The inside game

Vivek Ramaswamy already is well on his way to stitching up the Republican Party nomination in next year’s governor’s race. He’s also on the brink of winning the inside political game with a year to go until voters get to weigh in.

The Ohio Republican Party’s central committee will meet in Columbus on Friday to consider whether to endorse in the 2026 elections for governor and U.S. Senate. Among those pushing for the committee to put off endorsing in the governor’s race is Gov. Mike DeWine. The governor and his allies have been calling committee members, pushing them to delay until at least August, arguing it’s too early to weigh in, according to multiple sources and as first reported by NBC News. Another candidate, Attorney General Dave Yost, has argued privately that the party shouldn’t endorse at all.

Ramaswamy’s team, meanwhile, is pushing for the endorsement, which under party rules requires a two-thirds vote from the committee members who show up on Friday. From where I sit, it seems very possible Ramaswamy will be successful, which would show how much influence President Donald Trump has over state party operations and how little influence DeWine has as he’s winding down his career in politics. (Trump has endorsed Ramaswamy. Recent history shows that should be enough for him to run away with the GOP nomination.) 

The most interesting thing about the jockeying is that it offers the clearest sign yet that DeWine is still hoping someone else gets in the race. The most obvious DeWine-friendly alternative is Lt. Gov. Jim Tressel, whom DeWine convinced to pause his retirement and get into politics earlier this year. The former OSU football coach has shown no public or private signs of wanting or seeking the job. But that’s not stopping Republicans from widely seeing him as an unofficial candidate anyway. 

Dave Johnson, a state GOP committee member who leads the Columbiana County Republican Party, said in an interview that he’s spoken with “all three” candidates – Tressel, Yost and Ramaswamy. He said he likes all three of them, including praising Ramaswamy as a political phenomenon among rank-and-file GOP voters.

“I think it could be close,” said Johnson, who said he’s not revealing whom he’ll support. “Especially for members who have been around a long time. It’s painful to go against someone you have worked with over the years.”

Jockeying in the race for ODP chair

I broke the news this week that Liz Walters is stepping down as chair of the Ohio Democratic Party after holding the job for four years.

Walters is leaving to become CEO of TargetSmart, a Democratic political data firm. The development launched a scramble to replace her. State Sen. Bill Demora, a longtime party operator, is campaigning for the job most vocally. Also considering running is former state representative and Portage County commissioner Kathleen Clyde, whom Democrats said will be backed by former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown if she officially becomes a candidate. Another potential candidate is Dave Brock, the chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party. Tamie Wilson, who unsuccessfully challenged GOP Rep. Jim Jordan in 2022 and 2024, reached out to me to say she’s interested in the job. 

(UPDATE: Brown posted on social media on Thursday that he indeed is endorsing Clyde.)

The race will set off another round of debate over why the Democratic Party has slipped so badly in Ohio and whether there’s anything anyone here can do about it, absent another fundamental shift in national politics like the one Trump helped usher in around the time of the 2016 election.

I asked Walters this week if she has any advice for whomever succeeds her. She said doing the job well involves getting out on the road as much as possible.

“When you get to be in communities across Ohio, whether it’s Xenia or Akron or Athens, it just puts a new meaning on the work. And it helps you stay focused on why we do this,” Walters said.

I also asked Walters what she’s come to learn in her four years leading the state party. She came up with an answer that flies in the face of her and other Democrats’ previous hopes that they could find success here by figuring out how to distinguish themselves from the national brand, which isn’t as popular in Ohio as it used to be.

“In modern American politics, all elections are national,” Walters said. “And as much as we want to be able to kind of isolate local or state races from the national dynamic, that is getting harder and harder to do.”

Jake Zuckerman’s take on the new Householder court decision

Hello from the new guy. This is my first week at Signal Ohio after nearly 10 years in journalism, five of them spent covering the Statehouse in Columbus. I keep a close eye on energy and environmental politics, public health, and money and influence on Cap Square. I’m also usually open to discussing the NFL, classic rock, the Tour de France, marathon training, or my Ohio University glory days. 

(You can email me at [email protected], and read my articles here.) 

A topic I’ve covered for years bubbled up in the news this week: ex-Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder. 

A federal appeals court upheld Householder’s corruption conviction on Tuesday. A three-judge panel on the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected Householder’s various arguments pushing for the overturning of his racketeering conviction, which was built on bribery and money laundering charges. 

You may have read the news about the opinion. My reading of the opinion (technically, opinions) left me with two takeaways on this and other future corruption cases. 

For one, the judges agreed with prosecutors that the government doesn’t need to prove an explicit quid pro quo occurred. In other words, two parties don’t need to sign a contract labeled “Bribe” or get caught on tape spelling out the exact terms of graft. 

Instead, the court said the law allows for a more lenient standard where the government need only show that a “meeting of the minds” occurred, which jurors can infer from what participants “say, mean and do” in terms that can be “informal, written or unwritten, and express or implied.”

The ruling could give prosecutors much more latitude in bringing corruption cases if the evidence is clear yet short of some kind of smoking gun. 

The second implication: The U.S. Supreme Court could still chime in. Judge Amul Thapar, a possible SCOTUS shortlister who wrote his own concurring opinion, said that “if the Supreme Court revisits its bribery cases and undermines the foundation of Householder’s conviction” under a federal anti-theft law applied to public corruption cases, it would undermine both his conviction as well as that of Matt Borges, a lobbyist who was tried alongside Householder in the scandal and sentenced to 20 years. He also called some of Borges’ arguments about the application of honest services wire fraud “compelling” but said he will follow precedent “until the Supreme Court revises its caselaw.”

The Supreme Court has grown increasingly skeptical of public corruption prosecutions, reversing several major graft-related convictions. An attorney representing Householder said in a statement that it’s clear that the Sixth Circuit “believes that the Supreme Court must act to clarify the law more clearly around political donations and bribery. We hope and fervently pray that they will do so.”

In the news

Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters resigning ahead of 2026 midterm elections

Ohio voters approve Issue 2, funding local infrastructure projects 

Campaign to repeal anti-DEI higher ed bill clears first legal hurdles

What’s the deal with REAL ID? What Ohio drivers need to know