Tag: Thomas Hall

Vivek Ramaswamy’s Ohio Campaign for Governor is all About Family First: Getting rid of red tape in Liberty Township

Vivek Ramaswamy discussing taking the red tape out of a red state!

It was good to see Vivek Ramaswamy again.  Mark and Leslie Williams had a nice, private event for him to talk about the campaign status and the going-forward steps and probably the best thing I have heard in politics so far was what Vivek said about Ohio, that it was a deep red state, but that it would not be the state of red tape.  That his run for governor was committed to restoring Ohio to the nation’s greatest status in wealth generation among all the states.  And given his understanding of things and personality, I think it is very much possible.  The moment I found out that he was running for governor, I was excited about it.  And since he launched his campaign just a few months ago, he has turned his efforts into a nice running machine that will cascade into many exciting opportunities that many have never thought possible.  Vivek Ramaswamy understands, and as I have watched these GOP events develop over the years, there was something very different going on that was exciting —a festivity to it that was not politics as usual.  But before we get into all that, I have to say, Mark and Leslie did a great job with the event, including the fantastic food table set up with finger foods that they had in the middle of the gathering space, established for this meet and greet for Vivek.  I took a picture of what was left of it after a few hours, but it was quite something to see.  All the little things in the event were done with just a little extra flair that makes spending time with people on a Saturday night of political talk more enjoyable.  And once Vivek gave his speech, took pictures with people, and had to get on to the next thing, people stayed around talking and catching up because they didn’t want to leave such a wonderful occasion.

When this started it was quite an exhibition. It was a lot of food!

I was one of them, I was happy to see so many people I like to talk to all in the same place.  I enjoyed seeing most of Nancy Nix’s family there, mom, sister, aunts, grandchildren, her husband Bob, we all like each other naturally, and it was nice to catch up under those conditions.  Everyone knows I love Nancy Nix; she is one of the best for a reason, and a lot of it is that she has a nice and loving family, which is evident to everyone who can see.  I had just spent time with one of my favorite trustees, Todd Minniear, a few nights before.  With his wife Jamie, they are a couple of my absolute favorite people and they were there.  Thomas Hall and his family were there too.  His mom and dad are good, solid people, and if you haven’t noticed, there is a pattern to my accolades.  I often judge the value of people by the kind of families they come from and are creating for themselves, and for me, it was a great evening because I had a break from the broken dysfunction that often comes with associating with a lot of people from diverse backgrounds and social structures.  Here, almost everyone shared the same strong family values that I greatly appreciate, making it a great evening for me.  My wife doesn’t always get to come to all these events.  When we launched the campaign event for Vivek a few months prior, she had to miss it due to other family commitments that we had.  However, this time we were able to coordinate things in a way that allowed her to attend, and she enjoyed herself as well.

As usual, I always enjoy seeing George and Debbie Lang when they are in a place where things go as well as the Williams event allowed.  Where the accommodations are set up thoughtfully, so that people can easily discuss essential political matters.  As a critical Senator in Ohio, everyone wants to talk to George, so my time with him is often spent with me looming in the background to discuss as many important things as possible.  However, in a large group like that, it’s not easy to convey everything in brief statements, as time may not allow.  But when people wonder why I like George and Debbie so much, it’s that core value system again. They are a great family that really loves each other, and I value their sincerity, both with each other and with the world around them.  When people wonder why George Lang is good at his job, a common theme among those who have come out in early support of Vivek Ramaswamy for Governor of Ohio is that they see the state in the same way they see their families, with love and care.  And those are their primary political motivations.  No matter what personal success they have had in life, and I know that is the case with Mark and Leslie Williams too, who hosted the event, they want to put that same effort into making Ohio the top state in the country, and the world, for people to live in and raise good families.  If you are a family-first kind of person, knowing these kinds of people makes sense.  And I enjoyed myself for all those reasons.  One of the primary values that everyone I knew shared at this event was a love of family, and they all did just a little bit more than average to have good families. 

I enjoyed catching up with Darbi Boddy.  People have been wondering about her since her time as a Lakota school board member concluded in legal gymnastics.  People have asked me a lot why I like Darbi so much.  She is a good mom who talks to God frequently.  And since she left the Lakota school board, she has been hanging out with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago.  My wife noticed the pin she was wearing, and it was the same one that she had.  Let me say, Darbi is doing some great things that will manifest into goodness in a few years.  She is more deeply engaged in politics than ever, and I am very happy and proud of her for all that she has accomplished.  A common theme I have been discussing is that many people are unaware of Darby: she loves her family, and her involvement in politics is aimed at helping more families emerge in the world. I have a lot of respect for her hard work in this regard.  I like her kids, and I like her husband.  I want to see people like that succeed in the world.  I also enjoyed catching up with Bob Hutsenpiller.  We have a long history together. Similarly, he and his wife have been together for a long time, and his business has been a family affair throughout his long career.  And he’s just a good person trying to make things just a bit better in the world.  My joke with Bob is that he usually comes to these political events with work shoes because he is always on construction sites and has worked hard all the years I have known him.  And I would say that was the common theme among all the people I mentioned, and many more that there isn’t enough time to discuss.  But Vivek Ramaswamy makes it easy, just as President Trump has; these are all people who value family, and they are treating their state and country with the same love they pour into their families.  And it shows.  I met Vivek’s parents and got to know his wife at the event we had at CTL Aerospace, and I was happy that he recognized me out of all the people he has spoken to over the last several months.  But Vivek loves his kids.  He loves his wife.  He loves his parents.  And anyone who is that caring about the people in their life can show the same love to the state they are running.   And for me, that’s why I care so much about the people who were at that event.  The common theme was family first, even if nobody explicitly stated it.  You won’t catch any of the people I mentioned in some sex scandal where they are cheating on their spouses for power and prestige.  In most cases, everyone at that Vivek event already had power and prestige.  But what they were fighting for was something much more important: the power of family and the values that come from it, and carrying that attention over into political office, where it can genuinely make a significant impact.  And for me, being around such people is the best evening I could hope for.  I’m very much looking forward to Vivek Ramaswamy being the governor of Ohio.  That will be a good day!

Rich Hoffman

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

Why Thomas Hall is so Great: If only everyone was so lucky

Fight, fight, fight was the theme of the evening at the GOP tent at the VOA Country Music Festival, where several officeholders and some running for the first time gathered together ahead of the upcoming elections.  It was an excellent time to catch up with everyone. I could speak to many people in a way that I hadn’t done for a long time, which was good.  But what do we mean by fighting and winning in politics?  When I think of such a thing, I think of the young man Thomas Hall, who is the Ohio Representative in my district and is running to hold the seat he currently has.  But he wasn’t always in my district; he used to have the Middletown area, but now, in District 46, he represents Liberty Township and the surrounding areas, which I’m thrilled with.  I’ve seen Thomas Hall in the pressure cooker for a while now, and I supposed he’s not as much of a young man as when he first started in politics.  But I think a lot of him, and for good reason.  I have been meaning, and we didn’t quite get there during this event, to talk to him about his recent trip to Israel, which I am very interested in.  But behind the politics, Thomas Hall is just a good person, one of those cases where he’s better than the package you see.  He’s just a promising young man who has survived the fires of Hell and come out on top, and he looks poised to stay there.  This is a good thing for anybody he represents in the Ohio Statehouse.  He takes his job very seriously, and it shows.  I’ve seen him in Columbus work a room, and if he didn’t have a great foundation to work with, it would be easy to be swept away by lobbyists and other scandalous characters.  But with Thomas, you get the feeling with him that he’s always savvy and under control.  And that any malicious intent that comes his way can easily be handled. 

