This $600 million gift shows how two-faced Ohio's GOP really is
It might seem like ancient history in Ohio. But it was only two years ago that Republican leaders were trying to make it almost impossible for voters in the highly gerrymandered state to amend the Ohio Constitution.
They issued dire warnings that wealthy “out-of-state special interests” would take control of the Ohio government if the state didn’t make it a lot harder to get amendments, such as those guaranteeing abortion and marijuana rights, into the founding document. The attempt went down in flames, and possibly down the memory hole.
Just two years later, Republican supermajorities in the Ohio legislature passed — and Republican Gov. Mike DeWine signed — a budget that gives the out-of-state billionaires who own the poorly run Cleveland Browns $600 million for a new stadium.
The budget DeWine signed on June 30 gives the Haslam Sports Group $600 million from the state’s unclaimed property fund. It pays the Browns owners to abandon their current downtown location and build a new stadium 16 miles away in Brook Park.
Famously burned once by a wealthy owner abandoning the city, Cleveland’s city government is in court fighting the move. And Ohioans with unclaimed property are suing to block the funding method DeWine approved.
Republican officials face a backlash over lavishing money on a team run so ineptly that in 2022 it guaranteed $230 million and traded three first-round draft picks to obtain DeShaun Watson — a quarterback facing numerous accusations of sexual misconduct. Watson served an 11-game suspension with the Browns, and when he finally did take the field, he sucked.Last year, the team performed abysmally, winning just three games. And its owners, Dee and Jimmy Haslam, seem not to be doing their Republican benefactors any favors with the public.
Just three days after after receiving their controversial $600 million gift from the state, the Haslams bought a $25 million mansion in North Palm Beach, Fla., the Akron Beacon Journal reported.
The Cleveland Plain Dealer on Monday reported that it truly is a gift that the Tennessee truck-stop moguls are getting. The family — which is worth an estimated $14.4 billion — doesn’t have to repay a dime of the money it will receive from Ohio’s unclaimed funds, the paper reported.
Haslam Sports Group didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The gift to the Tennessee billionaires came as part of an Ohio budget that is seen as generally favoring the wealthy in a state where more than a quarter of the populace — 3 million people — are poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.
DeWine’s press secretary was asked about the message the Haslams sent with their purchase of a 5,600 square-foot mansion just 72 hours after receiving a $600 million gift from the taxpayers of Ohio. Had the governor effectively allowed out-of-state billionaires to use Ohioans’ money to buy a waterfront palace 1,000 miles from the nearest point in the state?
“We will not be offering comment on this,” Dan Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, responded. “As you know, this issue is in active litigation.”
Just two years ago, Republican leaders were saying that Ohio’s government needed to be protected from such powerful, out-of-state interests.
They were pushing an amendment to the state constitution that would have raised the minimum share of votes to pass future amendments from 50% to 60% — a huge additional burden. It would also have raised the signature-gathering requirements just to get an amendment on the ballot so high as to make it all but impossible, critics said.
The proposed amendment contained a provision that sounded technical, but was logistically daunting. Instead of having to gather verified signatures of 5% or registered voters in half of Ohio counties, they would have had to gather them in all 88, no matter how remote and spread out their populations were.
Making voter-initiated amendments virtually impossible would have concentrated even more power in the hands of Ohio’s gerrymandered legislature, which would have been able to pass laws and initiate amendments the way it always had.
Critics said that would only make a bad thing worse. In recent years, the gerrymandered body has had an impressive track record when it comes to corruption, some of it the centerpiece of a major new HBO documentary about the corrupting influence of dark money on American politics.
Undeterred, Republican leaders called a special election for August 2023 in which the public would vote on a measure that would effectively lock them out of the state constitution.
Abortion-rights and marijuana-legalization amendments were likely to be on the November ballot. But Secretary of State Frank LaRose claimed the August measure wasn’t aimed at blocking them.
“This is about empowering the people of Ohio to protect their constitution from out-of-state special interests that want to try to buy their way into our state’s founding document,” he said in July 2023.
LaRose’s office didn’t respond when asked whether the secretary had any objection to giving the Haslams — out-of-state-billionaires — $600 million in public money just as they bought a Florida mansion.
As it happened, campaigns on both sides of the amendment issue were mostly funded by out-of-state sources.
The effort to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution failed by a 14-point margin. The abortion-rights and recreational-marijuana amendments passed by similar margins three months later.
The Haslams were hoping for a different outcome. In June 2023, the Knoxville, Tenn., family gave $50,000 to Protect Our Constitution, according to records at the Ohio Secretary of State’s office. That was a group aimed at making citizen-led amendments much more difficult, if not impossible.
The Haslams were also among the biggest contributors to a separate effort aimed at keeping the current crop of Ohio Republicans in power, regardless of what voters want.
Highly gerrymandered Republican supermajorities in the General Assembly have been accused of ignoring voters’ wishes. For example in 2019, they passed harsh abortion restrictions that took effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. The following year, Ohio voters passed a constitutional amendment outlawing the restrictions by nearly a 15-point margin.
There are two anti-gerrymandering amendments in the Ohio Constitution. But, refusing to give up their gerrymandered supermajorities, DeWine, LaRose and other Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission ignored seven orders from a bipartisan majority of the Ohio Supreme Court to draw more equitable maps.
The idea behind such amendments is to draw congressional and state legislative districts that are competitive. That way, candidates have to listen to voters at least as much as they do party leaders and their wealthy donors.
After she aged off of the court last year, former Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor led an effort to pass an anti-gerrymandering amendment that she said couldn’t be ignored.
The Haslams were against it. They contributed $100,000 to Ohio Works, a group dedicated to stopping O’Connor’s anti-gerrymandering effort.
Their side won by seven percentage points on a night when Republican Donald Trump won Ohio by 11. Anti-gerrymandering advocates were sent back to the drawing board.
Then, perhaps not coincidentally, the Haslams contributed $120,000 to Ohio’s Republican legislative leaders in the months before they voted to give the out-of-state billionaires a $600 million gift of the state’s money.
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Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.
