Tag: Lori's Roadhouse

Bernie Moreno, Don Jr, and Vivek Ramaswamy at Lori’s Roadhouse: Good people doing good things for all the right reasons

Don Jr Endorsing Bernie Moreno at Lori’s Roadhouse

A reporter for the Cleveland Plains Dealer wanted to talk to me after the Bernie Moreno rally at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester, Ohio, on February 28th, 2024.  It was an unusual rally in that Vivek Ramaswamy, Donald Trump Jr., and Kimberly Guilfoyle came with Bernie to support a President Trump endorsement ahead of the March primaries; these were all national figures campaigning for the second senate seat and had the full backing of J.D. Vance.  The reporter wanted to know when I knew I wanted to support Bernie Moreno instead of the two other guys, Frank LaRose and Matt Dolan, and I told him it was late August into September.  I said that Frank had screwed up the election in August for Issue 1, and that was going to hang around his neck for a long time because of what it cost us in Ohio, incredibly loose abortion laws from radical progressive outsiders, and the legalization of pot.  And with Matt Dolan, who owns the Cleveland Indians baseball team and allowed himself to be arm-twisted into changing the name to the Guardians, he was simply too soft.  If that’s all he could do to resist the woke mob of lefties who have taken over our government, then he would be no good as a senator.  As Don Jr pointed out during the Moreno rally, a sports team is a little thing that doesn’t matter much to people in the grand scheme.  If Dolan fell short of courage for that little issue, what would he do in the SWAMP, where things mattered quite a lot and the pressure was much more intense?  As I told the reporter, I know both Frank LaRose and Matt Dolan, and they would be nice, typical politicians under normal circumstances.  But they aren’t the kind of fighters needed these days, where we need MAGA Republicans to fit the Trump agenda once President Trump is back in office, and out of them all, only Bernie Moreno fits the need.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet Bernie Moreno several times now, including the private lunch we had back in September, and for me, it’s not even a question.  He is the right guy to go up against Sherrod Brown, which continued my reasoning to the reporter.  It’s not enough to win the Republican primary; once Trump endorses someone in the Republican Party, it seals it for whoever that is.  But to get elected into the Senate will be a brutal campaign against Brown, who is deeply entrenched, and it will take someone as likable as Moreno to pull it off.  Even with the Trump endorsement, it will be a steep haul, and the other guys have too much baggage.  They have brand damage that Brown will easily exploit in a general election, so it comes down to who can beat Sherrod Brown.  And Bernie is that person.  I knew it when I first met him, and now, in West Chester, Ohio, with the coveted Trump endorsement behind him and compelling personalities campaigning with him, it is pretty clear what the path forward is.  Ohio deserves some of the best possible senators we could get, and J.D. Vance has picked his partner in the act. Our task is to give him the tools he needs to succeed.  So, the picture was becoming quite clear at the Lori’s Roadhouse rally.  It was a packed venue for an afternoon event in the middle of the work week.  After the rally, everyone went up to a fundraiser at Wetherington, and the Republican Party was unifying behind a clear strategy, and it was great to see. 

Don Jr knows how to engage with a crowd

Seeing so many culminating aspects come together that I have watched uniquely over the last few years was very satisfying.  I enjoyed watching Vivek speak, Don Jr, Kimberly, and, of course, Bernie.  Don Jr. is such a good guy, especially in person.  I had some people with me, and Don signed the wallet of one of them, to have such a down-to-earth guy, the firstborn son of an ostentatious billionaire, is a real treasure.  Don Jr. balances celebrity with practicality amazingly well, and he’s funny.  I’ve seen him in person many times now, and he is always a fine line between comedy and serious political commentary.  And, of course, with Vivek Ramaswamy, I remember being invited to an event with him in Middletown where he essentially launched his political career.  The fabulous Nancy Nix was in front of me during the rally, proudly watching the events on stage at Lori’s, almost like a proud mother.  Many people don’t know it, but she has her hand in most of these things in Butler County.   She put Vivek and I together in a meeting ahead of the release of his book Woke, Inc., which I think will be the economic platform for American policy over the next ten years.  I felt it when I first read it, and I am very sure of it now, and Nancy knows it, too.  She was also very important to the launching of J.D. Vance, which I wasn’t convinced of initially.  But Nancy understood these personalities very well and worked hard behind the curtain to ensure everything worked and the right people got into the right jobs and met the right people along the way.