I’ve met his parents several times at some of these events, but we had more time to talk in August of 2024 than we have in the past.  In some of those previous times, things looked so dire that nobody was sure what would happen next.  Politics, as I have said, is a blood sport; things can and do get pretty wild.  Many people who came to the Country Music Festival at the VOA needed to talk to each other.  It’s been a tough four years since Trump left office, and people have lost focus in some respects.  It’s tough when you are trying to grow the tent of the party to accommodate more people, but those people don’t have the same foundations and strength; when the pressure of politics emerges and moral necessities come into play, it’s easy to drift into decay.  And as a political party, Southern Ohio Republicans needed to break some bread together.  A lot of people get into politics for different reasons, and it’s up to each person to find some reason to have common ground with others for the sake of party politics.  Authenticity can often get abused in such cases, but that was never the case with Thomas Hall, and in some of those times, I referred to his parents as good people who made a good kid.  Thomas’ dad was a former police officer, now a firefighter chief.  His mom is a wonderful enthusiast of the men in her life, her husband and son, and when I see them all together, it’s usually a big family affair.  Thomas has, of course, a love interest who I see around town a lot, and she is always supportive and doing the extra work it takes to run successful campaigns.  When you speak with them, you can tell that they all have good foundations that give them firm ground to stand on no matter what is happening in the world. 

So Thomas always tells me he’s grateful to me for getting through some of these tough times of turmoil where rough campaigns got very heated.  My help pushed him over the top and put him in office so he could do the excellent work he is doing presently and, I hope, well into the future.  And I tell him that he’s the one who did all the hard work, and indeed, there are very few people who work as hard at politics as Thomas Hall.  He gets out and knocks on doors and is very tenacious.  And I’ve seen him working directly with Governor DeWine on legislation that was difficult to make happen, so the elbow-twisting part of politics takes a hard worker, and he has deserved all the success he has had and more.  He doesn’t have to throw appreciation my way.  What I have done for him, I do for many people. He’s referring to a lot that goes on behind the scenes, but I’m happy to do it because I like seeing good people get a chance to do good things in the world.  Like a gardener who pulls up the weeds of a garden to protect the good plants, you are trying to grow while preventing the parasites from destroying everything.  I do what I do because I like seeing the good stuff grow.  And Thomas Hall has grown into a lot of good things. 

So when his parents thanked me for all I have done for their son, I had to tell them what I thought of them, which shows up in Thomas, and I think about it a lot.  They were good parents to him.  Thomas Hall has a great foundation that other people in the world don’t have because they, as parents, gave him a great place to start.  If things get too hot, at least Thomas has a nice family that cares for him.  And it shows.  So, while they intended to thank me, which they did, I would give the credit to all of them.  Thomas is a sincerely good person who is not wasting his talent.  But to his parents for raising a good kid who has grown into a good man, a lot of people would love to be so lucky.  The sense of service that Thomas has picked up from his dad is being applied to Ohio positively.  I’m happy to defend and support anybody like that, and there are others.  Perhaps not as good as Thomas, but in my experience with these kinds of things, a lot of similar personality traits emerge in these kinds of people who get involved in politics and want to represent people in government.  Not everyone has the advantage of a good family on which they can rely.  But Thomas Hall does, and as I told his parents, if anybody should be thanking anybody, the world should be thanking them for producing such a nice young and honest man in the world.  I am personally very proud of Thomas Hall.  But I’m also very proud of his parents.  I wish there were more people in the world like them.  And maybe in the future, there will be.  There is hope in the world that people will follow their example and do better for themselves and others.  Usually, when you meet people who are as well put together as Thomas Hall, good parents at the foundation make it all possible.

Rich Hoffman

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

Ding Dongs in Columbus: A Review of Governor DeWine’s State of the State speech

Before I get into the obvious homeless guy on 3rd Street in Columbus who was standing on the corner a block south of the Statehouse, completely nude, with his ding dong and buttocks clear for all the world to see, as if he were getting ready to shower at a YMCA, I have to talk about the fantastic book I bought from the Statehouse gift shop that I have had my eye on for several years now, The Art and Artistry of the Ohio Statehouse by Dayna Jalkanen.  Every time I go to the Statehouse, I think about getting it, but time is always short, so I never do.  I love the Statehouse and the intentions of the work that is supposed to be done there, of republic-style representative government, and I had just told a story to similar people about my thoughts on Governor DeWine’s speech where I stood in the rotunda with DeWine giving out pictures with a lunch buffet set up in the middle of the room where senators, representatives, lawyers, lobbyists, cutthroats and even media personalities were at work saving the world from their perspective.  Even the “Rooster” was there dressed in his backpack and poorly attired shorts, deliberately showing disrespect for the process as he runs a government blog checking the antics of the powerful with a kind of Marxist mentality of “bringing them all down.  During this visit, I had a little more time to make it to the bookstore, where I was there with Jennifer Gross, the Ohio Representative from the 47th District, and her son, a brilliant young man.  I explained to many people that DeWine’s speech this year was horrible, worse than usual, and uninspiring.  And there was a thick blanket over the whole State of the State address as Columbus conspiracies were awash in speculation and scandal.  But as I have said before, the Statehouse is there, grand and has deep roots in history.  It intends to inspire people to greatness even if they fall short, as was apparent under this current flock of politicians.  So, I wanted to get the book to remind myself of the worth of it all.

As I checked out the book at the counter and spoke to Jennifer about all the perils of progress during legislative proceedings, I reflected on what I had just said about DeWine’s speech and why it was so bad.  Governor DeWine was clearly in a lame-duck stage of his term.  He was on the outs with the Trump campaign over several controversies.  But the biggest one is that DeWine isn’t a Republican, especially not a Trump Republican.  He’s a product of FDR’s New Deal and some Johnson version of a Great Society where the government was there to do what parents couldn’t or wouldn’t.  And that was the entirety of DeWine’s speech on the State of the State on 4.10.24.  The whole thing was about how the state of Ohio could take care of children in ways their parents would fall short of, and everything he mentioned required more legislation and tax money spent without scrutiny on the next generation without any real expectation of success.  As I had just said in the rotunda, everyone in that room thought they were doing the right things, including DeWine.  They all had the best of intentions.  Nobody thought of themselves as evil.  Yet there was evil everywhere, and why?  It’s a challenging game where you must go to Columbus to work with others to make things happen.  You have to build relationships and get things done.  But in compromising with other people to get things passed, most people find themselves changed forever in the process, and they aren’t the same people who were elected, and they don’t survive the meat grinder of politics intact. 

Whenever I attend a State of the State speech, I always like to sit in the gallery where all the lawyers, aides, and lobbyists sit because I want to hear how they talk to each other.  They all have some specific thing that concerns them most about the government.  It might be renewable energy, social programs, or even Rob Portman’s retirement status, and how many boards he is sitting on for advice.  I was sitting next to one of his former aides who went on and on about how much influence the former senator still had in the business world, which I had to snicker about.  I’ve known Rob Portman for a long time, especially at the beginning of his political career when he was in his 20s.  Rob Portman shouldn’t be advising businesses about anything; he doesn’t have the horsepower to understand the field or how it works.  But in that gallery, I heard many stories about things those people wanted to impress upon each other as they were caught up in the moment.  All dressed up to listen to the Governor give a speech about saving children from their parents.  I explained it later by identifying the problem for what it is: all those people at the speech had the power of government at their fingertips, and they had to decide how to use it to help people.  And that’s where the evil comes in: when people don’t have the right thoughts about things, how can they decide to use government the way it’s supposed to, not how their feeble minds interpret it?  DeWine intended his speech well, as everyone listening did.  But where can they apply government power to the right purposes?  That’s what I wanted to think about as I bought that book and why I took a little extra time talking with Jennifer about those kinds of challenges this time. 

