Tag: Lakota School Board

Doug Horton in His Own Words: The Joy of Taking a Shower in Liberal Tears

I’m not the kind of person who spikes the football.  However, just before the Lakota levy attempt in 2025, school board member Doug Horton posted a video (shown here) where he emphasized the last levy won by Lakota back in 2013.  That was a swipe at me personally, so I have to address it, specifically.  He also indicated another Democrat talking point that has been circulating for many years, and that is that I, and about a dozen other anti-levy people, are a vociferous minority who do not represent the rest of the community.  So his message is not to listen to us and vote for his monstrous tax proposal because we love children.  However, these days, many more than a dozen people are opposed to the Lakota tax spending addictions.  And there are a lot more than I who take a position and help out during these political campaigns.  In this case, I had very little to do with the official campaign.  I do the things I always do, but with many more people working on the campaign, and they are brilliant and organized individuals.  And I’m proud of the great work they did.  And that effort is only going to grow in the future, especially with a successful defeat of the Lakota levy, the first one since 2013, which barely, and I mean barely, squeaked by.  Back then, it was Sheriff Jones who stepped over the line to support the public school teachers because he was still mad at the Tea Party effort to make public sector unions illegal in Ohio, which was the side I was on.  It was due to Sheriff Jones’ support that the 2013 levy passed by just a tiny bit, and another hasn’t passed since then. 

And why should a levy pass? It’s not like the community isn’t giving Lakota enough money.  They have a budget of over a quarter of a billion dollars per year, and for their collective bargaining contracts, that’s not enough for their insatiable desires.  It took about a decade, but Sheriff Jones and I are mostly on the same page, and that’s how the ball bounces in politics.  And for this levy attempt, and any others that Lakota proposes in a declining enrollment district with education changing dramatically in the years to come, that’s how it’s going to be.  This leaves people like Doug Horton on the extreme outside, and because he made the statements he did, we must address his point of view as a costly school board member and as a proper representative of the poor management currently on the board.  For many years, we had something of a conservative on the board who worked with everyone to keep more taxes off the ballot.  We even managed to get a majority on the board to control costs, which Horton referred to.  And I found some of his comments incredibly out of touch, especially regarding Darby Boddy, the conservative school board member whom Lakota, as an organization, lobbied hard to remove, literally the moment she was sworn in.  If Doug Horton is worried about Lakota headlines not being negative in the national media, then don’t support superintendents who have sex fests on Craigslist and tell the police that he fantasized about engaging with children who were going to the school at the time.  Horton proposes ignoring the problems so they can receive good press, pass tax increases, and gloss over trouble for the greater good of the school brand, which is a kind of fake sentiment that is at the heart of many problems when raising children.  A topic we could spend many books writing about, given its incorrect point of view. 

Doug Horton and many others in the background have worked hard to destabilize the school board so that they could get rid of the conservatives and essentially get to this big facilities plan, which has been in the planning phase since Trump’s last term, a very long time.  And they believed that if only they had enough liberals on the school board, the community would pass the levy.  And my thoughts have been for a long time to let them have the school board, let them try to run a levy, and let that levy crash and burn when they find out just how many people in the community are against them, many more than just a dozen or so.  In the case of this levy, the defeat was even more than I thought; it lost 60% to 39%.  I thought our side might get into the high 50s.  I was impressed to see it hit 60 in a down-year election, where engagement was naturally low.  It was actually a good simulation of what we expect Lakota to do next, and that is try to slide another levy under the door in May when people want to forget about school and turnout is low, or in August when nobody is thinking about politics.  Turnout was not very vigorous for this election, and still, Lakota lost massively, so that’s a good start for the tax defenders.  And it proves something even more profound that I knew we had to get to once we essentially kicked the control of the school board over to the liberals.  They needed to see what I’ve been telling them all along, which they obviously pay attention to, because Doug Horton essentially announced it to the world as a matter of fact.  People are not with them; they are against them in massive ways.  And they never believed it because they don’t speak to people outside their social circles, which are proportionally very small. 

The biggest problem with our conservative majority is that we let them play the game of division; they got our people all fighting each other with the belief that, in the vacuum, they would regain power and win the hearts of the public.  And Doug Horton does represent the rest of the board, especially Julie Shaffer and Kelly Casper, in his point of view, and that is the public would spend money on their dumb ideas if only I weren’t around, or a dozen or so noisy people, which they have justified to themselves as a small minority.  What reality says, however, is that those voices represent a majority of the Butler County population, and as I said would happen, when given a chance to talk, they would voice their opinion at the ballot box.  And they did, they crushed the Lakota levy.  I don’t think about it too much, but when I see videos like his, it’s a grotesque reminder of just how stupid some of these people are, and it really makes me sick that they are my neighbors.  I’ve lived in the area longer than most of these pro-levy types have been alive, and I will be around long after all of them are gone.  To me, they are the unwelcome noise of a thriving community, where people come from other places and bring their misguided ideas with them, which are socially very destructive.  But when things get tough, I like to let people show what they have, and he certainly did.  And rather than warn them not to pass a levy, I’m fine to let them try, which they did.  And what I said would happen, happened.  And it was because a lot more than a dozen people got information to the voters that helped them make the right decision.  And the amount of support we have had in that effort has grown over the years; it hasn’t declined.  The real solution lies in young people like Ben Nguyen, who was just elected to the school board, and I think will bring many good ideas with him, along with healthy and intelligent debate.  And we’ll need about three or four more like him to push off all these ridiculous liberals.  But first, they had to be exposed for what they were.  And they have, so now it’s time for a lot more work, focusing on school board building rather than defending our property values against those who are clearly out of touch and not very smart.

Rich Hoffman

We’re rebuilding the school board. Good management is the best way to defeat tax increases.

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

I Endorse Ben Nguyen for Lakota School Board: What a smart young man with a great future

Ben Nguyen is in good company.  When Nancy Nix invites me to her house to meet people she thinks will be the future of politics, she has a pretty good track record.  And I felt bad; I was running late when she invited me over to listen to a speech from a bright young man by her pool, as I had in the past.  I was stuck on an overseas call, and the time zones didn’t match up to the schedule Nancy had given me.  But when I did arrive, it was just in time to hear a speech by Ben Nguyen, a former student at Lakota schools who had just graduated and was now running for the school board.  And as I watched him speak, he had picked a spot by her pool to talk to the crowd that was just like another young overachiever, J.D. Vance.  A few years ago I had listened to the future Vice President give a very similar speech as Ben did from that very spot, which was before he was even running for the senate seat, and of course Nancy was right about him.  Ben also reminded me of another bright young mind who she promised me had a great future in politics, which was Vivek Ramaswamy.  I think of these guys as young, even though they were in their late 30s when I first met them, because, to me, they are.  I’m not a young person, so everyone seems young to me.  But Nancy Nix has a knack for finding good people in the crowd and getting behind them with a bit of help.  I was not surprised to learn that Ben Nguyen was an intelligent young man, and I enjoyed listening to him speak about why he was running for the Lakota school board in the November 2025 elections. 

