Tag: Thomas Hall

Vote for Thomas Hall for the 46th House District in Ohio: Setting the bar high, too high for political rivals

It’s never been an option from my perspective; after the remapping of the Ohio House Rep districts, Thomas Hall has always been the clear favorite. That’s not because Matt King, who is running against him in the primary that voters will decide on August 2nd of 2022, is a bad candidate. But just that Thomas Hall is that good. He checks all the boxes you’d want for a Representative seat in the new 46th district, which now includes Liberty Township, Ohio, and traditional districts from the north, such as Middletown.   Recently at a West Chester Tea Party meeting, Thomas and Matt spoke to the audience to make their pitch as to why voters should vote for them, and I present those videos here, which comes down to one key attribute that decides the issue. In Thomas Hall’s case, he has a lot of experience and has been very successful during his first term in Columbus. He has done all the right things, including passing blockbuster legislation across Governor DeWine’s desk for H.B. 99, which makes schools safer in the case of a mass shooting. Matt King just doesn’t have the experience, and it showed as he presented himself. Both are nice young men, but in the case of Thomas Hall, he’s just an exceptional political representative who has done such a good job that no challenger would do well against. 

To Matt’s point, he did the best he could, and he’s right about the Founding Fathers being very young when they were involved in the revolutionary business of starting a new country. He’s been a guy from the business world, not a politician like Thomas Hall, who has two terms as a trustee in Madison Township to add to his resume even as young as he is. And typically, we might say that not being in politics is more attractive than voting for the incumbent. In most races, that would be true. But Thomas Hall is such an exceptional young man who has faced the hottest fires of controversy and done so with great poise; you get the feeling from him that he’s just getting started. Thomas Hall has already shown that he can go up to Columbus and work with people who do not agree with him and work on legislation in a productive way to get their support. And he knows how to navigate the rough waters of politics without being a sell-out to his district. Of course, that has made Thomas Hall a target for those jealous of his success. For instance, Sheriff Jones has endorsed Matt King because the Sheriff is on the record being angry at legislation Thomas sponsored, like H.B. 99. But Thomas has managed to pick up the enthusiastic endorsement of Butler County Sheriff’s Office Police Union, which Sheriff Jones is a member. He also has the support of the NRA, Buckeye Firearms, Ohio Right to Life, and the Middletown Police Union. Sometimes when you are too good, you do make enemies. In my opinion, Thomas Hall has made the right kind of enemies and he made those enemies because he had done his job too well. 

Some of those jealous forces have thrown their support behind Matt King simply because they don’t want to live up to the high bar that Thomas has set for them. Matt is a blank sheet of paper, making it much easier to live up to. The hope that a fresh set of eyes as a House Rep might turn out well is the same kind of reasonable hope that someone who purchases a lottery ticket might expect. You can’t win if you don’t buy one. But in buying one, you accept that the outcome is uncertain. In my experience, a person with a business background like Matt has will have a tough time because when you run a business, you can hire who you want, and if you need money, you just go to the bank and make your pitch. The tricky thing about Columbus is that it already has people there whom you have to work with who have their own ideas about things, so it is difficult at best to get anything done and to do so with your authenticity intact—and even saying that of course Democrats who enter the Republican Party as Trojan Horses would like to see an end to Thomas Hall. You can see that clearly in the upcoming fundraiser mysteriously sponsored by the Republican Party of Butler County that has the Super Bowl trophy of Spencer Ware on it. They even put the trophy in Matt’s name. When you see this kind of thing, its always an indication that the candidate doesn’t have their own record to stand on, so they try to evoke the records of other people, like the Super Bowl exploits of a person who was on Super Bowl-winning teams, or Sheriffs with a long history of service, but a history of wanting to be a kingmaker and knock off political rivals at the party level.  

But the most convincing case for Thomas Hall came when he was pressed during the meeting by a critic of H.B. 218, which was a reaction to the impositions of the vaccine mandates. The critic in the audience was pressing Thomas for his support of the bill, which she did not feel went far enough in protecting employees from their employers during Covid. Thomas was front and center with all that activity, so he has a track record to criticize. But I think he handled that emotional question very well, which shows how much grace under fire he can handle, so I offer it here. Many political personalities would have stumbled through this kind of criticism, but Thomas did all he could at the time, so he could confidently answer the question.   There was undoubtedly a time limit being imposed on H.B. 218, and Thomas wanted to get something done, even if it didn’t go as far as the person asking the question wanted it to go, which was complete protection from mandatory vaccines. When the Biden administration put forth their Executive Order in September of 2021, it was essentially a race against time, putting politicians like Thomas Hall between a rock and a hard place on purpose. There is a fine line between individual rights and the rights of a company to require employees to comply with the needs of a workplace. That caused a lot of trouble for Columbus in reacting to the pressure; Thomas showed outstanding leadership during this challenging situation and was very respectful to his critic when asked the question. Of course, many of the Biden mandates have been found unconstitutional, as many thought would be the case all along. H.B. 218 tried to do something in a really tough time, so there wasn’t much more Thomas could do, but his reaction to the criticism is telling because it shows how he can handle pressure, even when it’s critical. Matt King couldn’t be asked any questions because he didn’t have a record to defend. And ultimately, that’s what this race comes down to; one of the candidates for the newly created 46th District in Ohio has a lot of experience and has been very successful. The other guy is hoping to use other people’s reputations to knock off a political rival who has set the bar too high for other politicians to live up to. That makes it a pretty clear case. Ultimately it’s up to voters, but the logic favors Thomas Hall greatly. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Thank Goodness Ohio Has Thomas Hall: Gun rights are the only things keeping us safe in a Democrat-run government intent to destroy America