But the answer to that question was at the corner of 3rd Street, just one block south of the Statehouse as I was leaving.  There was security everywhere around the Statehouse because of the governor.  I was leaving the Senate, and there were plenty of police.  But then there was this 6’ 6 man of color standing there with his pants pulled down around his ankles, underwear, and all oblivious to the world around him.  I don’t think he knew his ding dong was hanging out in full view to all the cars and pedestrians moving by him.  I’ve seen homeless people all over the world, and they are caused by too much government destroying the personal initiative of individual people.  And here was this guy, an apparent creation of a nanny state government rotting away in full view of everyone just a block from where all the rules of Ohio were made.  And nobody was doing anything about it.  He was violating public decency standards.  He was probably violating many drug laws.  But he was a person of color, and nobody wanted to be called a racist for pointing out his bad behavior.  So, everyone just ignored him and went about their way.   No doubt, several children that day had their lives ruined by seeing that naked guy on the street corner on a sunny April day in 2024.  With all the grand ideas proposed by many governors over the years, the reality is that the quality of life for people only gets worse the more that the government tries to replace good personal conduct with more laws, which aren’t even enforced a block from where DeWine gave his speech.  And all the people talking about big, fancy ideas in the gallery were already in their cars on their way home, driving past all the problems none had the guts to deal with.  Which is how evil works in those kinds of gatherings.  Well-intended people who use the power of government to do what they lack as people, and it migrated into society to show itself in that homeless guy so disconnected from reality he was nude on a street corner in the capital of Ohio, which should be a showpiece of excellence.  The Statehouse certainly lives up to the lofty expectations.  But the people in it, inhabiting it, don’t.  And they hide their lack of courage behind procedures and fancy speeches.  Yet they always fall short because their minds aren’t up to the task, and they don’t have the guts to increase their intellect where they can help people like that guy instead of making more of them by default. 

Rich Hoffman

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

Ohio State Central Committee Members Show the Trend in Modern Politics: Sara Carruthers did not get endorsed by the Republican Party, among others

It’s not just the cosmetics on corporate television; we are seeing some real trends in politics that everyone should take notice of.  What we learned after 2020 was just how much control an invisible sector of a ruling class had over our elections, and in America, we were very far away from a real republic.  It was a kind of dictatorship run by corporate conglomerations who thought that communism China style was the wave of the future and that everyone else should get on board with it.  I read countless books, particularly by people like Ray Dalio, who had already committed to this World Economic Forum view of the world from the power players at Davos early in the last decade, so for them, it was all a done deal.  But as mystified that many are that Trump is headed to be the nominee for the Republican Party and that Ohio was one of the first states to fully endorse him officially, there are a lot of perplexed faces out there from the mainstreamers who thought they had it all figured out.  They didn’t, and the evidence of all that was obvious in a recent Central Committee meeting in Butler County, Ohio, where the actual trends were showing themselves quite obviously.  The mainstream candidates found that they weren’t so mainstream and that the baked-in opposition party approach to mass collectivism, such as the local Sheriff’s commitment to unionized labor, was dramatically out of step with the coming political trends.  No surprise for me, I have watched this evolution since before the Tea Party movement started in 2009, as a direct reaction to the implantation of Barack Obama as a terrorist selection of the Weather Underground party, which many of us pointed out but were not listened to.  It was the same kind of denial that resulted in local politics in 2023 as the Central Committee picked new faces for party endorsements to replace the old ones. Suddenly, the political world took on an entirely new meaning. 

For instance, there has been a lot of talk lately about Sara Carruthers, a state representative for the 47th district in Ohio who had just been censored for not supporting the Speaker of the House that should have been elected, but instead worked with Democrats to put in place a known RINO, last year.  After the defeat of Lynda O’Conner off the Lakota school board in 2023, Sara expressed her views about extremism in the Republican Party to the Journal News quite explicitly, saying that she found them alarming.  For a long time now people have been frustrated by Sara’s obvious leanings toward the Democrat Party and there has been a desire to purge the party of RINOs, (Republicans in Name Only) and that has most percolated within the Central Committee meetings.  Over the last decade, better people have joined these Central Committees and have sought to reform the Republican Party from the inside out because they were frustrated with the kind of Republicans who were running the party, people like John Kasich and John Boehner.  But there was always a lot of strong-arming and intimidation that went with these meetings, so it has taken a while for many members to find their courage and conduct themselves the way that party politics was designed to best represent the voter base of a community.  So Sara didn’t get an endorsement for the Republican Party this time; instead, it went to Diane Mullins.  Shocking in the traditional way of viewing politics, where those who raise the most money tend to have the most power.  That shift has changed since Trump entered politics. Gradually, the Central Committees have grown the courage to fill their roles appropriately instead of being intimidated into voting a certain way. 

Another emerging trend is in MAGA candidates, like Bernie Moreno, who J.D. Vance has endorsed as a partner over Secretary of State Frank LaRose.  Frank LaRose only received 30% of the vote among the Ohio State GOP Central Committee, whereas Bernie Moreno received 70%.  Remember the story about Sheriff Jones, who went on a personal vendetta against State Rep Thomas Hall? It looked like the young man was done in politics because the powerful sheriff targeted him for destruction, along with several other people as well.  Thomas received 100% of the vote.  But when it came time to endorse the sheriff, he did not come highly recommended, which is a direct result of his activism against the very popular Butler County auditor Roger Reynolds, whom the sheriff falsely prosecuted for purely political power-playing reasons.  At this last meeting, according to those there, the Sheriff was very upset about his weak vote and decided to pull his name from the endorsement process.  I recently had a pleasant conversation with Sheriff Jones about his new car in the parking lot of an event we were both at.  It was a nice car.  We also joked about our hats because we both wear cowboy hats in public.  And we kept the conversation light.  The vice mayor of Hamilton, Ohio, was there, and the meeting was a “lofty” occasion.  I may like the Sheriff personally, but he has not shown himself to be a Republican these last few years since Trump left the White House.  And that exploded at this recent Central Committee meeting.  Without a full-throated endorsement, he decided he was done with the whole political party endorsement process and didn’t need it.  After all, who was going to run against him?  As angry as he was, who else could he blame?  He was using the political party to strong-arm the Central Committee for years, and finally, they stood up to him, and he didn’t like it.  But it was based on his actions, not theirs.  It’s in subtle ways like that which politics is changing all across America, and many have not yet figured out just what kind of impact that will have.  Which I say will be dramatic. 