Essentially, Ben is against the upcoming Lakota levy, which is the most expensive school levy in the state of Ohio.  He is also against indoctrination in public schools, and he has fresh experience, having just left school to learn what is really going on.  And he wants to do good things in life with his obvious talents.  He has siblings still attending Lakota schools, so he is concerned about public education in general.  He plans to do many things in the future, as his life is currently an open book.  However, to run and win the school board seat would be historic; he would undoubtedly be one of the youngest ever to do so.  But as I listened to him speak, he possessed the wisdom of a much older person, and he was only going to improve with time.  I had just recently watched Bernie Moreno give a similar speech from almost the same spot in Nancy Nix’s backyard, and he’s close to my age.  And Ben sounded just as well-versed politically, and he was very articulate and well-spoken.  He’s already a better political figure than most people who have been doing this kind of thing for three or four decades.  As I thought about Ben, I was skeptical due to his age as I drove to Nancy’s home.  I am one of those people who think it’s better to be old and broken, looking like a wet towel discarded in the sun, than a beautiful young person with everything working, because of the essential ingredient of wisdom.  Wisdom is hard to get, and it’s worth the age it often takes to get there, and what you lose along the way.  So I’m not automatically impressed with young people.  However, it was clear that Ben Nguyen was something special because he possessed a remarkable amount of wisdom at a very young age, which was evident in his family background, as he discussed.

And he was right in his speech about why someone like him needed to be on the Lakota school board.  I have been intensely critical of the public education system.  My thought on it was to erase everything John Dewey ever did and to start the concept of education anew in American culture.  I don’t think people are nearly as educated as they should be, and I deal with a lot of people every day who hold advanced Master’s and PhDs.  People aren’t that smart in our culture, and it disgusts me.  I’m not excited to support more of the kind of education that leaves people so ill-prepared for the world.  However, to Ben’s point, the current school board does not represent the kind of people who live in Butler County, Ohio. If we are going to have a public school funded by taxpayer money, we should have representatives on the school board who represent us.  After speaking with Ben, I think he would be great, and I will certainly be voting for him.  Needless to say, I fully endorse him and would love to see him win a seat in this upcoming election.  It would be a step in the right direction.  I’ve been a part of a lot of campaigns to put members of the school board in place to represent conservatives, but the efforts have been discouraging, leaving me wanting to blow up the whole system with charter schools and the elimination of the Department of Education as a whole.  But Ben Nguyen reminds me of why I have worked for good school boards in the past, and his personality appears to be well-suited to withstand the intense scrutiny that comes with the job.

Isaac Adi was also there to show support.  Isaac is a current school board member for Lakota, and he consistently votes in favor of Republican positions.  But he’s currently the only one.  He and I have seen each other at a few events since the highly publicized fallout he had with Darby Boddy, a school board member I had supported a lot and still do.  The pressure of those positions, by the whispers that come into them, is hard to deal with, and I wanted those two to work better together instead of against each other.  And Isaac was one of the reasons I no longer thought school board races were worth dealing with.  But seeing him there to support Ben, I thought the beginnings of something good were forming.  Of course, to get a good school board, it would take a lot more than just Ben Nguyen.  However, this was a good start, because until there is a good school board, Lakota schools will continue to mismanage money and ask for tax increases, as they have more in mind than just this bond levy on the November ballot.  They are also considering an operations levy in the very near future, and we don’t want a liberal school board rubber-stamping more spending, as they have been doing.  We need smart people who are willing to engage in lively debate and continually ask essential questions. With Ben Nguyen in that school board role, I see a lot of opportunity for good things to happen.  However, people will have to show up and vote for him because the Democrats are counting on a low turnout to maintain the status quo on the school board.  So people are going to have to rally behind Ben.  And after hearing him speak and explaining what he wants to do and why, the Lakota school district would be in a much better position.  And Ben Nguyen is certainly somebody voters can get excited about.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

What is Required for a New Lakota School Board Member: Its a system that needs to die

Coming up in the Lakota schools soon is an opportunity to elect three more conservative school board members, and to answer the question I have been asked regularly: am I running for one of them?  Because many people want me to.  Not to give a politically worthless answer, but in my opinion, people who genuinely appreciate the system should be the ones to run it.  I do not like the system, and I have no interest in working with people like that.  I view education as a reform effort, and I believe the amount of time required to fulfill a school board role exceeds 70 hours per week.   It’s not a helicopter position as it’s now for many people who are currently in it.  So I would advise people who want to help fix the system and are willing to do that level of work to let us know, and we’ll help you connect the dots.  But as far as one of those people being me, that wouldn’t be a good idea for those wanting to save the system in some regard.  I’m accustomed to being entirely in charge of the things I do; I’m not a very good consensus player.  I don’t even think the design of school boards in public education is correct; it needs a strong CEO-type to oversee these radical superintendents.  I don’t like the lawyers.  I don’t like the teacher’s unions.  I don’t like the way they are funded.  I don’t like what they teach.  I don’t think they work long enough hours, regardless of the level of employees, administrative, or the teachers themselves.  I support scrapping the whole thing and starting over.  However, there are many parents with school-age children who want to make the best of a difficult situation, and these are the types of individuals who should be leading the school. 

As far as holding on to the way things were in the past?  There is no chance of that.  I was watching the protests this weekend at the Statehouse against Trump and Elon Musk over their fears that Social Security will be cut, which isn’t even on the table.  However, the level of stupidity exhibited by some of those participants is genuinely overwhelming.  There is no talking to people like that with reason.  They can’t understand anything that needs to be changed, so, in my opinion, they should all be scrapped.  They are not prepared for what needs to be done.  I would argue that they aren’t even qualified to be parents.  I feel sorry for the children born into families with the kind of parents who go to these anti-Trump protests.  It’s not their fault their parents are idiots.  But I see no hope in any of those people; they are the result of a society that has experimented with Marxism, and they accepted those thoughts as a new reality.  And that is not the future of education.  There is only one way things are going, and no amount of crying like a baby is going to change anything.  The funding of public schools needs to change; it will change.  The government funding of schools, with unmanaged money moving from the federal government back to the local level, is not a future prospect.  It can’t be, and it never should have been.  People have seen what that system gave them, and they aren’t willing to continue with that method.  The per-pupil costs of educating students should be at least half what they currently are.  When I talk to people who are out there carrying signs in favor of preserving that system, they don’t understand it, and they never will.  Education has to be competitive; we need competition with other teachers, with other districts, and with other states.  The teacher’s union model of everyone getting a collective bargaining agreement for subpar work is over.

And as I say that, people will tell me tomorrow, and the day after that, and the week after that—that’s why I should be on the school board.  Consider what you’re saying and think about what you know about me.  Yes, I can speak very politically, and I work very well with people who hate me and plot against me with everything they can come up with.  My life is far more complicated than the most ostentatious Shakespeare play.  There isn’t any way for my life to be reflected in art because nobody would believe it, including the most conspiratorial of Shakespeare’s works.  My idea of the perfect school board member was and is Darbi Boddy.  She genuinely cared about making the school a great one, and she represented a sizeable demographic group within the Lakota school system.  And people from all political sides conspired to get rid of her.  Who in their right mind thinks I would put up with that?  Darby handled things very well and played by the rules, paying her legal fees to defend herself in ridiculous ways.  She never should have had to do that.  And I can say, I wouldn’t.  I would burn the whole system down from the inside out, along with all the people associated with it.  So be careful what you wish for.  I want what’s best for the people of my community.  However, what’s best for me is what people who deal with me receive, and I’m not sure people can see past the results they want, which are undoubtedly attainable.  But what would they do with the wreckage in the aftermath? That’s where the real trick is. 