Lori Fisher and her husband Greg own Lori’s Roadhouse, and they certainly go above and beyond. A great place to save America!

I only mention Nancy because as I have come to know some of these people, and this is what I was thinking about while talking to the reporter for the Cleveland newspaper, there is some real magic going on with these events that defy conventional political thinking, and my articulation of the point struck the reporter.  These were not typical political considerations but a fight between the life and death of a country and the world’s economy.  And none of these people, including me, needed to do any of this stuff.  All the people traveling with Bernie are rich and powerful.  They don’t need to be in politics.  And I’ve been involved in Butler County politics in Ohio most of my life, and there aren’t that many good people like Nancy Nix who are not in love with name-dropping and power playing, who just do good things because they want to do good things.  There aren’t enough good people in the world doing good things for good reasons.  That includes Greg and Lori, who run Lori’s Roadhouse, they didn’t need to do what they were doing to support these kinds of events.  As I looked around the room at all the people present, Jim and Lee Redkey were standing next to me, T. C Rogers too, and Michael Ryan, along with many others who could have been doing a million other things with their time.  But they were there to support people who were going to great measure to do the right things for our country.  And it was wonderful to witness.  When you start to see the hidden hand of righteousness working over time toward a grand fortissimo of justice and history playing out before our eyes, it’s a magnificent spectacle that doesn’t quite fit the description in a typical newspaper commentary on politics.  It’s simple yet infinitely complex, as so many moving pieces starting many years ago have moved toward this moment as a destiny seeking to be fulfilled.  And so many people played their part, least not the people on the stage supporting Bernie Moreno.  A promise of great things yet to come because people who define greatness purely, not for the recognition they might get or the financial resources that follow, but because it was the right thing to do is a hope for a future that nobody has yet witnessed in the history of the world.  And it was at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester, Ohio, on an unusually warm day and a political onslaught yet to come that greatness peaked its head out for all to see.

Rich Hoffman

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Don Jr. Campaigns in West Chester, Ohio for J.D. Vance: We are seeing extraordinary things happening

The beer is always good at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester. When they have political events that are conducive to country music and Republican Party politics, it tastes even better. And as I sipped on a beer with my wife at the bar watching J.D. Vance and Don Jr take pictures with a supportive crowd, several people asked me the same question, what effect will Trump’s endorsement of Vance for the hotly contested Ohio Senate seat have on the race as a whole. At present, the election is really between Josh Mandel, who I have been supportive of during the whole race, primarily because of his willingness to fight anybody anywhere, and his open talk about 2020 election fraud, and J.D. Vance, the former Never Trumper. He was now being personally put on a platform by the Trump family. All the other candidates, Jane Timken, Gibbons, and Dolin, are fighting for the traditional Rob Portman RINO types, the same people who currently support DeWine for governor. The present fear is that the Trump voters will be split between J.D. and Mandel, letting the squishier Republicans slide into the lead on May 3rd, 2022. Also, Jim Renacci and Mike DeWine are running pretty much tied, according to long-time Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale, as recently as a few days ago. So, what does all this mean, which is what people were asking me? So, I sipped my beer and answered……………….

If we take traditional primary voters, there would be many reasons to worry about all those mentioned concerns. But this isn’t a standard primary. Biden has taken the country to terrible, new places, and Don Jr. was just a few feet away, helping J.D. Vance overcome his past as a Never Trumper. President Trump had just held a major rally with tens of thousands of people in Delaware, Ohio. Marjorie Tayler Green was coming to West Chester in a few days to help Vance out and many other top-tier Republicans. This was no ordinary race, and voter engagement looked like it would be very high. That would help Renacci, even without a formal Trump endorsement. Because of the high voter engagement, Vance and Mandel voters would naturally also vote for Renacci. It doesn’t help Renacci that Blystone and others have stayed in the race to help DeWine by splitting the vote essentially. But with high voter turnout, things were looking good for Renacci to knock off DeWine. But in a hungry Ohio primary season where everyone wants a Trump endorsement, the J.D. Vance endorsement and personal work that Don Jr was willing to do himself would likely tip the scales in favor of J.D. Vance. 