People are tired of corruption in politics, and many good people have joined the Central Committees in their communities to help root it out.  For too long, powerful political characters and their donor backing imposed their will on Central Committee members without much respect.  But that has changed.  Central Committee members in Ohio endorsed President Trump in these same meetings, so the trend is moving in an obvious direction.  And if I had to bet money on it, I would say that all this has the attention of Jack Smith’s case in Washington, D.C.  He knows his case is going nowhere and now he’s looking to shift the blame to the Supreme Court by accelerating the trial for insurrection.  The goal was to prevent Central Committee members from endorsing Trump ahead of the primaries coming up.  But now that Trump is so far out early, these court cases won’t do what they were intended, so Smith is looking to get out of it and place the blame on the high court to protect his reputation.  I’m also sure that there is a way for Sheriff Jones to get back into everyone’s good graces.  He was good in Butler County when Trump was in the White House for the first time.  And now that Trump is running again, the Sheriff can get behind that effort and people can come together again.  But the days of forcing big labor RINOs who would otherwise be Democrats if they ran anywhere else are over.  Central Committees are doing their jobs, not just rubber-stamping some of these political candidates.  And when they do wrong, such as Sara Carruthers has, they endorse alternatives, which is about time and a sign of good things to come.

Rich Hoffman

Making The Butler County Republican Party Great Again: People don’t want to think of Boss Hogg when they think of politics

At first, I thought of the complaints as leftovers from contentious issues that have divided the party, such as the Thomas Hall battle with Matt King and the obvious rift with Sheriff Jones and Roger Reynolds. I tend to view those kinds of things as family squabbles within a household. Usually, people get over things and move on, which was happening with that nice event for Thomas Hall. But when people who don’t usually deal with the Butler County Republican Party are complaining, they don’t know about the details, only their experience with it. And that experience has not lived up to the reputation of the past, where Butler County had a lot of volunteers, high engagement, and the kind of national reputation that made President Trump want to come and campaign in the area. But the reputation that was developing, because of all the rifts from leadership that was flowing out into state and federal politics, was not a good one. For a community of over 400,000 people, small-town politics was back in fashion where a few party leaders had turned the wonderful Butler County Republican Party into something that would make Boss Hogg from the Dukes of Hazzard blush. And that was embarrassing to hear. I had been hoping that after the 2022 election, many of those trends would level out and that much of the problem had been not having the unifying factor of Trump to rally behind. Without Trump, the party has reverted back to the differences that it had during the early 2000s. But now that Trump was running again, my hope was that the party would unite again behind him. However, this time there appeared to be a different kind of problem. Many older people in leadership now are in the way of younger and hungrier personalities, and those elements feel restricted in their ambitions, which is not a good thing for future growth.

This problem reminded me of the Cincinnati Bengals and how the Brown family just can’t get out of their own way for success. Sure, they have had some good players over the years, but they just have not been able to put together a successful string of seasons to show fabulous organizational presence. They went to the Super Bowl last year and had a pretty good season. They had the whole off-season to get better and improve on the previous year with essentially the same players. The Bengals invested in a new offensive line, but the results were not good. The quarterback, Joe Burrow, has been sacked more than any other NFL quarterback. So the Bengals didn’t get better because the problems with the Bengals were in their coaching and front office. Not the players on the field. So if leadership was always the problem, the Bengals didn’t help themselves by investing in an offensive line; if they didn’t have the kind of coaches who could take advantage of those improvements, then, of course, the problem would still present itself as a problem. Obviously, the Butler County Republican Party was having the same issues. Many new talents are coming into the party who can network and connect with the world. There are lots of MAGA Republicans across the state who are newly engaged in politics and are looking for jobs to do. But then, when they interact with Butler County, we have this Boss Hogg image that people have of our elderly leadership, and it turns them off, and it’s starting to show to the outside world. 

It was good to see a nice GOP event in Butler County dedicated to a victory celebration for Thomas Hall at the Majors Barn. It was a tough election season, and some hard feelings emerged during that race, which clearly split the Butler County Republican Party in half. But several people supported Matt King, who ran against Thomas for the 46th Representative Ohio seat. They were there to congratulate Thomas and to show leadership in coming together as a party now that the election was over. There were people there that I could speak with where things got pretty heated, and we had some nice conversations, and everyone made up. I know everyone couldn’t come, people were busy, but you could tell a lot about Republican Party leadership by who was there and who wasn’t. I can tell you someone, who was there, Roger Reynolds, was, and we had a nice conversation about the horrendous problem that was happening to him. I asked him if Sheriff Jones was going to pay for all his massive legal bills for the phony trial coming up for him in December of 2022, which to me looks like a complete political hit job. That is not the kind of thing that makes the Republican Party better, but something that has made it worse. Roger kind of smiled at me and shrugged his shoulders. He’s one of the good guys, and his only focus was on getting that mess behind him so he could live his life again. And Thomas and I spoke about the new Speaker of the House and what an excellent relationship those two had together, which was encouraging. Good things were happening. But I also received reports from some of the state people and the federal people who deal with Republican parties all over the country. Their impression of the Butler County Republican Party was not a good one. There were a lot of complaints about engagement, phone calls, appreciation letters, and just basic organization, and while I kept up a happy face inside, I was pretty mad. I am proud of the Butler County Republican Party and don’t like hearing people say bad things about it. 

Hey, I get it; we all get older. You look in the mirror and what looks back is a person falling apart. Age can be cruel. And when the dog doesn’t respect you, and your wife is complaining about you leaving your socks in the corner by the bathroom, and nobody thinks you’re all that special, it can feel great to go to a Party meeting and have everyone worship you for all the things you have done in your life. It’s hard to be big enough to get out of the way and let younger people step in and show their ambitions.   That has always been the Bengals problem; the Brown family has always gotten in the way of its own success. And that is what is happening with the Butler County Republican Party. It’s not just from the direction of the police, but there are commissioners, trustees, and many others who are holding positions as placeholders, then getting mad at the youth for nipping at their heels. And my advice to them, the elders, is if you really love the Republican Party, you would want to do the right thing, and that is to get out of the way and let those with the most ambition and freshest eyes step into leadership positions. Sometimes being a great leader is in getting out of the way. And hanging on to the past and living off a reputation to hide the aging process from your own eyes isn’t love. It’s selfish, and the only result is that you become the latest Boss Hogg in the world and become known not for good deeds but for corruption and ill-advised political fights that ruin everything a lifetime took to build.

Rich Hoffman

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The Men of Butler County, Ohio Are Too Busy Getting Their Nails Done to Stand up to Bullies: Republican Party endorses Roger Reynolds for Auditor, Thomas Hall is found innocent of any ethics violations

The number one question I get asked lately is, “where are the men of Butler County, Ohio?” People see what happened to Roger Reynolds, the auditor of Butler County, who is running for re-election but has seven indictments against him pushed by Sheriff Jones. They wonder why nobody has stood up for Roger. The indictments are apparent abuses of power coming out of the Sheriff’s office, yet few people have stood up to the Sheriff to defend Roger, and many don’t understand why. The ethics investigation into Thomas Hall has resulted in him being found not guilty of any trouble, even though Sheriff Jones pushed hard to find something to bust the young man on. The Sheriff even went way out of his way to try to primary a replacement candidate during the re-election of the State Representative of the 46th District. Thomas had to hire a lawyer to help clear his name, which is part of the abuse of power game. These public employees love power because it gives them leverage over people to quell their thirst for the abuse of it, and it costs money to defend against that power in courts that are essentially run by the same forces. I backed Thomas when it wasn’t popular to do so, and Jones backed Matt King and put many of his resources behind the young challenger. But Thomas won anyway, despite all the dirty politics. Recently while the Lakota superintendent was being interviewed by police he sent a message to his friend, Sheriff Jones, hoping for help in the matter of him being caught having “pillow talk” about three kids who go to his school where he wanted his wife to “drug them, molest them, and video them” for his sexual gratification, he reminded Jones that I was the same person who supported Thomas Hall in the election that was an embarrassing loss for the Sheriff, implying that law enforcement should look the other way on his issue because of it. There is a whole heap of dirty politics to go around in just those few examples, and you better believe it, there are many more cases not even talked about. This is why many are asking where the men are these days, and I say they are out getting their nails done, filling out their Fantasy Football picks, and being nice little compliant progressives that the modern world told them to be, while crime, bullying, and evil go unmolested in county politics. 