I think there is a way to do it, but as I mentioned, I believe the job of a school board member at Lakota schools requires at least 70 hours a week.  It takes that long to read everything you need to read and speak with all the people you need to talk to.  The school board meetings need to be more prolonged, more frequent, and include more detailed information.  And the people working together need to build a team, not to resemble a Shakespearean drama.  And when I say that, we need three school board members who will work together, not against each other, and merge into the political faction of the teacher unions.  I have a very dominant personality in personal conduct, and I excel when I can give orders.  But consensus building is not my thing, and it never will be.  I’m the one you call to take the head shot.  Not the one who cleans up the mess.  And Lakota schools are a mess, and there is a lot to clean up.  And the people doing that need to like each other and to represent the community in the best way possible.  But there will be a lot of hard talks and times in the next two to three years.  Really, until Vivek Ramaswamy is governor of Ohio, we won’t be able to truly fix public education for good with competitive models and funding tied to the child, not the uncompetitive local school.  The property tax racket has to come to an end.  It has given us a garbage product taught by garbage people who are worthless in every category, and it’s time to put all that to an end.  As those protesters increasingly do in places like the Ohio Statehouse, they aren’t in the realm of reality, and that isn’t the fault of the rest of the world.  It is their social dysfunction to think that a school system can continue to get unlimited funds to sponsor a poor work ethic and to teach Marxism to the next generation isn’t even a consideration for the future.  I will not say everyone but me should do such a hard job.  But when it comes to delivery, be careful what you wish for.  My bedside manner on this topic does not come with any handholding.  I’ve been ready to pull the plug on the patient for a long time.  It’s a system that needs to die.

Rich Hoffman

Click Here to Protect Yourself with Second Call Defense https://www.secondcalldefense.org/?affiliate=20707

Darbi Boddy and the Masonic Order of Doom: The fight of social collectivists against MAGA individualism

Evil is the only word that applies to how Lakota schools, its administration, fellow school board members, various political parties, and the legal system have treated Darbi Boddy.  I told her recently that she should dump all those losers and let the whole thing burn.  But I wouldn’t quit either, even if it is the right thing to do.  That is more my wife talking than me; the empathy comes from concern over Darbi’s family.  On November 17th, 2023, Darbi needed to attend a safety meeting for the Lakota school board, and she had to make arrangements for someone to care for her little girl in case she was put in jail.  I’ve gone to war with people for far less than all this, so I don’t blame her when she says she’s not going to quit.  But the totality of the evil involved here is jaw-dropping and is every bit as bad as I’ve always said it was.  These are terrible, horrendous people engaged in teaching these kids in public schools, and there is a lot worse brewing under the surface.  And Darbi feels compelled to stand up to that evil and I admire her for it.  And so it was when she arrived at the meeting, there was security who told her that she couldn’t be there because of the recent and very dysfunctional Isaac Adi restraining order against Darbi.  But Darbi had spoken to the school lawyers and people who should know, and they told her she could attend, so she did, until the police issued her a citation and a court date for November 29th, 2023 for a violation of a court order.  To show how much these people care about kids, they threatened to throw Darbi Boddy in jail just for attending a school board meeting in which she was elected to participate.  Her husband is serving our country overseas, and she is the primary caregiver to a cute little girl, these people could care less what all this did to her, just as they don’t care about the students at Lakota.  All they really care about is how they can use those poor kids to fill their empty and featureless lives with social conformity.

It didn’t have to be this way; it wasn’t long ago when Judge Lyons was with Darbi and me at a nice political event where I was one of the featured speakers.  The judge was sitting at our table, and I enjoyed his company, as I have on other occasions.  And I have thought of him as a pretty good guy.  But he is also the attorney for this Isaac Adi monstrosity against Darbi, where he and others have been aggressively trying to get rid of the new school board member for the last two years.  And going back to the beginning, they drew first blood.  Lynda O’Connor led the charge, and she has dragged into her antics of personal destruction many characters, such as Judge Lyons, to satisfy a personal vendetta against Darbi Boddy for mysterious reasons.  Reasons that transcend politics.  Many people have been giving me the inside scoop on this story, and it gets uglier the more we learn from the personal experiences of these people.  I understand many temptations for brotherhoods, such as those experienced in Masonic memberships, especially within the legal profession, and Bar Associations, union membership, political parties, and all kinds of groups that give timid individuals a place to hide behind a collectivist mindset.  This bloodthirsty hatred for Darbi Boddy and others in the MAGA movement was tied to this desire to hide personal behavioral characteristics behind various elements of social collectivism and use the disguise of saving the children to mask it all from the public just as the Shriners do a lot of excellent community work when the actual elements of membership may not be so psychologically healthy. 

Looking at this case, if it weren’t for Judge Lyons’s networking, this restraining order against Darbi Boddy from Isaac Adi would go nowhere.  The recent appeals court process of Roger Reynolds, the former Butler County Auditor attacked by rivals in the Republican Party purely over power, has been much slower than the case with Isaac, which has been lightning fast.  So fast that Darbi has barely been able to react to it, which is the point. You can tell how weak a case is when they build it around entirely procedural conduct to disguise merit.  If judges weren’t also the attorneys in this case, this whole thing would stall with everyone waiting for a trial.  But this one is moving lightning fast because other elements at work look to go well beyond political parties.  This is the same kind of legal warfare that Democrats are using to harass President Trump, and it all looks scary until you get to the details.  Notice how Trump is winning in court already, especially regarding the Colorado case, which was just decided yesterday in his favor.  And the gag order in New York.  I have said from the beginning what the legal result would be in those cases, and Darbi’s case is similar.  The restraining order trying to keep her from attending school board meetings, which is all this is really about, will likely be dismissed, and the citation she was issued will be as well.  And regarding the issue in Columbus where Isaac is pushing for a violation of the incorrectly applied court order, at best, it’s a misdemeanor.  So, there is a lot of overreach where judicial activism is on full display, but there isn’t much legal merit.  Just a serious abuse of authority.  But it’s the intent that is so alarming, and that people that you think are, or were, reasonable people can be so treacherously malicious to the point of self-destruction. 

One week before all this, I sat down with Isaac to discuss this drama. We were at a political event together and hadn’t talked much, and he approached me to have a conversation and tell me how much he forgave me for all that had gone on. Which I thought was odd, but I listened, as usual. He told me how much he “loved Darbi” and wanted to do the right thing. He also told me how much differently things look on the inside as opposed to the outside, and that I didn’t understand. Well, I see pretty well, and I’ve heard all that before from people up to terrible things. What’s going on is collectivism, the same behavior that rots people’s minds toward various degrees of Marxism, and it manifests in the kind of memberships people socially engage in. Whether it’s the club of a school board where the political elements are making clear to the public that they don’t care what the voters think, they will remove Darbi because it’s their club and they decide who is in it. The voters are not in control, which is what the same cop who investigated the various sexually related antics of the previous Lakota superintendent and let him off the hook, did when he issued Darbi a citation for attending a meeting on safety as an elected officeholder just doing her job. The message was that people from the outside were not welcome. President Trump isn’t welcomed into the Swamp, and Darbi Boddy isn’t welcomed to the Lakota school board, and they were going to try anything to remove the voter’s pick from their club of malcontents and social parasites. I wouldn’t blame Darbi if she did want to quit. The message is clear to all like her that the Republican Party is not open to outsiders. It’s the club they value and the networks of social collectivism that are all about not doing what’s suitable for the kids or the community—bowing to the wills of a politically radical teacher’s union and all the associations that spawn from it. It’s as ugly as anyone can imagine. And thank goodness someone like Darbi has come along to expose it all. Like Trump, there is so much we wouldn’t know until someone was willing to challenge that system and show the world just how bad these people always were. I want to say I hate to be correct, but I can’t think of when I have ever been wrong. And I certainly have not been wrong about the Lakota school system from the beginning. If anything, I’ve been too polite.