Prior to the beer, J.D. and Don Jr. spoke to an eager crowd about why the senate candidate was a born-again Trump supporter, no longer a Never Trumper. And they made some excellent points that were worth mentioning. J.D. is undoubtedly not planning to be a war hawk like John McCain and Lindsey Graham have been. He doesn’t want to be in the war in Ukraine and has a very Trump-like position regarding global affairs. America First, and let everyone else fight their own battles. Drop the globalism and bring home all the jobs. That’s a good thing. The other thing that Don Jr. brought up, which was shown in the really great video of Don Jr.’s 25-minute speech, was that he asked the audience how many senators they actually liked that would fight for MAGA. He wondered if anybody could name five. Well, nobody could name more than three, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, and Josh Hawley. Beyond that, all we had out of the remaining 100 were squishy politicians who cared more about being liked by the media and could care less about the people they were supposed to represent. Many of them, like Mitch McConnell, had sold out America to foreign powers long ago, and they hid their guilt behind a kind of political game that most of them were playing, except for those three names mentioned. Some members of the audience mentioned Marjorie Tayler Green and Jim Jordan. But Don Jr. explained to those people that those were members of the House. They weren’t senators. 

So, to answer the question to everyone who didn’t get to ask me that same set of questions, I think the Trump endorsement will put J.D. Vance over the top. I think voter engagement will stave off the more establishment types. And that same voter engagement should help Renacci over DeWine. Of course, anything can happen, but as I sipped on the wonderful beer and enjoyed the good company there at the bar, that’s how things looked to me. Regardless of what happened on election day, the speech by Donald Trump Jr. was an amazing one, something that not even the craziest comedy sketches from 2015 would have dared to entertain. The kind of critical opinion expressed in the open at that event was very new and honest. It was the kind of stuff that people only talked about in private. They never talked about those things out loud. So we were in unique territory here, where the son of a billionaire who might otherwise just live life in a previous decade being a playboy and living on the golf course was flying around the country trying to get MAGA politicians elected to help his father have options in the Oval Office by the year 2024. This wasn’t politics as usual. These guys weren’t doing these things for money or power. J.D. Vance himself could be making a seven-figure income in a number of fields, but he wanted to be a senator. He wanted to help save Middletown, his hometown, from the victimization of globalism that had killed it over the last half-century. These were people who were defying logic as it was traditionally known. They loved their country, and the attackers of America never planned for that. We saw something extraordinary happening. 

And more than any other political prediction, I see something more special happening. Voters are engaged in a way they have never been previously. They are taking more time out of their lives to be involved in these kinds of political events. As I watched the people in line trying to get a picture with J.D. and Don Jr., I couldn’t help but think how proud people were to be near them. Not so much for the celebrity of the event, but because they recognized what Don Jr. was trying to do to save America. He was giving up a lot to be at Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester, Ohio, to give his father a chance to have a beneficial senator in place by the time 2024 came around. Someone who would stand up to China and support the future Trump trade policies, especially regarding China, who owes us all a lot of money for what they did with Covid in 2020. And the public appreciated that kind of fight, and they wanted to be near people who were fighting on the front line. We’ll see how that pans out on election day, May 3rd. But from my viewpoint, remarkable things are lining up that we have never witnessed before. And that is an exciting prospect.  

Rich Hoffman

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Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester: Mark Welch, the Superstar of Politics

Government is Best when it Gets out of the Way

As I listened to Mark Welch speak at a special fundraiser preview event at the new honky-tonk in West Chester called Lori’s Roadhouse, I couldn’t help but think that government is good, at least in West Chester.  When I say honky-tonk, I’m not talking about the old days of Gilley’s in Pasadena, Texas, where Urban Cowboy took place.  This place in West Chester is more like the modern Gilley’s in Las Vegas, very nicely put together luxuriously.  There is nothing cheap about it; it’s an ample space to host very large national talent for concerts. It’s something special for the Cincinnati area, and it’s great to see it located in West Chester, Ohio.  It’s not by accident.  The endeavor is a combination of great government that pushed out of the way as much nonsense as possible so that the dream of Greg and Lori Fisher could put all their great efforts into creating such a wonderful venue. I’ve been to places like Lori’s Roadhouse in parts of the country far away from Cincinnati.  But the moment I stepped into Mark’s fundraiser and saw what the owners were up to, I was enchanted.  There wasn’t a better way to show why Mark Welch should be re-elected as trustee of West Chester.  It’s not so much what an elected official can do for a project like Lori’s Roadhouse, but what kind of nonsense Mark can remove from the Fishers to let their creative input do the great work of creating such a wonderful place. 