I’ve talked to people involved on the inside of the dispute between Roger Reynolds and Sheriff Jones. They used to get along just fine until a couple of things happened, which we have to talk about because Jones is the one who decided to abuse his authority behind the law to try and destroy Roger Reynolds over ridiculous conditions. I saw an ad the other day asking the question ahead of the election, “would you support Roger Reynolds with your money even though he has seven indictments against him and is facing jail time?” Well, YES! I know why there are seven indictments against Roger Reynolds, and I think they are bogus charges by a rigged system by a political enemy who has sought power and position to use government to control people, and I don’t like it one bit. Roger Reynolds knowing what I know about the case, is an innocent man being prosecuted by a system of bullies who have used politics to destroy people for personal reasons. And with Roger, one of those issues was that he let go of a family member of Sheriff Jones because they had worked in the auditor’s office and stopped coming to work because of Covid. We have all seen many employees abusing the Covid protocols set up by the out-of-control CDC, and this was a person who needed to be at work. But they were following the government nonsense regarding Covid, so Roger let them go as a non-essential worker. Nobody can say what Sheriff Jones thinks or doesn’t but judging by his behavior and what he has said to others, he then used his power and position to destroy Roger Reynolds and teach him a lesson for not keeping his family member employed. But logic would say that Roger Reynolds did the right thing. 

Then there was the incident over disclosure where Roger and Sheriff Jones were talking about maintaining records for the public. Roger Reynolds is a full-disclosure kind of guy, but Sherrif Jones wasn’t. As he said to Roger, “I don’t want someone sitting on their toilet to know how I’m spending my money. If you do it, I’ll have to do it too,” or something to that effect, according to the witnesses. Well, Roger Reynolds pushed for it anyway, so it’s at that point that the political war between them moved into all the ugliness that led to those seven phony indictments that were led by Channel 19, who started the story. (they’ll do a phony story for the Sheriff but not a legitimate story about Lakota schools, how about that)  Then Sheriff Jones pulled all his strings to set the indictments into motion to get rid of Roger Reynolds and put Bruce Jones in his place, the current fiscal officer of West Chester. I know Bruce Jones quite well. He was the campaign manager for Venessa Wells, who was running for the Lakota school board before she got so sick of the politics and wanted to drop off the slate card with party endorsement.

Venessa also received all the divorce information that led to the trouble with Matt Miller, the Lakota superintendent and the pillow talk about children that have him in so much trouble. Do you see how all this connects? Yet we don’t see Sheriff Jones indicting Miller. The law is used as a weapon to protect public employees from public management, not as an instrument of justice, and that is what has people so upset. I like Venessa; I like Bruce; I even like Sheriff Jones. In my experience, Sheriff Jones respects masculinity and tough people. But if he thinks he can get by with pushing people around, he certainly will. I’ve never had a problem with him, but I hear about all these terrible stories from just about everyone leaving people to wonder where the men are to defend against such bullies.                                                   

I am happy to report that the great Butler County Republican Party has endorsed Roger Reynolds for the upcoming election despite the seven Sheriff Jones indictments. This is even with Sheriff Jones being in the leadership of the Republican Party. The thing about politics is that people aren’t supposed to always get along. There are supposed to be fights and testing of the resolve for it to work, and Roger Reynolds has certainly shown himself to be tough and not back down from a fight.   It shouldn’t have cost him many thousands of dollars as he has to defend himself in court. At some point, Sheriff Jones owes Reynolds a lot of money to compensate him for the political hit job he has endeavored to utilize as an abuse of office to inflict catastrophic political damage to an innocent man. Nobody trusts the law when they indict Roger Reynolds but lets someone like Matt Miller go free. People see what’s going on. Despite trying to destroy Roger Reynolds out of political revenge, the Butler County Republican Party’s Central Committee did the right thing and voted to endorse Roger Reynolds anyway. So, there is good in the world. Sheriff Jones might not like it, but who cares.   He has put himself on the wrong side of history and obviously acted in ways that were not on the side of right. In public life, all kinds of people abuse their power to control and ruin other people’s lives. Roger Reynolds certainly isn’t one of them. And when it comes to standing up for what’s right, voting for Roger Reynolds on November 8th is undoubtedly a step in that direction. I’ll be voting for him proudly.  As to standing for what’s right, it’s not people who fail to defend innocent children, yet prosecute public officials who promote full disclosure who anybody should fear. There is no reason for men to hide from such bullies behind the skirts of their women while trying to impress them with talk of nail polish and feminine napkins on sale at Walgreens. It’s the bullies who should fear the men of Butler County. And as things stand now, it’s mainly the women who are the only ones standing up for anything.

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

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Government Schools are All About the Employees: The kids are used as a means to expand easy jobs and administrative nonsense

Everyone wants to know what’s going on with Lakota schools and why there has not been any mainstream news regarding the very serious allegation against the public school administration. Given the nature of the offense, as indicated in the official police report from the Butler County Sheriff’s Department, many were expecting at least an arrest or a leave of absence. But there has been nothing but an acknowledgment of documents, one from the police indicating that on August 8th, 2022, the complainant responded to the Butler County Sheriff’s Office to report that she had received and compiled information from a third party of potential criminal wrongdoing by the suspect regarding juveniles. Then there is a short email from the president of the Lakota School Board speaking on behalf of the entire Board, saying, ” Ms. (former candidate for Lakota school board), The Board has reviewed your email and attachments. The safety and security of the district’s students is the Board’s highest priority. As noted in your email, this issue has already been escalated to law enforcement and is now in the capable hands of the Butler County Sheriff’s Office. When the Sheriff’s Office concludes its investigation, the Board will review its findings and determine if any further action is warranted. On behalf of the Board. ”  I thought all that pretty interesting, especially after the press conference Sheriff Jones held recently stating that he was investigating wrongdoing in the direction of Ohio Representative Thomas Hall, because years ago, when he was a trustee for Madison Township, there were questions as to whether or not he recused himself on Fire Department matters since his father was the Fire Chief. As discussed before, Thomas sought legal advice on when to recuse himself and when not to, so he was clean. But, with a Sheriff talking tough like that, you would think that a Lakota school administrator with an ex-wife putting in writing some really charged content would inspire more action on behalf of the “safety” of all. But after a month of tranquil activity on the matter from the administrative perspective, there hasn’t been anything to satisfy people’s fears.

I was wondering myself, knowing all the characters involved. When I first saw the material, I could have published it and beat the rest of the media to a really salacious story. But I was more concerned about the criminal side of the story and wanted to know how much some of the people in charge cared about what was happening in the school. Unfortunately, we have our answer, and it’s one I thought we would have from the beginning. Over the years, I have witnessed too many of these stories to think anything else. But I thought it was worth a try. We trusted the system and hoped for a reasonable outcome. With a case like this, it would be expected to have at least a note from the Board to the parents, much like they have on other things in the past. I remember when someone left a threatening note in a bathroom during a levy campaign, and a lot of drama was made about it. Lakota always seems to send home notes to the parents, letting them know when something is wrong and that the administration is all over the issue so they won’t have to worry. But on this issue, they have been oddly silent. They might say that it’s purely political, the entire escapade. But then again, what hasn’t been political? The moment that new school board member Darbi Boddy was voted in as a new school board member, many board members and the administration have been trying to remove her in any technical way they could, using every excuse possible to make a media story out of her, to put pressure on her to resign. So why wouldn’t there be political opposition flowing in the opposite direction? They should expect it; they created that atmosphere. 