All these brotherhoods, yet they would sacrifice the responsibility of freedom for social acceptance all the time. Many evils are committed under such an arrangement.

Rich Hoffman

Why Not Lynda and Isaac: I’d rather vote for Democrats because at least you know what you are getting

It has not been very pleasant. I have been traveling a lot across the world, and at each airport stop once arriving back into cell phone coverage, I have been flooded with text messages and calls wondering why I still defend the Lakota school board member Darbi Boddy and do not have the same kind of sympathy with current school board president, Lynda O” Conner, and member Isaac Adi. I understand the concerns, but neither Lynda nor Isaac are conservatives, and you know what I always say. I love all Republicans until they show me that they aren’t. There isn’t a situation where Lynda and Isaac give the illusion of a conservative school board. At the point I’m at now, I’d instead remove the illusion and let the Democrats have it so we can hang them on all the problems later. Playing this game with Lynda and Isaac is lying to ourselves, and I see no point in doing it. All it does is cause further brand damage to the Butler County Republican Party brand. My view on these silly disputes is that they are small-minded, who in their right mind cares about power on the school board except for people who don’t bring much value to anything else in their lives. Watching what Lynda has been willing to do to achieve such silly power has disappointed me. The school board is a part-time gig at best. It should never generate the kind of political games from Lynda’s camp, and I cannot support her or those propping her up. I have given them a chance. I’ve worked with Lynda, and that picture Isaac Adi has with Jim Jorden is one that I took. I have tried to help all of these people. But only one hasn’t lied to me, at least that I know of yet. And that is Darbi Boddy. The rest of them have been horrendous, and if that’s the best we get, we might as well vote for Democrats.

This coming from a guy whose son was sentenced to life in jail for pedophilia.

I’ve heard a thousand times, that Darbi lied to everyone during the vetting process, and represented herself as a calm, collective, friendly person willing to play ball. I’ve heard from even friends of hers that Darbi engages in personal outbursts and is very aggressive. I had experience with Darbi before she was elected, and I have had several complex discussions with her since; I can say that she has always been honest, even very Christian, much more so than I initially thought. She has values and she defends them. And she has never been crazy or violent around me, and maybe she had a right to be. I always liked Darbi Boddy, but I like her much more now after two years in office than I did the year leading up to the election where she and Isaac ran together as an endorsed Republican Party ticket. Darbi has been my favorite among all the people I have dealt with on the Lakota school board over the last decades. I don’t think she misrepresented herself during the fundraising and campaign stage. I think what happened was that Lynda used her to get the vote for the school board president position then quickly turned against her when the mask debates were getting heavy during Darbi’s first month after being sworn in. And that betrayal hurt her, and it has only gotten worse since, not because of Darbi, but the behavior of the other school board members.

Showing they have control of power while real crimes are abundant without their attention

You might have heard in the news that Isaac Adi won his restraining order against Darbi Boddy in court, where Lynda was nearby blowing on the fire to help it burn. Lynda is the one who lied and misrepresented what she was up to. Isaac indeed misrepresented himself to me and I am excessively disappointed in him. Darbi has not disappointed me. Lynda has. Isaac has. And the rest of the characters fall somewhere along those lines. My policy in all things in life is that I’ll give everyone the benefit of the doubt, but once I find out you’ve lied to me, it’s over. And it’s over forever. There is no forgiveness. So that is why I still support Darbi Boddy but am very much against Isaac Adi and Lynda O’Conner. Everyone knows that I do not like Julie Shaffer, one of the other school board candidates. Despising her is a more accurate term. I would vote for her before I would Lynda O’Conner because I think Julie is more honest, and at least I know what kind of Democrat radical I am dealing with. They all register as Republicans, but their actions always tell the truth about them. After watching that mess, which likely will be overturned on appeal, the protective order against Darbi from Isaac because his little feelings have been hurt by how aggressive she is, I’m willing to call it a day on the whole election for the Lakota school board. Think how absurd all this is; Sheriff Jones is threatening to arrest Darbi to help his buddies on the school board when he can’t even arrest all the people showing an interest in abusing children which caused all this trouble to begin with. All those who have helped Lynda will have to learn a hard lesson. Don’t call me because I will tell you I told you so. Out of all these characters the only one who has consistently told me the truth has been Darbi, which is why I still support her and have nice things to say about her. She has been very respectful to me, my wife, and conservative politics. And that is supposed to be what we are all fighting for.

Hey, everyone only has themselves to blame. Around 20 great young people wanted to run for political office, and the Republican party could have gotten younger with fresh people with long shelf lives.  What will Lynda do? Give Butler County 4 more years, of what?  And will Isaac be the future of the Butler County Republican Party?  He’s getting restraining orders against women!  People like Darbi make people want to go out and vote Republican, and several people like her would be good.  However, the Party decided to pick controlled assets they felt more comfortable with rather than people who would make the party better and represent the voters of Butler County.  Lynda and her gang have played the game of personal destruction and the damage left in the wake is her fault, and those who helped her along—trying to talk me into throwing Darbi in as an equal failure would be dishonest.  I think Darbi has every right to be upset at everyone who has been terrible to her.  People of value often find that their feelings get hurt, and she’s disappointed in other people.  Not the other way around.  With all that, it should be pretty simple why I support Darbi Boddy.  I would love to see a school board with four more like her.  But that won’t be the case this time around; Lynda is the one who went against the plan and misrepresented to everyone what she wanted.  And I’m not OK with that.  Darbi, in my experience, was a good person who was easy to work with until she was sabotaged with an effort a few months into her term to be removed from office.  And that kind of personal sabotage is just another form of election fraud.  The voters picked Darbi.  Lynda and others have worked to undo that election, and that is the worst of the worst in my book.  And why Darbi is not in the same boat as Lynda and Isaac.  And why I support her and not them. 

Rich Hoffman

Isaac Adi Loses His Man Card: Despite modern woke rules, people are still people

So they have drug Judge Lyons into all this? I love the Judge, and there he was in court serving as the stooge for a failed political figure, as Lynda is calling in all the favors, hoping to turn back the tides of reality like some crazy old woman seeks the fountain of youth before the grip of old age seals her doom. These political gymnastics can’t hide the terrible report card at Lakota. Lynda was in charge, and it’s on her, which will be the subject of tomorrow. But for now, man cards are still crucial in the world, despite the attempt to use new woke rules to remove such judgments from society. Men and women still have expectations from each other that have been relevant for many thousands of years, even millions. And that was something an old friend of mine, who ran WLW radio then, used to enjoy during his Saturday radio show from 9 a.m. until 11. Back before there was ever a YouTube, through the Obama first term, I used to do a lot of talk radio all over the country, and I had a good relationship, especially with Clear Channel Radio, who ran WLW, specifically through Darryl Parks when he was the big man at the station, setting all their programming priorities. He and I had similar politics, so I was a frequent guest with him and many other Marconi award-winning personalities, and we had a good time having fun with forbidden early woke social rules. It would be woke politics that would have Clear Channel remove most of the conservative talent (Bill Cunningham is not a real conservative; he only plays one on the radio), and Parks eventually lost his title. But while he had it, we had a lot of fun and did a lot of good radio making fun of ridiculous things, such as woke policies, well before anybody even knew what they were. We would often exploit that trait on his radio show, and one of the most popular mechanisms we would employ was removing people’s man cards when they showed weak behavior in a public setting, especially men who were not standing up for traditional masculine attributes. We would talk about them on the air during his show to hundreds of thousands of people and remove their man cards as a shame for their lack of courage and strength when it was needed most.