I continue to be proud of State Representative Thomas Hall for his bill that Governor DeWine signed on Monday, June 13th providing minimum training requirements for teachers to arm themselves in public schools and to act as first responders should a tragic event occur. It was the kind of bill that was controversial in the face of an aggressive anti-gun lobby, so it took a lot of political skill for Representative Hall to move his bill through the House and Senate and go through all the revisions that it took to get it onto Governor DeWine’s desk. The bill was signed on the same day that Constitutional Carry went into effect in Ohio, so after a few rough years with Mike DeWine, particularly on Covid, we are seeing an administration that has been very good on Second Amendment issues. DeWine was eager to sign Thomas’ bill and rebuild some bridges that were lost over the Covid lockdowns. A few years ago, I would have never thought that Governor DeWine would become one of the most pro-Second Amendment governors in the country, but with the signing of House Bill 99 sponsored by Thomas Hall, that’s what he has become. It’s interesting to see how DeWine has evolved on gun rights over the last four years, which I think says more about the conditions of society than anything. It goes beyond him looking to repair his relationship with Republicans over Covid lockdowns. It was only a few years ago that DeWine was showing support for Red Flag Laws. Yet now, DeWine is one of the most pro-gun governors in the country, and that is great to see.

Meanwhile, there is a hard push from progressives who have managed to snag some GOP senators to ride some gun control legislation to give Biden a token win using recent mass shootings as a driver for more government control over gun rights. The Biden administration, which Texas has been one of the first to admit the illegitimacy due to the election questions that have been increasing with each day, wants to get more progressive gun control legislation on the books before they lose all their power. The Republican Party of Texas is starting to say that quiet part out loud, and as I have been saying for a while now, that quiet part will only get louder as more join the chorus. More centralized control over the American population is why there is an election fraud scandal. Would the government attempt to seize power through election fraud to disarm American society? Well, obviously so. And they are aggressive about it. The Biden administration is already trying to leverage Winchester ammunition with government contracts to alter its sales to the public, hoping to drive up the price of ammunition just as they have been doing with gas prices, to alter the behavior of the consumer. If they can’t ban guns, the Biden administration hopes to discourage through supply chain problems the flow of ammunition that shooters can get access to. The illegitimate Biden administration will be forever known in history as the government force that attacked America through supply chains. If you consider the terrorism that is obviously happening at food processing plants, again to alter supply chains with a radical Weather Underground sabotage of them under the Biden watch, a real menace to society is revealing itself. And it is within that climate that the government is pushing for more gun control. 

Because of Democrats, we are looking at a much more dangerous and unstable world. And the Biden administration has been laughing about it, even mocking Republicans, daring them to fight. It’s the same type of attitude that was revealed when members of the Colbert Show were caught and arrested in the U.S. Capitol after hours harassing families of the J6 defendants. NBC tried to downplay the incident, but the radicalism couldn’t be more obvious. We are dealing with an outright Marxist political move in America from the political left, and they are taking their talking points straight out of the book The Communist Manifesto. Now, I’ve been saying all this for a long time that the political left is communist in nature, using socialism as a soft door to enter through. Many people didn’t want to think of their fellow Democrats in such a way, but after four years of Trump, which I have also been saying would happen for a long time, their masks were ripped off. Now they are showing themselves for what they always were, America hating Marxists who are intent on destroying our country no matter what it takes. When members of popular media like those from the Colbert Show are so desperate and audacious in their actions, you can see the level of desperation; they mean to kill the country behind their actions. Would these same people commit election fraud and attempt to cover it up with everything they have in them? You bet they would. 

We are now in a world of liberal lunacy gone terribly wrong; crime is up because of Democrats. Concerns over the power grid because of BlackRock’s control over American energy policy leading straight to the World Economic Forum Marxists in Europe have people worried about constant brownouts and other mass grid failures. We have been closing coal plants and not replacing them with real viable energy generators. Gas prices are artificially high; it’s as if the Biden administration has an obsession with the Mad Max films and is trying to make them come true. We are seeing a plot designed outside the United States that has entered American life through politics and finance that intends to destroy everything we are. And even Mike DeWine sees it as governor of Ohio and has modified his position on gun control to reflect it. Truly, the First and Second Amendments are the only things keeping America alive at the moment. Gun ownership is the only thing that has kept this out-of-control society from completely destroying the American idea and keeps families somewhat safe in their homes. We are witnessing a progressive nightmare created by the Biden administration for the ultimate destruction of America while they still have the power to do it. And they can tell that the window for their attempts is closing, and their desperation level reflects that knowledge. They only have a few months to destroy the country, and they are picking up the pace of their attacks.