The truth is that all public schools, Lakota being just one of them, are all about filling the needs of the employees. They could care less about the kids involved. This is the case today, and it has been the case over the many decades that I have been involved in these public school issues. Government schools like Lakota use children as a playground for the adults, making these schools some of the largest employers in the region. Yet they expect to never get in trouble for bad behavior. If what was happening at Lakota were happening at any large corporation, there would be, at a bare minimum, paid administrative leave while everyone sorted out the matter. There would be press conferences updating the taxpayers on what was being done to investigate the matter and assuring the public that good people were doing good work. I wanted to think differently of Lakota, knowing some people the way I do. I really didn’t think they would be willing to put up with bad behavior when they saw it and knew about it. Even if it was just the remnants of a bad marriage, when a personal life starts to impact the public life of someone, that is a factor in work performance that can be very negative. But there was just a case the other night where a person was caught regionally just downloading child porn, and the police were all over them with arrests and significant news coverage. Why, with this case, did everyone suddenly want to show a benefit of the doubt toward the evidence presented, even as crazy as much of that evidence has been? 

A Message from Lakota Local Schools May 5, 2022

Dear Lakota Staff, Parents and Guardians, The end of the school year is a time to celebrate our students and staff and all that we have achieved since August. This year, we have even more to celebrate as we have been able to lift our COVID protocols and return to a much more normal school experience for our students. It is unfortunate that, over recent weeks, instead of this being our focus, district leaders have been forced to respond to baseless allegations and escalating threatening behavior by an elected member of our school board.As a result of a school board member’s blatant disregard for policy and procedures that are in place to help ensure the safety of our students and staff and a productive learning environment, this morning, Lakota Local Schools was forced to issue a notice of trespassing to Mrs. Darbi Boddy. As such, Mrs. Boddy will no longer be allowed on district property without prior authorization and unless invited for official Board business.Yesterday morning, Mrs. Boddy violated Board Policy and Administrative Guidelines 9150 by visiting two schools without first notifying the building principal – a requirement of all visitors to our schools. Entering through the main offices, she then proceeded to ignore staff requests to remain there until the principals met her. Instead, she left the offices and proceeded to walk the hallways, violating safety protocols and causing a disruption in learning at both Lakota East High School and Liberty Early Childhood School. While some may question why such a seemingly steep action was taken against Mrs. Boddy, let me explain. We welcome our parents into our schools; we welcome our community into our schools; and we certainly welcome our school board members into our schools – as long as they follow safety procedures and policy. These are not difficult. They involve alerting building administrators of the interest in visiting and setting up a time that is convenient for all involved. Yesterday, this did not happen. This is also not the first time that Mrs. Boddy has ignored board policy, nor is it the first time she has disrupted learning in our schools. Our decision was not made lightly and was done in consultation with law enforcement. It is my hope that by sharing this information with you, I am able to stop rumors from circulating and reassure you of our commitment to safety. The safety of our students and staff is always my first priority and a responsibility I take very seriously. I will do everything I can to ensure that our students and staff feel safe, welcome and included when they walk through our doors.

Sincerely,

Matthew J. Miller
​​​​​​​Superintendent

Of course, we all know the answer, which is the painful part. Many people knew the answer from the beginning but didn’t want to believe it. I was very skeptical about everything. As things have transpired over the last month, it became an apparent human resource problem without consistent standards, which is a tremendous management problem. I didn’t care much about Lakota at the start of this process. My hope was that by electing better school board members, the proper management of the district’s largest government school might improve. I have seen complaints about her since Darbi Boddy was elected and sworn in because she’s a conservative. It has become grossly apparent that the only thing the teachers and administrators care about at Lakota is not the kids but their easy jobs with high pay rates. As bad as the accusations are in the police report, I know that there is far worse going on behind the scenes that nobody is even talking about because they are either scared or don’t trust anybody to say anything. Not even the police. With the kind of threats that have been tossed at this whistleblower occurs, the message is clear, don’t mess with the breadbasket and playground of the adults who work at the school. The community and the children of the community are there to serve them and them only. That’s not what they say, of course. But that’s the message they convey. To say I’m disappointed would be a misplaced description. I had optimistic hope that I might be wrong. Government schools are all about politics, liberal politics at that, and they waste money on a garbage product while they treat the place like their personal Tinder app. And the way the public employees behave is reprehensible. But why wouldn’t they be when management allows them to behave that way? 

Rich Hoffman

Thomas Hall Wins the 46th Ohio Representative Seat: Sheriff Jones has no clothes

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a political candidate who deserved election or re-election more than Thomas Hall did in a very tough year where districts were redrawn at the last minute. There was more internal party opposition against an opponent than what he not only survived in an August 2022 primary but excelled. In the end, Thomas Hall beat his rival, Matt King, by almost 12%, although with the addition of Liberty Township to the new 46th district, it looked like the race might tighten up. By the time the smoke cleared, it was an easy win for Thomas Hall despite the opposition. Part of that was that he has had an excellent record during his first term. But the rest of it was that he just worked so hard to win, personally knocking on over 6000 doors and meeting voters face to face. And many members of the Butler County Republican Party, led by Sheriff Jones, threw everything they had at him, including the kitchen sink and all the plumbing, to defeat him. But it didn’t make a dent in Thomas, which didn’t surprise me in the least. I had called the race over eight months ago and given my personal endorsement. And as history shows, when I endorse someone, they tend to win. Not so much for anything I do, but for the quality of people, the candidates tend to be and for knowing the trends in politics. Nobody was going to outwork Thomas Hall, and as I have come to know him, he’s a good, sincere person to his very core. Nobody would beat Thomas Hall as long as he let voters know who he was, which he did, walking neighborhoods for many weeks now, shaking hands and talking to people instead of just sending out mailers, robocalls, and hit pieces on Facebook. Thomas was well funded and did all the usual political stuff, which I mentioned. But in addition to that, his campaign put in many thousands of hours of labor into direct communication with real people cutting out all the traditional media from hijacking the process. And for voters, they have come to realize they are lucky to have someone like Thomas to vote for. 

The sad part of this story, as positive as it has been, was the tragic fall of Sheriff Jones, who made it his personal vendetta to destroy Thomas Hall in every way, shape, and form. For several months now, I have felt sorry for Sheriff Jones. I see what he is going through now in many of the competitive shooting events that I do throughout the year. It’s tough to be the best at something, then suddenly, some young kid who can do it better, faster, and more often than you comes along, and it hurts. I’ve seen that kind of jealousy destroy many people, and many never recover from it. Thomas Hall wasn’t willing to kiss the ring of one of Butler County’s kingmakers in the Republican Party. Jones obviously took it personally and decided to primary Hall for a second term in the Ohio legislature as a Representative. I watched over much of the fall of 2021 as many fellow Republicans were unified and would attend events together in great camaraderie, to suddenly being enemies with one another. That’s about when Sheriff Jones went on WLW radio and went out of his way to embarrass Thomas Hall because the Sheriff didn’t like his voting record. So, he wanted to show himself as the kingmaker in Butler County and put his aggressive efforts behind Matt King to primary out of office Thomas Hall. Suddenly, many of those same Republicans weren’t getting together anymore, and by the spring of 2022, the sides were split. Most Republicans who wanted to maintain a relationship with Sheriff Jones had turned against Thomas, betting that his political career was over because Sheriff Jones had decided it was. 