So in that fabulous and influential tradition, we must bring back the removal of man cards when they show they do not deserve them, and that is certainly the case with Isaac Adi, the Lakota school board member who attempted to have court protection from fellow school board member, Darbi Boddy.  He and Darbi were at a conference in Florida and had several arguments, which isn’t unusual.  They ran for school board together and have turned out to be quite different politically.  It didn’t look that way at first, but since Isaac won his seat, he has essentially become much more liberal, whereas Darbi is still the conservative mom that she ran herself as.  But unlike regular politicians, Darbi didn’t say one thing and then show herself to be something else.  And that is what the establishment types call a lack of “professionalism” when politicians do what they say they will do with the naive assumption that they might be able to change anything. For most politicians, you throw populist opinions to the public to get them to vote for you.  Then you say other things to those who donate money to political campaigns.  But when you are in executive session with other politicians, you are all friends; you talk about Bill’s cat and Sarah’s new dress, and no matter who they are, Republicans and Democrats, you enjoy a kind of silent membership to the club.  Darbi was always the same person: the campaign Darbi, the fundraising Darbi, and the daily school board member.  So when efforts were led by Lynda O’Conner, a supposed conservative school board member, to get control of these two new school board members a few years ago, Isaac and Darbi, only Isaac listened.  Darbi remained independently conservative, and since then, Isaac and Darbi have had a very contentious relationship, and they argue frequently for obvious reasons. If it’s anybody’s fault for destroying their relationship, it’s Lynda O’Conner who did it.

According to court testimony on September 15, 2023, because of this incident, Isaac was admitted to a hospital for two nights and three days, and he had a medical bill as evidence. That says everything.

But the only time they’ve been violent, that type of thing was initiated by Isaac. At least two times, I know where Isaac has punched at cameras recording him, and it was women holding those cameras. Isaac has a temper and has expressed it openly. He likes to be in control, and when he feels he’s losing control, he turns to physical aggression. I never thought it was a big deal, but under the definition of harassment that he expressed to a court on September 15th, 2023, then the smeller is the feller in this case. He’s the guy in the elevator passing gas and then looking at everyone else as if it were their fault. So it is ironic that after that Florida trip for school board business, he went to the courts to file a petition against Darbi, citing that he did not feel safe around her and that she had been “bullying” him. And that she carries a gun and he doesn’t feel “safe.” Jiminy Christmas, that is not how men talk! I understand that Darbi is tough, and she has a powerful personality. I have been to the firing range with her and her husband, and I can report that she does know how to handle herself with a gun. But what world is Isaac living in? Everyone carries a weapon, or at least they should. It’s like saying that a woman has earrings. Carrying guns is a common social enterprise, so it should not have been a big deal to Isaac. But he went to the courts to seek protection from her, which was pretty embarrassing, and he felt he needed to. The judge denied the request, as should have been understood from the start. Isaac failed to present evidence that an ex parte order is necessary for his safety and protection from imminent danger.

They should have never tried to knock Darbi off the school board. They just keep digging themselves deeper and deeper.

All that might be fine in the legal world of court talk and political discourse.  And to say it’s a dysfunctional relationship doesn’t go deep enough to the true heart of the matter.  What is the purpose of these frequent confrontations?  It comes down to acceptance of honest public discourse, and what I find valuable about Darbi is that as a genuine representative of the community and an unpolished political figure, she is a good gauge of how people feel in the district.  Yet the political trend is to be one way in public and another in private, which is an inherently dishonest position, and that understanding has led to healthy conflict.  But if you are a man, you don’t run to the courts looking for protection, for the “state” to protect you.  You handle your battles and don’t seek government help to resolve them.  That is why Isaac Adi must lose his man card.  By the woke rules of the modern world, it’s OK for men to cry and be emotional.  And to be afraid of guns.  But by the fundamental laws of manhood, those are all reprehensible traits that women classicly find destructive and unattractive.  And I think Darbi’s primary source of disappointment, knowing her pretty well as I do, is that Isaac has shown himself to be everything but the kind and conservative person she ran with on the campaign.  Darbi never wanted to be a political figure in the traditional sense.  She just wanted to be on the school board to help kids get access to a better life.  And she has had no desire to become what Isaac has, and that anger spills over into their conversations.  The Lakota school board’s dysfunction started when Isaac attempted to remove Darbi from the school board with many other hostile people, led by Lynda O’Conner, literally the moment that Darbi gave her the critical vote to make her president.  So, who in their right mind would expect Darbi to get along with them at this late date or that she’d want to join hands under a banner of peace now?  She can only hope that she gets more people on the school board who are better representatives of the community to work with, and until then, she is just holding her nose, like many people are.  But compromising with people without integrity is not an option, or dealing with people who have lost their man cards. 

Rich Hoffman

Why I Won’t Support Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota School Board: There is a storm coming and it won’t be pretty

Of course, we are going to have this fight in Butler County, Ohio. It’s happening globally, nationally, statewide, and regionally. Look what Ken Paxten is going through with the Bush political machine in Texas right now. We find the same kind of problem regarding issues on the Lakota school board: populism as opposed to machine politics. The main reason I can’t support Lynda O’Conner for the school board is due to her performance, which has been rooted in machine politics that has stood against the kind of reforms education needs.  She has her role in the nasty storm that is about to hit, and rather than trying to destroy fellow school board member Darbi Boddy personally, she should have been preparing the community for what’s about to happen.  I know many people are getting caught up in the Rs and the Ds, even though school board people are supposed to be nonpartisan.  We know from experience that such a concept is far from the truth.  And based on partisanship, I don’t see any difference between Lynda O’Conner, Julie Shaffer, or Doug Horton.  They all would fit nicely in Kathy Wyenandt’s living room as like-minded Democrats.  Lynda has called herself a conservative, and she has a network that leans in that direction, but her behavior has been more on the side of Kathy Wyenandt’s pro-government school posse of progressive insurgents and far from small government and fiscally conservative values of the GOP.  All the intimidating phone calls, going through people’s garbage, messing with their utilities, or property ownership with useless bureaucracy attempting to show power over the anti-Lynda forces can’t change what she has done.  She has told me what I wanted to hear in the past, yet she has behaved in the opposite direction, and those are not traits that can be endorsed.  She brought us Darbi Boddy, then immediately, as soon as she was sworn in, turned on Darbi in excessively unhealthy ways, not showing good leadership at all.  And now Lakota has a lot of problems looming on the horizon, and because of the time she has been on the board and what she has chosen to do with her time over the last two years, any rational mind would be crazy to endorse her.  I was hoping she wouldn’t run and that she would point her interests in a different direction, such as a trustee position.  But she has done the worst thing possible: running again when strategically it makes no sense, so now we must have a difficult conversation. 