Their guiding manual, The Communist Manifesto, will tell us what they plan to do next. And for that reason, we must be happy to live in a state where State Representatives like Thomas Hall represent Ohio politics to head that aggression off at the pass and do good work for the people. To sign H.B. 99 on the same day that Ohio moved to Constitutional Carry says much more about the actual state of our country. While the gun grabbers are the same type of people reflected in the arrests of the Cobert staff at the Capitol, the only defense anybody has against that aggression, and the progressive, globalist activism of the Biden administration, is to be armed with guns. Preferably lots of guns. Because the enemy is among us, and they mean to destroy everything we represent, and they have no intentions of holding back. The only thing keeping them in check is our guns. They have no respect for our laws. They have no respect for our country. The only thing they do respect is force, and that force for us comes from our gun rights and our ability to always have them with us. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Great H.B. 99 by Thomas Hall: Making schools safe by empowering decentralized security

It’s been in the background for a while; it’s how good legislation is done; H.B. 99 has now passed the general assembly and is headed to Governor DeWine’s desk for signature with a few minor tweaks. And with that signature, Ohio will step into a leadership role in solving the mass shooter problem in public schools. The bill itself was sponsored by Thomas Hall and has become known as the School Safety Bill and will essentially set a roughly 24-hour minimum training limit on allowing teachers and other adults to carry firearms in a public school setting allowing for first responders in the event of mass shootings which are all too frequent these days. Thomas Hall held a press conference for the event on June 2nd, 2022, once the vote had concluded in the senate the day before, to discuss the details, which started well over a year ago. It had been considered controversial by the same types of people who have left schools so vulnerable to attacks by essentially making them gun-free zones, which isn’t practical these days. While school resource officers are always preferred, we have seen that their effectiveness is not always stable, such as the recent school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, where official police were unsure how to deal with the crisis. The truth of the matter is that security is best when it is decentralized, as is the case with the general practice of concealed carry. Having public schools gun-free zones or limiting security to institutionalized options have not been successful. H.B. 99 creates a decentralized option that is the key to future gun safety everywhere in America. It was the hard work of Thomas Hall in working with a lot of people in Columbus to make it a possibility. 

The best way to think about the situation is to consider a house cat that has been declawed because the owners of the cat do not want the pet to rip holes in the furniture. But then the owner finds the shedding of hair to be something they don’t want to clean up, so they put the cat outside for convenience. That might cut down on the hair inside the home, and the owner thinks they are doing something nice by still keeping the cat as a pet. But it’s the worst thing to do for the poor creature, the cat. Putting a cat outside without any defense is a death sentence for the declawed cat. Without its ability to defend itself, other more aggressive cats will pounce on the creature without mercy. It won’t take long for the declawed cat to be killed by a rival without an ability to defend itself. Sending a declawed cat outside a protected home environment is irresponsible and vicious. The cat owner first destroyed the creature’s ability to protect itself from other cats for the convenience of life in domestic bliss until it was decided that the owner could change their mind. Sending the creature outside without a means to defend itself allowed the owner to feel morally righteous without acknowledging the hostile nature of cats in general.

In 1990 Congress passed the Gun-Free Zones Act that essentially took guns out of public schools, which was equivalent to declawing a cat and putting it outside. Since that ridiculous law for public schools, gun violence has escalated to levels that nobody finds acceptable. Those who pushed for such a law continue to believe that guns should not be in schools or other government establishments and continue to pursue their efforts without reality attached. Gun-free zones have proven to be a menace to all logic by people who essentially value the furniture of public education more than the benefits of the cat under their care. Public schools have evolved into a platform for progressive institutionalism, and within that worldview, there is a desire to remove guns from society in general. That is just as ridiculous as insisting that outside cats in the world treat each other fairly and not try to kill each other over spilled milk and territory. Yet when that system fails to produce the results that liberal politics desires, a maniac and killer often is born, and the next mass shooting occurs. Thomas Hall has some experience with mass shootings; his father was a school resource officer who stopped a mass shooting in Madison schools a few years ago. So that was a case where the extra security worked in favor of the school. But to be successful, the officer must engage the target. Some paid security have shown a tendency to consider under emergency conditions that life is worth more than the paycheck and fleed the scene. It has happened too often in school shootings not to consider mitigating circumstances. 