I’ve known Sheriff Jones for a long time. I have liked him most in the early days of the Tea Party movement, then again during the first Trump term. To his credit, he was one of the first area Republicans to join behind Trump in 2016. But I remind people often that Trump used to be a Democrat. So did Kari Lake, for that matter. Sheriff Jones, to me, has shown himself to be a big government Democrat who dresses as a 50s-style cowboy sheriff. I like the look. But his actions are much more Democrat than conservative. We had a mutual friend in David Kern, so we have tolerated each other the way relatives do at Thanksgiving Dinner. Sometimes we got along, sometimes not so much. I’ve always liked what he brought to the “Republican” brand as an image. But have been embarrassed by him often as a public official. I understand that he’s never done anything but public life. So it’s been a relationship I’ve been willing to take the good with the bad. That holds until I see him start abusing his power as he clearly did with Thomas Hall. Then anything good Sheriff Jones had done all these years suddenly gets tossed out the window as he does the very Democrat thing, abusing his authority to exert power over others. He went way out of his way to make an example out of Thomas Hall, and many other Republicans followed after him. 

In the end, the good guys won. Thomas won due to his great reputation and his very hard work. He didn’t need a party endorsement, even though he should have had it as a good incumbent. Nobody wanted to cross Sheriff Jones and feared what their own political futures might become if they did. So, things got very ugly during the campaign. Nobody would have thought poorly of Thomas Hall if he had caved under pressure. I always thought he was the clear winner, and I would tell him that. I knew if people could get to know Thomas the way I had, that they’d easily vote for him no matter what Sheriff Jones said. I also knew that Sheriff Jones didn’t have the political capital that he thought he had. Outside of some Lakota school board members, some reporters at Fox 19, and some thankful tax increase moms in the neighborhoods around his house in Liberty Township, a lot of people don’t like Sheriff Jones because they have come to know him as a bully. And so long as Jones has stayed in that bubble, he hasn’t had to face the truth about how people really feel about him when his back was turned. I have often thought some of those feelings were unfair. I always thought Sheriff Jones meant well, looking at him through the eyes of someone like the late Liberty Township trustee, David Kern. But after what Jones did to Thomas Hall during this election cycle and other Republicans who dared to support him, I could see why so many people would not like the Sheriff. So, I knew when it came time to vote; people would pick Thomas Hall. And, of course, they did. After all the money that was spent against Hall by the Sheriff Jones-led Matt King challenge, it’s evident that many of those characters were stuck in the past and had not learned the lessons of recent political trends. You couldn’t buy elections anymore with ads in the paper, simple yard signs, or robocalls with the Sheriff talking endorsements. I had many tens of thousands of hits on this site over the last several months from people looking for more information on Thomas. And what they found was the truth, the truth better than paid ads and sheriff endorsements can give. People were able to see Thomas Hall for the excellent person that he was. And that’s why he won and will continue to well into the future. 

Rich Hoffman

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Butler County’s Version of Liz Cheney: As Thomas Hall said of Sheriff Jones, “he’s a bully, using his office for political motives until people stand up to him”

When I first heard about this sixth charge from the Butler County Sheriff’s Department, as they have been investigating Roger Reynolds as the auditor for several accusations of corruption, I thought it was ridiculous before. But now, it had become just as much of a kangaroo court as the January 6th Commission for which Liz Cheney was leading in an attempt to keep President Trump off the 2024 presidential ticket. Roger Reynolds has been an excellent auditor in Butler County for a long time, and he has a political rival in Sheriff Jones who wants to show him how much political power he has, and the two have been at it for well over a year now. And instead of fighting in a parking lot somewhere, this is how modern bullies fight; they use the legal system as a weapon against their political opponents. I watched in bewilderment how a grown man like Sherrif Jones could have such a press conference announcing so much of nothing as he did with this latest stack of accusations against Roger, declaring that this latest one on the pile was some kind of big crime of corruption in line with the recent case of P.G. Sittenfeld from Cincinnati who was just found guilty of similar charges. In Roger’s case, he is nothing like the dirty politicians like P.G. Sittenfeld or the very dirty politics that occurred in the FirstEnergy case in Columbus, which isn’t about money at all. The FirstEnergy controversy is an attack by the political left against the Ohio energy grid and using political infighting among Republicans to hide it. When you see cases like this, where a Sheriff is so personally involved in finding anything to knock off a political rival within the Republican Party, you can tell easily that it’s not a case about the crime but about power and control over other people.

I know the characters involved in the new indictment, such as Jenni Logan, the treasurer from Lakota schools. She stated she thought Roger Reynolds was asking Lakota to invest money owed back to the District into a golf academy at Four Bridges. Ben Dibble, who was president of the school board around that time in 2017, was involved as well, according to the liberal activist from Fox 19, Jennifer Edwards Baker, who would love to erode away the very good Republican Party of Butler County any way possible. She’s been at it for a while, and area Republicans have been targeted for anything resembling impropriety. Of course, that’s tough because many of the modern Republicans are not like they were back in the Michael Fox days or when Bob Shelley was a trustee in Liberty Township. Lakota has their own problems, and if there was some incidental conversation about a golf academy from money coming back out of the auditor’s office, which Roger Reynolds represents, it was likely out of polite conversation. I’ve seen the lunch circuit Jenni Logan has been a part of for a long time, and I understand how talk can be made. For a while, especially before Covid, almost everywhere I went to lunch, I saw Jenni Logan and Matt Miller, the Lakota superintendent, there talking with other people. I can easily see in such meetings how talk about how money should be spent would occur. Is that legal or illegal? Well, suppose we start picking pepper out of fly droppings like this over legal issues meant to show the sheriff’s department’s power over things people say and go from there. In that case, we will likely create a business and political environment where nobody can talk to anybody about anything anywhere. Knowing the characters involved in this latest indictment, it didn’t change a thing about my opinion about Roger Reynolds. I will still happily vote for him and support him in the upcoming elections. I care more about what good of a job he has done for my community than what kind of political enemies he has made along the way. And after that press conference by Jones, I could only conclude that he has now become Butler County’s own version of Liz Cheney, who hates President Trump so much that she would attempt to bend the law and waste endless amounts of money in investigations just to keep him out of the political theater.

The level of ridiculousness really overflowed when Sheriff Jones tried to bring up Thomas Hall, who is a current State Rep running for the 46th District, which now includes Liberty Township.   Jones indicated he was continuing to investigate Thomas Hall for conflicts of interest even though a recent Keith Faber report from way back in 2018 and 2019 failed to show anything wrong, even under a microscope of a state audit generated based on what people “say.” Those old-style political hits aren’t going to work in this new world where people have seen so much done against President Trump. The public is much more savvy about these things than they used to be. In reaction to Sheriff Jones indicating he was going to continue investigating Thomas Hall, whom Jones is supporting a rival to run against Hall in the primary on August 2nd, Hall simply called Jones a “bully.” Hall said specifically to the Journal News, “this whole thing is ridiculous, for the sheriff to want an investigation I think is wrong, using his office for political motives when there’s an election 19 days from today. (when the statement was made and referring to the August 2nd primary race)  The sheriff is a bully and will continue to do what he wants until people stand up to him.” That’s one of the reasons I’m supporting Thomas Hall; he’s a good, sharp young man who can handle the heat in the kitchen and make a wonderful meal with it. And the sheriff doesn’t like him because he won’t kiss the ring and allow Jones to be a token kingmaker. 