I’ve heard it all before: We must have Republicans on the school board, and these conversations have occurred in name only.  Like some sports player who wears any team’s jersey, they are told to play against, without true loyalty to any team.  The brand damage associated with Lynda will be very damaging in the months and years to come.  I was at an event recently where some very smart political people were talking, and one of these particular people was right about this “perfect storm” that is about to hit.  But we disagree on what role Lynda should play in it as an endorsed candidate of the Republican Party.  I would advise that the GOP doesn’t touch this one with a 50-foot pole and let the Democrats choke on it because the storm is an act of their creation, and Lakota can do nothing to avoid it.  I’m not against the GOP endorsing candidates.  A GOP endorsement is powerful enough to do as it has in the past, but with two more good Republicans on the school board; otherwise, we’ll end up with union stooges.  But for one of those two endorsements to be Lynda is a problem because the candidate might as well be one of the many liberals of Butler County who know they would never otherwise get elected to anything unless they were affiliated with the Republican Party. 

The time to deal with this story would have been over the last few years when Lynda picked a fight with Darbi over, essentially, political power, and now the kicking the can down the road is leading to catastrophic circumstances.  Obviously, it would have been better for Lynda not to be near a school board when these things hit the fan.  But nobody listened, so the brand damage is going to be devastating.  Nobody will be able to say I didn’t warn them.   The best thing to do would be to throw this election to the Democrats.  That doesn’t change any positive support for Russ Loges, who I think will be a great school board member.  Darbi could use help, and Isaac can decide whatever he wants to do.  But a teacher’s contract is coming, and they will want more money.  There is a facilities plan that looks like it will legitimately cost a billion dollars over the next 20 years.  Of course, that is attractive to people in construction, but it’s a vast, expensive commitment to a school system that is changing rapidly with school choice options that will become more dominant soon.  This isn’t something that just occurred; the school board has been discussing this facility plan since Brad Lovell was president of the school board, and Lynda was looking for help dealing with him.  It’s been a long time; meanwhile, Lakota has burned through its surplus and worked up the community toward a tax increase.  The problem is that property value assessments are increasing significantly due to state auditor complications.  So, the amount of taxation from those increased property value assessments will be significant.  Not the environment that makes for a healthy community passing tax increases to support a government school.  Then, of course, the national political challenges with inflation, supply chain issues at the grocery, and general temperament have brought pain to everyday people.  These next few years are going to be rough. 

I would have advised Lynda to ride off into the sunset after 16 years.  Instead of digging in and picking a fight with Darbi Boddy because she didn’t fall under the control of the school board president like other members did in the past.  And now there is a whole political faction within the Republican Party that is very angry at Lynda.  And with all the intimidation techniques employed, it has only dug them in deeper.  And they will continue to make their voices heard.  Instead of working to solve those genuine problems, we have significant fractures that will be very destructive.  Things would have been different if anybody was willing to play a little chess.  The blame for this would be much better placed where it belongs, around the neck of Julie Shaffer or Doug Horton.  But if Lynda is the endorsed candidate, it will likely end up around her neck, which isn’t good for her.  And everyone supporting her will end up with eggs on their faces during a crisis period that will need a lot of leadership.  This happens when you mix political philosophies in the way things have been done at Lakota.  It is far better to have apparent political disagreements and to let the losing side be obvious than to let a GOP member burn at the stake with everyone else.  And that is what kicking the can down the road financially for over twenty years will cost, which won’t be good for anybody.  Lakota is not a quarter of a billion-dollar business with Lynda running it.  It’s instead a quarter of a billion-dollar lottery ticket for the unions that have the power to distribute that pile of money collected by property tax owners that is spent on liberal political issues.  And as all that hits the fan, it would have been best to have distance politically from the destruction that will follow.  That is why I won’t support Lynda O’Conner for the Lakota school board.  I would have supported her for trustee or some other position.  But not for this mess, which occurred on her watch, actions she did not provide the leadership necessary when it was needed most.

Rich Hoffman

The Lakota 5-Year Forecast: What do I think of it?

Since the most recent five-year forecast by the Lakota school system just before Thanksgiving 2022, I have been asked hundreds of times what I thought about it. I’m happy that the government school doesn’t plan to ask for more money until 2025. There are elements of the radical teacher’s union background who think that we haven’t had a tax increase since 2013, and before that, there were a lot of fights on three previous attempts to stop the school from taking more money from the public, so the push has been that its time to extract more money from the community. Before we elected three board members that are supposed to be conservative to the board, the previous school board was very liberal and wanted to take the surpluses that we had and spend that money on new facilities projects. There is this belief that is built into the progressive mentality, which believes that Lakota is the largest employer in our region of Butler County and that they deserve to be treated with respect and always have new things, like state-of-the-art school buildings, and nice amenities for the staff to work in, because if we want to recruit the best teachers to the area, that we have to do those things in order to stay competitive. In reality, the unionized teachers go where it’s good for them financially, and as we have learned, there are quite a few of them who are swingers and alternative sexual lifestyles participants, so access to other such people is as big of a decision for them as anything else. Access to bars to pick up 22-year-old kids and younger is a significant benefit for them and part of their decision-making process. Communities with block parties happening often and providing plenty of socializing are very attractive to new Lakota staff recruits. They really don’t care about a nice new building; they care about access to other people who are just as deranged as they are. This is why there hasn’t been a mass exodus after all the drama about the current Lakota school board superintendent. Instead of being a detriment, it has been a recruiting tool because it advertised to the world what Lakota is really about, which has been far more enticing than anything taxpayers could spend money on.

Yet, the Lakota school system has a large tax base; if anything, Lakota should be looking to lower taxes. There are a lot of residents who support 17,000 students with valuable property that is much higher than other school districts. And that’s before all the commercial real estate is taxed. That revenue is only increasing, especially by the Liberty Center part of the community where a new Costco and many new wonderful developments are emerging, so with Lakota operating at a surplus for much of the last decade, that is because student enrollment really hasn’t increased, but property value and commercial opportunities have increased dramatically. So we are talking about millions of dollars that Lakota has benefited from and wasted on employee raises for essentially a terrible product, a free babysitting service to the community. But even with all those benefits, we had a previous school board that wanted to spend, spend, spend into oblivion so that they could ask for more money with a tax levy. And that was the talk from 2020 until 2022. That the Lakota school board felt they hadn’t asked for money for a long time, and it was time to do so, regardless of whether anybody really needed it. And that assumption comes from a unionized workforce that wants all the benefits of employment without any downside of management control. They want facilities; they want fewer students in the classroom. They want unionized bus drivers who call off work for every sniffle they have and blame it on Covid. Lakota has mismanaged itself into a complete disaster of an organization, with poor report card showings happening since Matt Miller took over as superintendent. So on the performance side, Lakota has been a disaster, and they don’t deserve a dime in addition to the many hundreds of millions that their budget currently is. They get enough and should be giving back a lot of that money by lowering their current costs. 

When I heard the 5-year forecast and saw the PowerPoint they presented, it made me sick because of a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff that few people know about. While I’m happy that Lakota announced that they had enough money to stay solvent until the year 2025 and had to gag at the school board praising the treasurer for a presentation that should be expected, not praised, I could see clearly that a lot of Lakota’s assumptions on money is built into their lack of preparation for a professional world. Like all progressive institutions, they have a presumption of entitlement and don’t expect to be judged by performance, and that is clear in their 5-year forecast. Contained within it are all the assurances I wanted that there wouldn’t be further pushing for a tax levy from Lakota as the radical liberal types had been wanting. I know that Lynda O’Conner didn’t want to deal with a tax increase, and only a few months ago, she and Issac Adi met with me in a super-secret location in someone’s basement to talk about the problems at Lakota. At that time, we were working out their problems with Darbi Boddy, who I continue to think is the best school board member I have seen in decades. I want four more of her over the next few years because if we do have more like her, Lakota will be forced to live within its very generous budget and not ask for more money. They wanted to talk me away from Darbi; I wanted to find out why they didn’t like her suddenly. But at that meeting, I told them, as I tell everyone who asks, I generally don’t care about Lakota until they ask for more money. I think the product is garbage, too expensive, and that they teach radical leftist concepts to the next generation in my community is reprehensible. And in that 5-year forecast, they addressed all my concerns that we talked about in that private meeting. 