The best measure for dealing with school shootings, just as it is witnessed in general society, is to put guns in the hands of adults, educators, and even administrators who are most incentivized to fill the need when a crisis arrives. It makes it much harder for potential shooters to block off their targets when they aren’t sure who security is; it could be anybody in the school. With that simple change in dealing with gun violence, a much safer public-school environment is established. Those against guns in public places, particularly schools, are against guns generally and have ideas that society would be better off without them. That is equivalent to the pet owner who does not regard the nature of wildlife outside the home’s safety, where other cats, raccoons, and coyotes will challenge any house cat with violence and worse at every opportunity they have. Guns and violent people are abundant in the world. Uninventing them and the nature of people who would use them to inflict unnecessary harm to others is not an option. Progressive politics simply aren’t considering the nature of violent human beings who fall through the cracks of their overly institutionalized society. They produce a lot of anxious characters, and by having gun-free zones, they leave lots of opportunities to make victims out of the innocent, all to fill an ideology of political nature that is not conducive to existence in general. H.B. 99 is a remedy to that problem and one of the first in the United States to take such a step forward. And under the current language that the legislature has shaped, Governor DeWine is poised to sign it to make it law. We are presently witnessing a complete degradation of institutionalism in general, specifically with the Biden administration’s problems publicly on all fronts. And the aggressive characters who linger in the world at the edges of sanity have been empowered to act in maniacal ways. Kids cannot be left vulnerable to these failures, so action is needed by our political order and society, in general, to bring real solutions to the matter. Teachers who are willing to take the 24 hours minimum course to carry a gun in the schools and be first responders to the next mass shooting are those most inspired to use those skills in a crisis situation. To be part of a decentralized solution is the best way a teacher can make their classroom environment safer and make it harder for a potential aggressive personality to exploit a weakness that otherwise might provoke them to action. The surest way to inspire that potential for violence is to make the target defenseless, which is what the 1990 Gun-Free Zone Act did. Correcting that mistake is the task of our times and the efforts of great legislation produced by Thomas Hall and the Ohio legislature. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Ohio’s Thomas Hall: The Man of Law Enforcement

It’s not hard now to know what we do about Sheriff Jones, why he dislikes the Ohio Representative of the 53rd District so much. I still tell all the people who now dislike the good Sheriff that he has done many good things over the years, and his brand has been good for the Republican Party and the first Trump term. Whether or not he continues to hold that lofty position is up to him. So far, he is turning hard left and headed for Mike DeWine country. But that’s his decision. Politics is a blood sport, and blood does get spilled. And that’s certainly the case with the feud between Thomas Hall and Sheriff Jones. Learning what I have, this problem goes far beyond just disagreements over sponsored bills or even kissing the ring by the youth to the elderly. Instead, it looks like insecurity that many older people go through when they realize a younger generation is replacing them. It can be hard to look in the mirror and acknowledge that you are no longer that guy. And for a guy with an ego the size of Sheriff Jones, of course, getting to the end of a long career in law enforcement will stir up emotions. After endorsing Thomas Hall for his next election, where Jones is trying to primary him out of contention, I stopped by the Statehouse in Columbus to see how Thomas was holding up. It’s been a rough campaign. Like many politicians, they have no idea really when the primary will happen. It’s set for May, but it might change to August. And in Thomas’s case, he doesn’t even know what district he’s running for because the Supreme Court might change it based on district mapping disputes. Yet, when I found Thomas in his natural habitat, I noticed that he was calm, cool, and sure of himself. And he quickly mentioned to me that Sheriff Jones’ labor union had endorsed him. 

Thomas told me all the measures he was taking to get re-elected, including all the door-to-door campaigns he had, regardless of how the districting broke down. We also talked strategy about the negative hits by Sheriff Jones. But now that the smoke had settled from the WLW incident back in November, where Jones went way out of his way to attempt to disparage Thomas in detrimentally belittling ways, the report from the outskirts of Butler County was that the Sheriff was losing his support. People in the rural parts of the county were always skeptical of Jones. They see him as more of a bully than a good cop, and that perception was already in place before Thomas Hall came into politics. The Sheriff is popular with the levy supporting Lakota moms and the big-government liberals, but not so much the rugged self-doers. When Jones supported Trump with them, they liked him. Now that he’s supporting Governor DeWine and is much more on the left than they are, they look at him with squinted eyes of skepticism. And in that way, most of Thomas Hall’s district falls under that category, so the attempts by Jones to disparage Hall have actually seemed to help the young congressman because he provides a protest vote to Jones.

Thomas and I spent quite a lot of time catching up, walking through the rotunda and eventually down into the atrium with the giant Greek pillars standing as testaments of law and order. We took a few pictures and continued to talk about the campaign and his goals for his second term. But along the way, the Governor was walking around in the rotunda, taking pictures with whoever wanted them, so there was a significant police presence everywhere. While we talked, Thomas Hall stopped by each one along our path, thanked them for their service, and showed them how much he appreciated them. They were highly appreciative and receptive. This went on with a frequency that stopped our conversation about every 30 seconds. My thought at the time was that Thomas was doing this for my sake, so I wondered if he did that kind of thing all the time. After taking a few pictures, he had to run off for a session, and we parted ways. But my curiosity wondered if, even in a bit of a hurry and without me around, he would continue to shake hands with all the officers on his way back to his office. 

