Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose said Wednesday that it should come as no surprise to anyone who knew former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder that he was a fraud. But LaRose still refuses to discuss his ties to the scandal for which Householder is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday.
LaRose’s name came up multiple times earlier this year during Householder’s seven-week federal extortion trial. In addition, a consultant working with a LaRose-linked super PAC also worked with Householder’s campaign committee at the height of the mass bribery conspiracy.
But on Wednesday, Ohio’s top election official, who is considering a run for U.S. Senate, appeared in Scott Sloan Show on Cincinnati radio station 700 WLW and made it clear that he had been opposed to Householder from the start.
LaRose promoted the state’s attempt extremely unevenly distributed constituencies in parliament to make it much harder for voters to put amendments to the Ohio Constitution on the ballot, while keeping the same rules for getting amendments initiated by the legislature on the ballot. Sloan asked if one-party rule in Ohio was a recipe for corruption — no matter which party was in power — when LaRose interrupted.
“Let’s talk about Householder,” LaRose said. “I mean, the guy turned out to be a fraud. And that shouldn’t surprise anyone, by the way — anyone who knew him. But he tried to change the (Ohio) Constitution while the FBI was investigating him to basically make himself speaker for life, and that shouldn’t happen with a 50 percent plus one vote. It should take a broader consensus.”
A huge scandal
LaRose, who cited evolving reasons to make it harder for voters to change the state constitution, he has already presented this argument.
The host was convicted of receiving over $61 million from FirstEnergy and other Ohio utilities to become speaker, then pass and protect a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout that primarily benefited FirstEnergy. Federal prosecutors today asked U.S. District Judge Timothy Black to sentence the former speaker to 16 to 20 years in prison — a sentence Householder’s lawyers told the court “would likely mean a life sentence.”
The conspiracy began with Householder meeting with FirstEnergy executives in their corporate lodge during the 2016 World Series and culminated in Householder’s arrest in July 2020. In early 2020, Householder plotted with them and other energy executives to exploit corporate money to change the state’s constitution and term limits so that Householder could theoretically remain a speaker for another 16 years.
In April and again on Wednesday, LaRose argued that it should be made more hard for voters to initiate constitutional changes to prevent similar incidents.
“Just remember that Larry Householder and FirstEnergy almost got away with changing our Constitution and keeping control of the State Capitol for another 16 years. Imagine what they could do,” LaRose wrote in Columbus Dispatch in April.
But LaRose’s proposal makes it harder for voters to change the state constitution in a way that corrupt lawmakers cannot.
Number 1The measure LaRose is pushing would make it much harder for voters to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot and require a 60% vote to approve it, up from the current 50%. And because the Aug. 8 election will be conducted under current rules, only 50% would be needed for approval.
Critics say that this solution almost impossible so that voters can place a proposed amendment on the ballot at all. Under current rules, supporters must collect a portion of the more than 400,000 signatures from registered voters in at least 44 counties. But under LaRose’s proposal, voters would have to collect signatures in each of the state’s 88 counties, no matter how rural.
Meanwhile, all a corrupt lawmaker like Householder would have to do under Issue 1 is force the amendment through a supermajority in the state’s gerrymandered legislature to get it on the ballot, where it would have to pass a higher bar of 60 percent of the vote. The watchdog group Common Cause Ohio says the modern restrictions would mean that “Only interest groups with large funds will be able to bring issues to a vote.”
Fighting corruption?
Aside from the questionable logic of LaRose’s claim that Issue 1 will protect Ohio from corruption similar to that depicted by Householder, there is the fact that LaRose apparently raised no alarm during the former speaker’s 38-month conspiracy. In fact, some of the main corrupt rescuers claimed to have been in contact with LaRose at critical moments.
For example, the utility bailout was so unpopular that a citizen initiative to repeal it began almost immediately after it was passed in July 2019. FirstEnergy poured $36 million into a obscure money group to fund xenophobic, supposedly violent campaign that effectively thwarted repeal.
While this was happening, former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges, who is scheduled to be sentenced on Friday, sent a text message to a co-conspirator who had already pleaded guilty.
“LaRose expects us to publicly support him,” Borges said, according to messages displayed during his and Householder’s trial. Borges explained that LaRose expected public calls to recuse himself from the Ohio Ballot Board, which had a vote in the repeal election, “due to ‘conflicts.’ He may be our friend in this trial, so let’s be prepared to speak on his behalf.”
And as signatures were being gathered for the repeal motion, FirstEnergy CEO Chuck Jones sent a text message to John Kiani, the CEO of a FirstEnergy subsidiary that was set to receive $1 billion in the bailout. Jones’ message indicated that—even though LaRose now says everyone knows Householder is a crook—both he and Householder had been providing the FirstEnergy CEO with “private” information about the repeal effort.
“For what it’s worth, LaRose and Householder think the game is over,” Jones told Kiani. “But that’s a private conversation, unless they told you the same thing. And Householder has a ‘quick fix’ anyway.”
FirstEnergy, which signed a deferred prosecution agreement for its role in the conspiracy, gave LaRose over $25,000 during the 2018 race for Secretary of State.
After the failed repeal bid, other information presented at trial indicated that LaRose wanted to meet with Kiani, a former Enron executive who, one of the conspirators testified, stood to make $100 million from the sale of FirstEnergy’s rescued nuclear and coal-fired power plants.
LaRose’s office did not respond to repeated requests for comment on the secretary of state’s involvement in the Householder scandal. Andrea Martin also did not respond.
Her firm, ANM Consulting, raises money for a super PAC, Leadership for Ohio Fund, support is expected LaRose’s likely bid to unseat Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown next year. ANM Consulting received $7,600 in 2019 from Larry Householder’s Friendsthe political action committee of the now convicted speaker.
Martin’s company also received $45,000 last year from Protect Ohio Valuessuper PAC that supported Republican JD Vance’s candidacy for U.S. Senate. The PAC is now the subject of a complaint to the Federal Election Commission that illegally coordinated his activities with the Vance campaign during the 2022 election..
Contradictory stories
Last November, LaRose said that No. 1 it wasn’t about stopping a citizen-initiated amendment to the abortion rights bill was expected to be on the candidate list in November. Earlier this month, he said he 100% on stopping this.
In April, he said it was intended to deter power grabs like Householder’s, although in the case of Issue 1, the mechanism Householder would almost certainly exploit would make it much easier to get the initiative on the ballot than it would be for a group of ordinary voters.
LaRose also fought last year to end costly, low-turnout August elections because they allow a “handful of voters” to make “important decisions,” which benefits those with “personal interest in bringing this matter to consideration.” But this year, supports the legislator’s decision to reverse its decision and put this bill to a vote on August 8.
On Sloan’s show Wednesday, LaRose again said the purpose of Issue 1 is to prevent wealthy out-of-state interests from changing what LaRose calls the state’s “founding document.”
“You’re talking about citizen-initiated constitutional amendments. That’s a real misnomer,” LaRose said of the current, 111-year-old system. “It’s really a special interest group with very deep pockets.”
He made such a statement even though Illinois billionaire Richard Uihlein, who denies election results, has already donated $1 million to LaRose’s push to make it much harder for Ohio voters to change the Constitution. CBS News reported last week that Uihlein is making such contributions in several states to limit voters’ access to state constitutions.
LaRose, however, said Issue 1 is needed to deter over-amending.
“Really, Issue 1 is improving good government,” LaRose said.
Sloan, however, disputed this claim, citing the fact that of the 20 amendments adopted since 2000, three quarters were initiated by legislative gerrymanderingOnly five of them were initiated by voters.