But why? What had changed over these last few months when it looked like a tax increase was the only thing the school board wanted to discuss? Well, they chained themselves to a sinking ship in their superintendent, who had gotten himself into a lot of trouble, and once he brought all that brand damage to Lakota, he threatened the public like some entitled, spoiled brat, all to hide his terrible performance since he was hired in 2017, and obviously the school system itself needs time to recover. Their former treasurer Jenni Logan, Matt Miller’s partner for a long time, suddenly left in August to become one of the seven indictments against Roger Reynolds in an upcoming trial. And that same month, all the crap literally hit the fan regarding the superintendent’s bizarre sexual lifestyle, which was revealed because he decided to pick a fight with school board member Darbi Boddy and her supporters. So there has been a bloody battle, and Lakota has brand damage because of it. If Lakota tried for a levy now, it would take more than three attempts to get it passed, and they know it. So they have to wait for a while for things to cool off and for the politics to change in a more favorable direction for them. They hope that if the people of Lakota just go back to sleep, they will be able to return to the good old days when nobody wanted to come to school board meetings, and they could have fantasies about tax increases for their progressive lifestyles. Jenni Logan didn’t leave a good job for a couple of bad ones at the commissioner’s office and at Ross schools for her health. There is a lot of bad behind the scenes, so when I see a report like this, it says Lakota needs time to recalibrate and repair its public perception. But it doesn’t change a thing about their internal management; they are a disaster with out-of-control employees who are too expensive and, most of the time, should not be around children. And no public relations firm in the world will be able to hide that pile of garbage by 2025. That’s what I think of the new 5-year forecast.

Rich Hoffman

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Sheriff Jones Sides with DeWine Liberals on Masks in Schools: Finding the corners of the political puzzle pieces

Sheriff Jones Flip Flops, But Why?

Here is how politics works, and even though Sheriff Jones probably won’t admit it, the timing of the Butler County health alert from the Sheriff’s Office says everything we need to know about the situation. Sheriff Jones often goes out of his way to contribute himself to the politics of the Lakota school system; he has done it against Thomas Hall’s H.B. 99, which would arm teachers in the classroom; he did it again in 2013 by siding with the tax increase the teacher’s union wanted. He certainly did it again recently as Darbi Boddy initiated a proposal to remove mask mandates in the public school even as Sheriff Jones announced his endorsement of the mask governor, DeWine struggling with a primary election. Puzzles like this can be hard to figure out until you put them together a few times, but with this one, the edge pieces were easy to spot, so the rest of the thing goes together very quickly. To help out the teacher’s union position on mask mandates, which they want to keep going infinitely, Sheriff Jones, who made international headlines with his former position on not forcing people to wear masks concerning Covid, has now reversed his position just enough to help with the upcoming vote in February on providing mask options to parents in the Lakota school district, or to impose mandates for further unforeseen durations, supposedly until Trump is in the White House again. Because the Biden administration will keep the mask mandates going as long as they can get political capital out of them, and the teacher’s union, all teacher’s unions, support the Biden presidency and mask mandates to hide that political incompetency. So this business of using kids to force a political message is exceptionally negligent, and all the participants are guilty in their own ways. Look at who is at the top of the list in endorsing Mike DeWine for re-election, who started all this mess in the nation to begin with. Remember, Ohio is #1 in the country for corruption under Mike DeWine’s first term. Does that sound like the kind of person a law and order politician would support?

Here is the List of RINO Republicans Who Have Empowered Governor DeWine to Destroy Ohio with Corruption.

Just as a criminal couldn’t break into a house and claim ignorance of the law once caught to avoid going to jail, the case for Covid now is well known. Just because many people have not come to terms with the reality that much of Covid has been purely political and points to political schemes extending beyond America’s nation, that doesn’t mean ignorance is an excuse for the further perpetuation of sheer stupidity. This is what all mask mandates are at this point. Just as we proved during 2021 that CRT was moving into all our public schools, and Lakota picked up new school board members because the blatant Marxist intrusion was well known before school officials could attempt to slide it back under the rug, the mask mandates are another progressive policy that has more to do with politics than safety, by a lot. For the actual situation on Covid and the political players involved, I would refer everyone to read the book by Kennedy, The Real Dr. Fauci. Kennedy is a Democrat, but he tells the story of Covid and who the players are and why they are. For those who are claiming ignorance as to why Covid is here and what we should be doing about it, I would refer to that starting point for reference. But for those who do know what’s going on want to return to life before March of 2020, which was the proposal that Darbi Boddy put forth for a February vote. 

Well, we knew this would happen once Darbi and Isaac Adi were elected to the school board. We had to have an election to bring some sanity to Lakota schools and all public schools, for that matter. And this mask issue was on the ballot in November, and Darbi is moving forward to fulfill an issue she ran on. Of course, the previous school board members and management team that has been in place during the Covid mess want to cover up for their complicity in the matter. And it is not surprising that Sheriff Jones is coming to their defense. He advertises himself as a Republican, but he has a soft spot for teachers’ unions.

The game goes like this, Darbi puts forward a controversial resolution. Kelly Casper immediately said that the resolution to lift the mask mandates went against the legal counsel of Lakota. She and Julie Shaffer have been pro mask for the kids since the beginning of Covid, for all the reasons that some people still think that Dr. Fauci is a nice guy they see on T.V. and not the snarling rat that most everyone else sees. To attempt to break up a possible 3 to 2 vote, Sheriff Jones comes out on Friday, January 21st appearing to have had a change of heart about Covid. However, for the last two years, Sheriff Jones has led the nation and the world to stand up against mask mandates in many cases. He has stated that he would not be the mask police even on foreign television. So why the change of heart? Well, you can ask him. I’m not sure he’d give a straight answer. Instead, we should listen to what people do, not necessarily what they say. 

I first noticed the Sheriff’s attempts to sway the newly elected Lakota school board on WLW in November of 2021, right after the election. His concern then was Thomas Hall and the proposal he sponsored to give teachers the option to carry weapons in class as first responders to potential school shooters. Sheriff Jones mentioned Lakota several times on his broadcast on the Bill Cunningham Show out of all the public schools in Butler County. Obviously, he was sending a message to Lakota, and knowing something about the political theater of Butler County; it’s not hard to find the edge pieces on this one. Several liberty candidates were newly elected in Butler County, and the Sheriff is known for asserting himself as the kingmaker in politics.   Many politicians won’t say anything to him because they want an endorsement from him when it comes time to go through the next election process. And like Sheriff Jones will say, “I’m just the Sheriff,” meaning he intends much more than what he indicates in most everything. That’s OK, I always say, politics is a blood sport, and I think that’s all fair in love and war. But all too often, these big government types, they believe that the rules are for everyone else but them and that they control the dictates, which everything always comes back around to where they should be, which is happening now, in Lakota. Julie, Kelly, Sheriff Jones, and the teacher’s union activists should have learned some hard lessons over the years. If they didn’t, they can’t claim ignorance now.

