In case you missed it, cleveland.com’s Jeremy Pelzer reported this week that Sherrod Brown has decided to challenge Republican Sen. Jon Husted in the November 2026 election. The story included a notably pointed quote from Joe Rugola, an influential state labor leader.
Rugola, who heads a large union of government employees, told Pelzer that he and other labor leaders had been laying the groundwork for Brown to run for governor and were disappointed when he opted not to. Rugola’s comments illustrate a broader sentiment among some in the Ohio Democratic Party, including those who have doubts about the electability of the current lone Democratic candidate for governor, Dr. Amy Acton.
In an interview on Wednesday, Rugola explained his thinking. He said he believes Brown – as a candidate for the U.S. Senate – will still help boost the rest of the Democratic ticket, even if his name doesn’t appear at the top of the ballot.
But, Rugola said, Brown would have been Ohio Democrats’ best chance to defeat Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican frontrunner for governor. Ramaswamy has floated banning public teachers’ unions, and he has received major backing from a top supporter of national school privatization efforts, two points that don’t sit well with labor.
“I think it’s an existential question for us,” Rugola said, whose members include school support staff.
“Our concern is about the future of public schools in Ohio,” he later added.
Brown’s decision to pass on the governor’s race could open a door for a primary election between Tim Ryan, the former congressman from the Youngstown area, and Acton, the former state health director. Ryan has been positioning to run and was waiting to see what Brown did.
“I’m not convinced it would be the worst thing in the world,” Rugola said of a potential Acton-Ryan matchup while also praising Acton as “an incredibly hard worker.”
“But the bottom line is, there are a lot of great Democrats out there that we’ve talked to in recent months who are interested in being on the statewide ticket,” Rugola said. “So we’ll see what happens with that.”
Despite county fair shootings, local fair operators have little legal power to limit guns
You might have caught the recent headlines about fights and shootings at several county fairs in Ohio.
An 18-year-old was shot in the torso Saturday at the Cuyahoga County Fair after a brawl. Another person was shot late last month at the Summit County Fair, which had featured similarly chaotic fistfighting a few nights before. And while no gunshots were reported at the Trumbull County fair, it experienced a brawl that ended with the arrest of a young woman accused of punching a police horse.
Amid all this violence came a July 28 advisory opinion from Republican Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost that effectively forbids county fairs from prohibiting firearms on fairgrounds. Cuyahoga County cited the order in its decision to allow firearms on site as well as to remove its metal detectors.
As Jake writes, the fair violence and Yost’s advisory opinion together captured an intersection of two trends: Ohio’s steady rollback of gun laws and an increase in violent outbreaks at outdoor summer fairs and festivals.
Buckeye – Lone Star connection
Ohio Democrats are linking arms with their counterparts in Texas as both gear up for redistricting fights.
State Rep. Allison Russo and her fellow Columbus-area Democrat, Rep. Beryl Piccolantonio, held a virtual fundraiser on Sunday with Gina Hinojosa, a Democratic Texas state representative from Austin.
Hinojosa described how she and other Texas Democrats fled the state to try to block a vote on a new congressional map that likely would allow Republicans to gain five Democratic-held seats in the U.S. House.
Russo, who’s rumored to be considering a run for Ohio Secretary of State, connected the situation in Texas to Ohio, where our Republican-controlled state government will take up congressional redistricting later this year. Russo said Republicans here, like in Texas, will be pressured to add as many Republican-leaning seats as possible.
Russo said the protest by lawmakers in Texas shows the significance of pressuring legislators to “hold the line for fair districts.”
GOP Supreme Court candidates to face speed dating this weekend
This weekend, there could be some new clarity injected into Ohio’s crowded Republican primary for Ohio Supreme Court. An Ohio Republican Party committee is expected to meet Saturday to interview candidates and then issue a potential endorsement in the race.
Rocky River Municipal Court Judge Joseph Burke, Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King, Second District Court of Appeals Judge Ron Lewis and ex-Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell all are slated to interview. The list does not include Larry Obhof, the former Ohio Senate president, who has opted not to run for the seat after considering it.
Whoever wins the Republican primary election in May likely will face Ohio Supreme Court Jennifer Brunner, Ohio’s lone statewide elected Democrat, in November 2026.
Voting machinations
Earlier this week, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose pulled the plug on a grassroots effort to ban voting machines when he ruled the mechanism activists tried to use in two rural Ohio counties was illegal under state law.
As I noted in the first story detailing LaRose’s decision, the episode offers a window into a slice of the Republican electorate that continues to oppose voting machines as part of a broader push to create more restrictive election laws. This part of the GOP makes it tricky for LaRose and other politicians because they have to appear sympathetic to such concerns while still defending the integrity of the elections they run here.
Read this story to learn more about what the Coalition of Concerned Voters of Ohio had been trying to do and what LaRose had to say about it.