It was a formal occasion that day, so I was dressed in a suit like everyone else. It was easy for me to hang way back and follow Thomas Hall to his office. He didn’t know I was following as I blended into the crowd. And sure enough, he stopped by every officer, not the same ones as before, of course, and shook their hand and showed them how much he appreciated them. Now Thomas Hall is the son of the old cop who stopped the shooting at Madison Schools a few years prior. Hall grew up with a love of law enforcement and public service, which is why as such a young man, he is already moving toward another term as a House Rep after a past as a trustee in his community. But this reverence for the police was not fake. He didn’t know I was watching him, yet he was very sincere about it. Like I say all the time, don’t listen to what people say; watch what they do. The police of Butler County know what kind of young man Thomas Hall is, and they like him. And that looks to be the problem Sheriff Jones has with him. It’s more a problem that Jones has than what Thomas has. And when the Sheriff’s own police union supported Thomas Hall despite of the activism of Jones, the direction of the campaign was clearly headed in a direction favorable to Hall. The police can see where the future is, and Thomas Hall is their guy. And deservedly so. 

I always enjoy learning these kinds of things about people. We live in a world full of fake people and broken promises. There are few people out there who actually exceed expectations. I already liked Thomas Hall before our meeting at the Statehouse of Ohio, in those grand chambers of intellect and the pursuit of justice. But after watching him work with people and his behavior when he didn’t know anybody was looking, I knew that there was a lot special about Thomas Hall. It’s a shame that Sheriff Jones is trying to put a rift in the Butler County Republican Party the way he is. I understand that fear of becoming irrelevant. I would even think of it as a forgivable situation. Nobody wants to see the memory of the Sheriff be like that old dog that bit some little kid at the end of its life, erasing all the good things that had occurred over its lifetime. But that is for the Sheriff to work out for himself. The police and voters where it matters were clearly happy with Thomas Hall, and he was certainly willing to do whatever it took to defend his House seat. And he was confident the way unbeaten people in life usually are. And when you are as good and sincere as Thomas Hall is, it looks clear that he will remain unbeaten for the foreseeable future. Thomas Hall is the man of law enforcement, and the police know it and will reward him accordingly.    

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

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

Sheriff Jones Flip Flops, But Why?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

The Show Business of Sheriff Jones: When it comes to H.B. 99, Thomas Hall offers a solution

Allowing Teachers to Carry Guns

At the heart of the problem, Sheriff Jones illustrated on his WLW November 18th diatribe against Representative Thomas Hall’s H.B. 99 was this long-established problem of whether or not more public sector employees are a solution to gun violence in schools or a hindrance. There are a lot of guns in Butler County, Ohio, so school shootings are pretty rare, and there is undoubtedly a direct correlation that liberal politics doesn’t want to admit to. Even Sheriff Jones himself is a supporter generally of concealed carry. He has told me that it’s great to have many first responders in the community to stop criminals at the point of a crime. But, Jones is also the head of a police union and symbolizes strength among all the public sector unions. And it is there that he politically turns left every time. He comes from a generation where they wanted to believe in the system of government that we have seen now has let us down time and time again. Yet, he is still a stubborn defender of labor unions even when they show themselves to be trouble. Saying all that, there haven’t been many school shootings in Butler County. There was one in Madison, Twp., not that long ago, and it was Thomas Hall’s father who was a school resource officer who ran the shooter off the scene only wounding four people, not getting a chance to kill them when the attacker fired into a cafeteria one day seemingly unprovoked. To say that Thomas Hall cares about school safety is an understatement. His bill H.B. 99 was meant to set basic training requirements for school boards to plan to so that they could allow teachers to be armed in the classroom, to be those critical first responders when and if a school shooter presented themselves as a menace to the public. For many mysterious reasons, Sheriff Jones was against the bill and made an absolute embarrassment on WLW attacking Thomas Hall for many reasons that no conservative would understand. But Jones has done that before. 

I was pretty disheartened to learn firsthand that Bill Cunningham was not a real conservative. My history with Cunningham goes back for several years, all the way back to 1996 when I had paid Cunningham to be the spokesman for our “Take An Axe to Our Tax” t-shirts that we were using to promote tax cuts during the Bob Dole campaign that year. I was supposed to come on WLW to talk about the promotion, but my segment got bumped because Willie decided to do a strip show that night, where he brought in live strippers to dance nude during the show. The producer offered me to do my segment during that mess, and I had to decline because it just wasn’t something I could be a part of. Later I learned that Bill Cunningham plays a conservative on his radio show, but he wasn’t very conservative. He was the Stephen Cobert of radio, playing a conservative in media, without really being one. I learned around this time that Sheriff Jones, who was frequently on with Cunningham, was much the same way. He played a conservative in public, but he has many big government ideas in private. He’s great if we are talking about law enforcement. But when it comes to social issues, he shows himself to be very liberal, which is why he and Bill Cunningham have always gotten along so well. I understood the show business aspect of the radio work, but I thought of these people as the real deal until I learned firsthand that they weren’t. 