Mark Welch and one of the owners, Lori Fisher herself

I view business as a creative enterprise, and I deeply respect people who go out on a limb and build new things that contribute to an economy.  Something like Lori’s Roadhouse is one of those things that adds to the many other things there are to do in West Chester.  There are so many options, and a lot of the reason is that the government has been small enough not to crush the hopes and dreams of entrepreneurs along the way.  It is hard enough to come up with an idea and then fund it with seed money.  It’s quite another to deal with politicians and other bureaucrats who embed themselves into the system to make a molehill of regulation into mountains for their benefit.  Usually, projects like Lori’s Roadhouse would be crushed before a business plan could ever be conducted because of politics.  I can think of hundreds, if not thousands of places around the country where a place like Lori’s Roadhouse would do well.  But, the politics of those areas would prohibit the dream from becoming a reality. 

Mark Welch and his wife Karen
Mark Welch doing what he does, being a celebrity politician

I had a chance to talk to Lori and her husband Greg Fisher quite a lot which was nice.  It was busy at the fundraiser, and I wasn’t sure if I’d get the chance.  As it turned out, Lori is the perfect front lady for such a place. She’s very friendly and optimistic, a fun personality which a place like that needs.  She told me she usually likes to work behind the scenes, but I can see why her name is on the place.  It deserves to have her name on the place.  Then there is her husband Greg, who had just spent months and months working out every little detail of this spectacular venue.  The food was great.  The bar was full.  The bathrooms are designed to still look good after lots and lots of drinking.  There is plenty of space for the men and women to have their dignity and get back to the action of live country music, a sports bar setting in much of the place, but a vast stage and dance hall area complete with VIP booths.  It was all top class, and the acoustics were fabulous as personally supervised by Greg.  As he ran down the list of all the elements of the place, it was apparent, he had a genuine love for the work, and I was happy to see it. That’s where someone like Mark Welch comes into these kinds of things.  Mark had worked in the background ever so subtly to help take away the burden of government from the Fishers so they could focus on the important stuff. Like securing the millions of dollars a place like that would cost and building a reputation that would bring in the big acts from all over the country.  A modern Gilley’s, but I would say better and with more class.  Something specific to West Chester. 

Lori and her Husband Greg Fisher, a dream come true in West Chester

TC Rogers was there; he is one of the commissioners of Butler County, where some of the legacy zoning issues made the project hard to get moving.  But at least West Chester didn’t do as other places do and compound the problem.  There were a lot of big-name politicians at Mark’s event, which was a good way to open a good American testament to goodness that Lori’s Roadhouse was offering.  It was undoubtedly a place anybody could enjoy, but country music, big leather boots, and cowboy hats draw a certain kind of political flavor, and it was on full display.  I had just returned from Jackson, Wyoming, where they have a similar high-class flair to their country background.  They have some very classy honky-tonk types of places there, but Lori’s Roadhouse was far better.  It looked and felt like something right out of Music City, Nashville.  It was unapologetically American for sure.  It had the kind of swagger that I had just been bragging about that I saw at a Cody, Wyoming rodeo.  They were similar in their boot-kicking display of Americana and a tip of the cowboy hat to great family tradition. 

Lori’s Roadhouse in West Chester, a super cool place of Americana and family friendly entertainment
Mark Welch Gets It! No Income Tax!!!!!

The community will have an option not just for the concerts but for a place to stop by after work, have a few drinks, and talk to people in the community; Lori’s Roadhouse will be a real treasure.  It’s not fair to give Mark so much credit because the Fishers did all the work along with their crews.  But I have to give Mark and the trustees credit for not getting in the way, and Mark specifically for helping where he could make the process of dealing with the government not such a challenging endeavor.  I had to smile a bit to myself as I listened to Greg and Lori talk about their new place because I have heard so many hundreds of stories over the years from people who never get things like this launched into reality.  And they had managed to do it. Usually, what ends up happening is the life gets sucked out of a project like this by all the rules and regulations of government.  It’s not often where a dream comes close to the original vision, and in the case of Lori’s Roadhouse, it’s easy to see the dream of the owners as they intended it to be, and that is the result of good government that knows when to help and when to get out of the way.  Often the skill of politicians is in knowing when not to be part of the problem, but in being part of the solution.  And when they figure that much out, great things like Lori’s Roadhouse happens.  And I am very excited about the results. 

TC Rogers, Commissioner of Butler County with the Owners of Lori’s Roadhouse

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business