I’ve talked to Roger Reynolds, and I know why Jones doesn’t like him, at least from Roger’s perspective. Roger runs a great auditor’s office in Butler County. People say all kinds of things, and if the roles were reversed, Sheriff Jones could easily find himself on an indictment list based on “what people say.” People could say that Jones is a bully because he wants to put the fear of the law into local trustees who vote on budgets from which his family and friends benefit. Jones has family and friends employed all over Butler County, and he doesn’t like it when they get laid off for not showing up for work. I know Roger pushed for more transparency on how money gets shown to the public, and Jones wasn’t a fan. And from there, their relationship, which had been a good one, fell apart. Those things happen; I see it as a human resource issue of county employees fighting over power and prestige. But when that hatred escalates to the level where a sheriff is willing to abuse his power to the extent he has with Roger Reynolds and Thomas Hall, purely over political power within the Republican Party, then it becomes a big problem. What we really have is a Butler County version of Liz Chaney. This name used to have significant meaning in the Republican Party until she was revealed to be a liberal hack by the Trump administration. And the phony hearings happening now in Washington D.C. are the same phony hearings that have been thrown at Roger Reynolds because he has pushed for more transparency and accountability for public officials. Not less. And for all the reasons that the political establishment hates Trump, they hate people like Roger Reynolds and Thomas Hall. And when it comes time to vote for them, I will happily pick Roger and Thomas every time over the opinions of Sheriff Jones. 

Rich Hoffman

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Thomas Hall Comes Out Squeaky Clean: Ohio Ethics Investigation by Keith Faber shows a great track record and no wrongdoing

It’s a few weeks away from the August 2nd primary for the Ohio Representative election between the incumbent Thomas Hall for the newly drawn up 46th District seat and his challenger Matt King.  And it wouldn’t be a typical election cycle if there wasn’t some kind of dirt being thrown by somebody.  After all, a lot of money gets tossed into the ring from numerous contributors, and they all want to see their pick win the election, and the belief that people can be significantly influenced by finance and sentiment perpetuates a lot of malice.   That is how the typical blood sport of politics works, and what we usually end up with in office, if done well, is the best possible candidate that we can get because of the grueling process.  But when you see bad behavior in that election process, we must talk about it because it shows where the real cracks of a campaign genuinely emerge.  And in the case of Thomas Hall, he is so squeaky clean that any attempts to say otherwise about him come out sounding ridiculously overinflated.  And that’s what emerged from a shot of desperation coming not so much from the challenger for the 46th District, Matt King, but certainly from those who want to use Matt to knock out Thomas from the very high bar he has set because many in politics simply don’t want to live up to that level of measure.  There was some controversy coming out of a group “Ohio News Hotline” that was trying to stir up trouble for Thomas, and an Ohio Ethics Investigation was discussed based on the years 2018 and 2019, hoping that they could dig up something to make Thomas look bad.  In short, there was nothing there, but the elements who wanted to knock off Thomas Hall were trying to stir up trouble, so setting the record straight is mandated.

It had been a good week for Representative Hall, the week after the 4th of July 2022.  I had just reported on how great he did at a local Tea Party meeting where he made an excellent case for why he should be re-elected to a somewhat hostile crowd.  Then on Thursday, he spoke at Lakota schools and did a fantastic job there as well.  Probably too well because Democrats and RINO Republicans who are very uncomfortable with Thomas Hall moving his influence into Liberty Township as the new 46th District is mapped out aren’t comfortable with the strong record of conservative politics Hall represents.  He’s rock-solid in every Republican measure based on his track record, and the NRA just came out with a glowing endorsement of Hall, so plenty of political enemies were stirred up by those two public speeches.  Then on Friday, there was a fund-raiser with several Democrats involved, and they were more than energized to support Matt King, hoping to take down the very conservative Thomas Hall.  Now that’s not unusual.  I know Matt and the King family, and they tend to be solid conservatives.  But Matt is unknown as a politician, so obviously, Democrats are hoping for that variable to help them, so they support King for obvious reasons.  Thomas is a known threat to them as opposed to gaining leverage over someone they might be able to call in favors later because they helped with the campaign.  Sheriff Jones has been working against Thomas because he doesn’t like the strong voting record of Hall, so there some inner Republican theatrics going on as well that have been fueling Democrats to help King gain some steam, much the way Democrats got involved in the governor primary helping put DeWine over the top in that recent election. 

That’s when the timing of the ethics report, done by Keith Faber, became an inflated issue and an anonymous tip attempted to stir up trouble through the Ohio News Hotline, prompting a media hit piece against Thomas Hall.  I also know Keith; I think he’s a good guy too.  Investigations like what his office does, I think, are great because they keep politicians clean.  It’s a good check on the balance of power, and without the Auditors Office from the State there to investigate, there would be much more corruption in politics than there is.  While all this talk was going on, P.G. Sittenfeld in Cincinnati was found guilty of bribery, so these topics were fresh on the minds of the desperate when the contents of the Ohio Ethics Investigation on Hall were made available.  Now here’s where unethical behavior starts to really show itself.  I’ve read the report on Thomas Hall from Keith’s office, which is squeaky clean.  There is nothing bad or disingenuous there at all.  But the radical elements and Democrats who want Hall gone tried to take things out of context to at least create doubt in people who haven’t read the report and never plan to.  Just the mention of an ethics report might be enough to inspire them to make a change from Thomas to King on August 2nd.  As mentioned, the report covered 2018-2019, but it wasn’t released to the public until June 16th, 2022, just a month and a half before the election.  That in itself is more than a bit suspicious. 

The report states that Thomas did not recuse himself as a trustee on matters involving the fire department in Madison Township, where his father, a hero who stopped the school shooting at the school there, was the fire chief.  In those instances, Thomas sought legal counsel on the matter and provided the proper distance required when dealing with financial matters.  But on voting for equipment and supplies for the fire department, he participated with the other trustees under explicit direction from that legal advice.  The report from the auditor simply mentions that it was unusual.  Not that it was inappropriate.  Then the report shows that Madison Township had some late tax filings and negative balances during Thomas’ term.  This was a problem with the fiscal officer they had at the time and was a common problem many trustees face.  Nothing improper, just commonplace management problems.  And with all the digging that the vast resources of Keith Faber’s office could utilize over a lengthy period of time and sit on a desk somewhere for three years until just before the August 2nd election, there turned out to be nothing to see regarding anything improper done by Thomas Hall.  I would propose that the timing of the report’s release and distribution to the public was meant to create doubt in the public to affect the election.  By the time people learned that the report contained no wrongdoing by Thomas Hall, the election would be over, and from the Democrat perspective, hopefully, King would win the election.   For the enemies of Thomas Hall, all they need to do is create doubt which was where the tip to the Ohio News Hotline went out to stir up enough buzz in the final two weeks of the campaign to push some voters maybe away.  The report was and is a last-ditch effort by a political class, both Republicans and Democrats, who don’t want the high measure Thomas Hall has forced them all to live up to.  Very few could go through a Keith Faber Ohio Ethics Investigation and come out as clean as Thomas did.  And that truly scares them.   Another term of Thomas Hall may make it so they can’t compete in the political world ever in the future.  And for voters, that’s very good news indeed.

Rich Hoffman

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