Sheriff Jones Attacks Thomas Hall For Petty Reasons

In 2013 Sheriff Jones and Cunningham came out in favor of the Lakota Levy, which raised our taxes in monstrous ways. It caused so much trouble in our community that we haven’t had a levy since because we never needed it. We didn’t need it then, but Jones worked with the Democrat Kathy Wyenandt to pass the tax increase. We didn’t speak for about five years when finally we broke a little bread together in the middle of the Trump administration. I thought he had been doing an excellent job for Butler County and representing us to the Trump administration. But I wasn’t too shocked to hear him revert to the kind of liberalism that he uttered again with Bill Cunningham using Lakota as a kind of launching point for his resistance to arming teachers in the classroom and for disparaging the very conservative Thomas Hall personally for his position of empowering teachers to add another layer of protection. For Jones, he wants school resource officers or prohibitive training that would make it so difficult for anybody who wishes to even to carry a gun in a classroom that it might as well not even be a law. But Thomas’ bill empowered school boards to set the maximum limits themselves, depending on their need, and Jones felt he needed to sabotage the bill through the public airwaves and the political career of the young representative himself. 

My argument in favor of a more private-sector solution, as opposed to a unionized employee, is due to people like Jones himself. When it comes to the cosmetic stuff, Jones is a great Republican. But when it comes to legislation, he’s a big government guy that’s always talking about compromise with the other side that wants to bury us all. I think it’s an age thing, he and Cunningham are from the same generation, and they thought the big Democrat politics from the early 60s were going to work, and they never really changed their point of view. We have seen times where school resource officers like Thomas’ dad run off shooters while under fire. But we have also seen some who panic, as the resource officer in Florida did, never engaging the shooter and allowing lots of carnage in the meantime. People panic, and cops, even with their many hours of training, panic too. Sometimes they get so much training that they can’t adapt to a unique situation. Sometimes they lock up. They passed the test on paper but can’t apply it to reality. I like the idea of cops in schools. But I want a teacher armed with a gun to be the first responder. And I like the idea of a teacher being so comfortable with a gun that they accept it as part of their lifestyle, practicing every week for the rest of their lives. Not just some bureaucratic training period that may or may not be enough. 

I always wanted to believe in Bill Cunningham as a conservative, just as I always wanted to believe in Sheriff Jones. But with them, most of their public persona is a show. And that is the same with police in general. Having a cop in the hallways of our schools may look nice. It might scare away some potential shooters. But if a shooting actually happens, I don’t believe any public employees are full proof and will behave appropriately under pressure. I prefer mitigation to their service if they get scared or misstep themselves when danger presents itself. Sheriff Jones, the big government guy from Butler County, believes absolutely in public service. He has been a public servant all his life and always will be. I still think he’s generally good for our community so long as it’s mostly a show we are putting on, and things aren’t getting too real. Yet, after the way he treated Thomas Hall on WLW, where he turned to the show to attempt to destroy a person he endorsed just a year earlier, I would never trust an employee like him in a school without some extra measure of mitigation, a teacher comfortable with a gun, to protect kids when they are under an assault from bad people. That is, If we ever fully get back to school because all these lazy union employees don’t want to go to work using Covid as a cover for staying home.   And what will we do in the future when the school resource officer, unionized and terrified of Covid, calls off work the day there is a school shooting? If we rely too heavily on them, we are bound to get burnt by the general laziness of all government employees. 

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

Old Yeller: The fight between Thomas Hall and Sheriff Jones

Why Is Sheriff Jones Going After Thomas Hall

Sheriff Jones decided to go on 700 WLW and speak disparagingly about Thomas Hall, the current House Representative of the 53rd District. I like Sheriff Jones, I hope he runs and wins a few more terms, but nobody in their right mind could support the way he attacked Thomas Hall on those radio waves to hundreds of thousands of people. Long-time readers here know that I used to be a frequent contributor on WLW, like Jones. Over time, many of my people who used to work there moved away, were fired, or otherwise changed their point of view. We separated like some kind of divorce, and I have not had much of an idea of reconciliation. I have more freedom in media with this site, so I have not returned in several years. But Jones does go on WLW quite a lot, so because I don’t pay much attention to what goes on there these days, I did not hear the original airing where Sheriff Jones disparaged Thomas Hall in many negative ways calling him a 12-year old “goof,” not just once, but many times. Still, I have often heard from many Republicans who want to defend Hall but are scared of retaliation from Jones, and I think that’s a shame. Hall certainly isn’t 12-years old. I said in the video that he was in his early thirties, but actually, he’s in his mid-twenties and is the youngest member of the current Ohio House. However, the young man is an overachiever by all measures, and his age certainly isn’t a hindrance. He has had two terms as a Madison Trustee, and now he’s in his first term as a congressman seeking a second term. 