Meanwhile, the kids are genuinely suffering from the political theater that has gone on with Covid. They have been caught in the crossfire, and they have no idea what to make out of these things. The adults have let them down. Society has let them down. And now that we know better about Covid and the political motives, we have an obligation to do the right thing. Someone must take leadership, and that is what Darbi Boddy is proposing with her resolution to take the school safety measures back to pre-March 2020 normality. The tricks of scaring school board members who are typically more like Kelly Casper, who will take the advice of the experts over her own intellect, are not going to work forever. It’s disrespectful to see this game play out, where lawyers advising Lakota will point to Sheriff Jones and say about the Covid danger, “see, even the conservative sheriff is supporting masks.” Obviously, Darbi is very passionate about this mask situation and she wants a quicker resolution than the school board process typically allows. But she’s only on her second meeting. I think over time, things will smooth out. Passions are wonderful, but the game is the game and everyone has to play it to win within the rules.

All that theater is meant to sway a vote in February, hoping to scare off one of the three conservatives. If we haven’t seen this game play out many times in the past, it might not be so obvious. But unfortunately, we have. The teacher’s union even has Republicans to manipulate to their cause. Whether they are Republicans or Democrats, they all share a common problem; they are government employees who make their livings off taxpayers. And fear keeps taxpayers paying and not looking through the puzzle box to figure out how the pieces go together. This mask policy is crucial to them for many political reasons that go far beyond safety for students or teachers. It requires ignorant people to follow them or people too scared to think. So don’t think for a second that Sheriff Jones just woke up and changed his position on masks overnight. No, it has to do with politics and not caring one bit about the kids of the district, but the strength of the teacher’s union to win their first battle against an incoming conservative administration. And like they do at levy time, and the Sheriff is playing his part, they use children as their vehicles for political destruction to fulfill their member’s desires for selfishness. 

Rich Hoffman

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Vote No by Saying Yes: How Great Issac Adi and Darbi Boddy are for Lakota

Issac Adi and Darbi Boddy for Lakota School Board

I could tell you many stories about politics that are dire and would make you want to climb under a rock and never get involved again.  But sometimes, some stories are fantastic, and that is the case with the two endorsed Lakota school board candidates, Issac Adi and Darbi Boddy, who are running to replace incumbent Democrats in November of 2021.  Every event I have been to with these two has been good; a few examples are shown below.  The video might be a little rough, but it’s what they say that matters.  Darbi and Issac work well together and are as unselfish as I’ve ever seen in politics, in any position. I’ve said from the beginning that I supported four candidates for the school board, but in this race this year, the Republican endorsement is what matters.  In the past, liberals have infected the school board, so critical race theory and transexual policies became part of the dominant conversation. They have managed to hide their intentions by calling the school board “nonpartisan.” Well, we know that nothing in politics is “nonpartisan,” especially the Lakota school board.  But when this idea of supporting school board members for Lakota came up, I never thought that two of them who would win the endorsement would like each other so well. That’s when the “can you imagines” started coming to my mind, where the school board represented the conservatives of Butler County, Ohio truly, and that they worked well together.  It’s one thing to have conservative votes on the board to manage things the way voters expect, but that they would perform functional management is a bonus that didn’t seem possible. 

Vote for Darbi Boddy

For instance, Issac Adi went door to door in my precinct, letting people know who he was and when to vote for him.  My wife noticed him in our neighborhood, and they struck up a conversation at the end of my driveway.  Issac recognized her immediately, which I thought was remarkable considering the number of people he has met over several months, including big names like Jim Jordan.  I would imagine his head is spinning with all the people he’s had to shake hands with, so it did impress me that he remembered my wife.  That is one thing about Issac Adi; he is one of the most sincere people I’ve ever met in politics.  He truly cares and is a good person.  So he remembers people and cares about them long after the handshake.  Of course, he wanted to know where I was which my wife told him I was babysitting my grandkids inside the house.  So he came up to see me and talk for a bit. 

After talking and catching up, I noticed that Issac wore Darbi’s campaign sticker on his shirt.  He was doing the hard work of going door to door on a pretty hot day, full of enthusiasm after talking to many hundreds of people personally, and he was promoting Darbi along the way.  Now I know that they are both endorsed and are part of the same team.  But the way the vote occurs, they very much have to run individually.   The top vote-getters are the ones who win in these kinds of elections, and it’s always hard to beat an incumbent.  The union vote and latte-sipping liberals always show up on election night, making it hard for conservatives to get a lot of votes.  But here was Issac promoting Darbi just as much as he was promoting himself.  And as I understand it, Darbi has been doing the same.  She was out promoting her and Issac as a team, not just individual candidates.  For any election, that is a pretty unique concept that doesn’t have a lot of historical precedents. 

Adding their votes to that of the current Lynda O’Conner would be a game-changer at Lakota.  I have been to other events where I have seen the three of them talking, and the chemistry is just there.  You can see it from a long way off. I’ve been dealing with school board issues in many districts around Ohio for twenty years, and I have never seen such a good combo.  Seeing Issac that day took some of my natural cynicism toward politics into a place it had never been before.  It seemed possible that at Lakota, something good had a chance to happen.  They are both so much better than the other alternatives, and if people had an opportunity to see that for themselves, these two could get elected.   There are still very significant obstacles, but as hard as they have worked throughout September and into October, it seemed like more than a fantasy and more of an eventual reality.  Usually, when I think of the Lakota school board, I typically think of severe dysfunction and people who do not know what they are doing with the money.  But here were genuinely competent and hard-working people who actually liked each other, at least as much as I’ve ever seen in politics, and there was a chance for great things to happen at Lakota for the first time in forever. 

Vote for Issac Adi for Lakota School Board

Issac had to eventually leave and return to the campaign trail from my house, but it took a while.  I enjoyed his company so much that it took us a long time to say goodbye that day.  I can say that I have been talking actively with many of the old No Lakota Levy people preparing ourselves for levy fights in the years to come.  The current school board has been trying to find the time to put one up for a vote to satisfy the out-of-control spending the teacher’s union expects.  This was an election year. Otherwise, the current board would have proposed a tax increase this year.  Likely, they’ll wait until next year now that they’ve agreed to give all those teachers sitting home on Covid excuses a raise that they’ll have to pay for next year.  But a levy fight is so damaging.  It’s much better to support a new school board that would manage the money that we already give them, which is a massive 200 million-plus budget.  If you can’t teach 17,000 kids on that, you have problems.  But the school board has never listened. Instead, they have attacked businesses for more money, like trolls always looking for a shakedown of tax revenue to pay for their reckless and infinite spending ultimately. Lakota’s school board has been deficit spending for their entire existence; no matter how much money we’ve given them, they never find a way not to spend more than they take in.  When they did have a surplus for a bit because of declining enrollment, they couldn’t wait to waste it on something new.  With this prospect of an actual conservative school board to replace the majority of liberals, great things can happen.  Issac and Darbi have done the work to get people to know who they are.  Now it will be up to the voters.  For the first time in many of their lifetimes, they have a great choice as the Lakota school district residents.  They can vote for the same old tax and spend liberals that have screwed up so much at Lakota.  Or, they can vote for Issac Adi and Darbi Boddy, who enjoy each other, work hard, and care to give the board a conservative majority for the first time.  If voters don’t vote for them, then when the tax increases come, people won’t be able to complain about it because they had a chance to say no to those tax increases by saying yes to Darbi Boddy and Issac Adi. 

Rich Hoffman

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