Sheriff Jones Goes After Thomas Hall over H.B. 99

Another thing I said about Thomas is a couple of times in the video, I referred to him as Thomas More, because for a lot of reasons, I think of the writer of Utopia whenever I think of Thomas Hall. It’s been that way for a while just because of my own reading habits. There are a lot of Thomas’ in English literature; another is the character of Thomas Becket from The Canterbury Tales, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral by his friend Henry the II. It’s one of my favorite books, and this story keeps coming to my mind when I think of Thomas Hall and his friend and mentor, Sheriff Jones. Jones had endorsed Thomas and was mentoring him until a few things happened. Apparently, Jones didn’t like Hall’s voting record. The Sheriff had a confirmed case of heartburn over H.B. 99, Hall’s bill in congress, which set definitions for minimal teacher training to carry firearms in public schools. Jones uncharacteristically turned on Thomas Hall and made quite an exhibition about it on WLW right before Thanksgiving in 2021. I hadn’t heard it until I did an endorsement video for Thomas Hall, and he mentioned it. I had heard from several very prominent Republicans, some very close to the Sheriff, that something had gone on really bad. As I said in the video, one of them was not Senator Lang. I never put people in positions where they get caught in crossfires with each other and given the mean streak that many fear in crossing Jones, many don’t want to be a part of it. Yet many more than ten contacted me to let me know what was going on between Hall and Jones, and they weren’t happy about it.

Thomas Hall Responds to Sheriff Jones

I listened to the Jones interview with Willie, included here; then I listened to the response from Thomas Hall the next day. I played them for my wife, who loves Sheriff Jones. We talked about the interviews and thought Thomas Hall did a fantastic job. He certainly won the argument. But Jones came across as petty and even childish. My wife offered that maybe he was hurting about something else, totally unrelated. Perhaps that’s true. Whatever it is, I would suggest a few thoughts regarding the excellent Sheriff. I’ve been sideways with him a few times over things, particularly school things and union business. I still blame him for the Lakota levy passing in 2013. He has a liberal streak in him that I can’t stand, but we have buried the hatchet since then. What he did for Butler County during the Trump years has been great. A person’s body of work can’t be defined by just a few years here and there or by the grumpy old dog that starts biting people who step on a porch to sell Girl Scout cookies. I hope that Jones runs and wins more terms for as long as possible. But perhaps my wife was right about him, that something else is bothering him. 

In my book The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business, I deal with this very issue of an older generation coping with the young people biting their heels. The chapter is called “The Skill of Developed Intuition” on pg. 181. You spend your whole life getting somewhere, making yourself into the person people put on T.V. Getting invited to the White House. Where you can’t go into public without people wanting to get a picture taken with you. And suddenly, here is some 25-year-old whiz kid who suddenly does more in one year than most state reps do in a lifetime. And he’s confident and won’t kiss the ring. Deep down inside, nobody would want to see such a young person broken, but consciously, the older person wants respect because he gave it when he was younger. The aging process isn’t fair. When you can start to see the end of the tunnel, and you know it’s going to be over soon, it is painful to see intelligent young people with their whole lives in front of them getting the attention it took you a lifetime to build. Sometimes, you might be tempted to crush the young competition, show them all they don’t know yet and teach them obedience. But I would caution you not to do that. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is encourage the young people, not tear them down, but build them up. 

Old Yeller

Listening to Thomas talk about the WLW incident, I was amazed he wasn’t more upset. I would be. I carry grudges for a long time, for decades. I would not have been able to say all the nice things that Thomas said about Sheriff Jones when I did my endorsement video with him. I would have been plotting revenge and embarrassment. But obviously, Thomas Hall has had a lot of good mentors in his life, his father being one. But several other politicians for another, including Sheriff Jones. So, there are a lot of lessons here that should be observed. I would hope that Sheriff Jones wouldn’t spend all the years of his excellent branding on petty nonsense that will overshadow all the good things he has done. There are people concerned about just that very thing by many of the calls I received. But Thomas isn’t that way; he understands that politics is a blood sport, and he plays to win without getting hung up on stupid stuff. And in his mind, he already defended himself on WLW the next day. But people were confused as to why the Sheriff went after Thomas, and I would suggest that it shouldn’t ruin the reputation of the Sheriff. I don’t think we are dealing with an Old Yeller situation here. Maybe just an old dog that would love to run around like the youth do but can’t anymore. There is still good to do, and from the point of view of Thomas, he’s willing to do good wherever possible.    

Rich Hoffman

Click to buy The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business

You Can Get it All with Thomas Hall: What good government looks like

Vote For Thomas Hall

Now that we’re in the primary season, it’s time for endorsements. This one for Thomas Hall is so obvious that I might not even think he needs one. But primaries can be tricky since there aren’t usually many voters who participate, so just for good measure, I wanted to say how excited I am to endorse Thomas Hall for the 53rd House District in Ohio. Some redistricting is going on, which might expand Hall’s district from Middletown into Liberty Township, which is presently going through the Supreme Court process. But whatever the case, Thomas Hall is one of the finest examples of what politics should look like. He certainly deserves another term to continue doing the excellent work that he has been doing. He’s a Trump Republican who worked for the campaign in 2016 when it wasn’t so popular to do so out of Madison Township, where he had been a two-term trustee. As he appears in the video above, Thomas seems to be too young to have so much political experience at this point in his life and running for a second term in the Ohio House, but let me tell you, this guy is a whiz kid. He’s been involved in a lot of undoubtedly conservative legislature. He has stood up to some severe bullying by influential political figures and not allowed them to sway him away from the voting public. He is one of the rare examples of a person who comes into politics with all the ideology of goodness and has lived it out in real life, which is exceptionally unique. He’s everything voters could want and more in a representative, and I look forward to more from him in the years to come.

I always refer to politics as a blood sport. One of the things I admire most about Thomas is that he’s been able to weather a lot of political current without losing himself to the tides of erosion. He is the same good person going into his second year as the first. He has a confidence that is unusual in people young or old, which has served him well as a political heavyweight in a brief period. Of course, that kind of competency would get attention and make political enemies. Having political enemies is a great thing; it means you are doing a good job and ultimately doing the people’s work. Many people get into politics for the wrong reasons, making it a weary point of conversation for most people. They’d rather not deal with politics because their experience with politicians is often very negative for that reason. But Thomas is the exception. He is like the classic representative from some far-flung Wild West town that greets all his voters with enthusiasm, shakes hands with everyone, including all the babies, and is sincere in doing it. And people love him. Going into January of 2022, I would think that Thomas Hall would be a slam dunk for re-election. But you can’t take anything for granted these days. Some people may not know Thomas yet, especially with the prospects of redistricting, so endorsements are an excellent way to learn more about him.

Thomas and I met to film the endorsement video in West Chester, Ohio, to the south of where he lives and works, just north of Middletown. The 53rd district consists of Middletown, Monroe, Trenton, Seven-Mile, Madison, and Oxford, so West Chester is in another political universe. When we were parking Thomas was like a rock star. People recognized him immediately and wanted to come up and shake his hand. Thomas Hall has, after all, been a part of most of the significant gun legislation that has been moving through Columbus, including arming teachers to promote school safety and constitutional carry. He certainly has the most conservative position on abortion in politics. To the political left, these may seem like extreme positions, but Thomas is far from any kind of extremist. His views are consistent with most people’s, and you can see when he speaks with those who greet him, that is the case. Hall comes across as a friendly young man who cares because he actually does. And it is that attitude that has made him so successful as a first-term member of the House. He’s doing the kind of work in politics that people have wanted to see done for a long time, but often politicians don’t dare to do it. But Thomas is fearless and friendly enough to have compassion for his political rivals. He doesn’t have to be mean or a sell-out. He’s smart enough to win without crawling through the mud, and people can see that. That much is evident when people approached him while we were going to film the video. People naturally like Thomas Hall because they can see that he’s not a phony. 

I’ve known Thomas for a while now; I have seen him at events all over town for years. I know how hard it is for me to attend political events because time is often short, and it’s hard to schedule in my busy life. Thomas is always at all those events, and he goes to a lot more of them than I do. And when he is there, he is always very polite, very respectful, interested in talking to the people around him. He’s always learning new things and applying them to his vast experience as a young man. For me, his first term flew by too quickly. Every time I have met with him, it was reassuring to know that a great person like him was in one of our House seats in Ohio. He is what government should look like, and I’d hate to see that condition change with an election. So for my part, it’s a slam dunk on Thomas Hall, re-elect him, and send him back to Columbus not just with the primary election but the general coming up in November.

The primary is in May. It may seem a bit far out, but we can’t take anything for granted. These things move fast. A good government takes more work than most people usually give to it. But it’s worth it when you get it, which is undoubtedly the case with Thomas Hall. When I think of his name, I think of good government. I think of someone who will stand up to corruption emphatically. He has the ideology of someone new to politics who wants to fight the bad guys out there. But he has the smarts to know how to do it without losing his soul. I would go beyond calling him, my friend. I think he’s excellent for Ohio, great for the nation, and really good for the Trump Republican America that is hatching as we speak. This movement only started to sprout during the first Trump presidency. Those who don’t like Thomas Hall in politics are the same kind of people who didn’t like Trump because both wanted to solve problems rather than use crises to gain more power. No voter could go wrong with Thomas Hall, and when it comes time to vote for him in the primary, I am very much looking forward to voting for him and making the world a better place with a second term.

Rich Hoffman