What a fucking loser:
Secretary of State Frank LaRose offered an unusually blunt assessment while defending the ballot language he helped write for state Issue 1, the abortion-rights ballot measure that voters approved earlier this month, to a conservative critic at a local Republican Party event.
In doing so, LaRose confirmed something that abortion-rights supporters have suspected all along: Abortion opponents helped him craft the ballot language in a way meant to benefit their campaign to defeat the measure.
LaRose was asked about the ballot language on Nov. 17 at a U.S. Senate candidate forum hosted by the Strongsville GOP, a local Republican club. He appeared there because he’s one of three Republicans, all of whom opposed Issue 1, vying in the March primary election for the chance to face Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November 2024.
LaRose also chairs the Ohio Ballot Board, a state panel tasked with writing the language voters see on their ballots when they decide whether to support or oppose a ballot measure.
In response to a question about specifics in the amendment language, LaRose said his office consulted with three prominent anti-abortion groups that led the anti-Issue 1 campaign – Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America, the Center for Christian Virtue and Ohio Right to Life – as it crafted the ballot language. All three groups played central roles in leading and funding Protect Women Ohio, the main anti-Issue 1 campaign group.
Here’s some more info:
LaRose said the anti-abortion groups pushed for changing “pregnant person” to “woman” as a way of benefiting their campaign while remaining accurate enough to withstand a court challenge.
He said they liked it because their campaign was named Protect Women Ohio and their yard signs said “Protect Women.”
“So they wanted that," the news organization reported LaRose saying. "They thought that was reasonable and would be helpful to them. And they thought it would be honest.”
When asked about the language previously, LaRose described his role as writing truthful and unbiased language.
Gabriel Mann, a spokesperson for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, said it was always clear that LaRose's chosen language was intended to benefit the amendment's opponents.
"LaRose never cared about American democracy or Ohio values, which makes him wholly unfit for any public office,” Mann told cleveland.com.
LaRose has certainly made abortion a key issue now in next year’s election:
Sen. Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, is focusing on abortion rights in his reelection race a month after voters in the state passed a measure to enshrine abortion access in the state's constitution.
Brown is hoping to hold onto a key Senate seat that he's held since 2007, despite the former bellwether state's increasing Republican lean in recent years.
Three major Republican candidates are vying for the chance to unseat Brown, including businessman Bernie Moreno, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Ohio state Sen. Matt Dolan. In campaign texts, Brown has taken aim at all of his Republican opponents over their abortion stance.
"I have always been clear about where I stand: I support abortion access for all women. I know where my opponents stand, too: All three would overturn the will of Ohioans by voting for a national abortion ban," Brown said in a text sent to Ohio voters on Nov. 16.
A similar text went out again Saturday.
Brown's effort underscores Democratic efforts to align the party with pro-abortion rights stances, encouraged by the resonance of the issue itself beyond party lines at the polls.
Ohio voters backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, and the state has a Republican governor and GOP-majority Legislature, yet Issue 1, the ballot measure establishing the right to an abortion, passed in the Buckeye State with 57% support.
Brown's messaging seeks to capitalize on the passage of Issue 1 just weeks after the vote and one year before his name will appear on the ballot.
Brown isn’t the only Red State Democrat focusing on this issue:
“This issue’s not going away,” Mr. Brown said in an interview. “Women don’t trust Republicans on abortion, and they won’t for the foreseeable future — and they’re not going to trust these guys running against me.”
Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, abortion rights has become an invaluable political asset for Democrats. They have leveraged the issue to hold onto control of the Senate, limit losses in the House and, this month, fuel victories in key state races across the Midwest and the South.
But perhaps the toughest test for the issue’s power will come in Senate contests like Mr. Brown’s in Ohio and Senator Jon Tester’s in Montana. The fate of the razor-thin Democratic majority in the chamber could well be sealed in those two places, by the same voters who have installed Republicans in every other statewide office.
So far, voters even in conservative states have consistently prioritized abortion protections over their partisanship. That was true last year in Kansas, where 59 percent of voters rejected a measure to remove abortion rights protections from the State Constitution, and again this month in Ohio, where 57 percent of voters agreed to enshrine such rights in their Constitution.
The open question is whether Mr. Brown, 71, and Mr. Tester, 67, can maintain their invaluable political personas while — for the first time in their lengthy careers in public office — persuading their constituents to keep abortion rights front and center when voting next year.
And it’s going to be a big issue in next year’s Supreme Court elections:
Ohio Democrats will try to take majority control of the state Supreme Court next year in what will likely be a contentious, expensive campaign.
Ohio Republicans have controlled a majority of seats on the seven-member high court since 1986. The GOP currently hold four of the seven seats on the court.
The Ohio Democratic Party announced Monday that 8th District Court of Appeals Judge Lisa Forbes is running and Justices Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart are running for reelection.
On the Republican side, the candidates are: Justice Joe Deters, who was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine to fill a court vacancy, Hamilton County Common Pleas Court Judge Megan Shanahan and Franklin County Common Pleas Court Judge Dan Hawkins.
FYI, it remains to be seen if LaRose will win his primary but one of his opponents already has a major backer:
Ahead of Thanksgiving, Ohio Republican U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance swung through New Albany to stump for Republican U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno. Vance endorsed the Cleveland-area entrepreneur months ago, at least in part, to stave off the kind of protracted primary Vance had to navigate in 2022.
But while the Republican field in 2024 is narrower, the barbs have been just as cutting.
Moreno has repeatedly staked out maximalist positions, calling for an end to birthright citizenship and accusing his opponents of being “pro-amnesty.” In truth, fellow GOP candidates Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls, both take a very conservative stance on immigration. But they acknowledge deporting the millions of people living in the U.S. without documents would be impractical.
Warming up the town hall crowd, Vance praised Moreno’s immigration stance. “Bernie Moreno is the guy who’s gonna say no more amnesty for illegal aliens, let’s deport people.” Vance added that he and Moreno both oppose additional funding for Ukraine — “sending your tax dollars to corrupt governments overseas.”
Vance has been an outlier when it comes to Ukraine, voicing opposition American involvement from the outset. More recently, he’s been a vocal opponent of a Biden administration plan to advance supplemental funding for Ukraine, Israel and the southern border as a single package. It’s a run-of-the-mill legislative compromise, but Vance bristles at the idea of combining funding for Israel and Ukraine.
“Israel is popular,” he argued. “So, what do you do if you have an unpopular package combined with a popular package? You try to just force them together (and) provide a political fig leaf for an unpopular policy. I don’t like doing that.”
Moreno echoed that point, bluntly insisting he’d vote against legislation that combined the two.
“I’m adamantly opposed to deceiving the American people which is what this stew is,” Moreno argued.
In Vance’s pitch to the crowd, he argued the biggest thing they could do to help him was “send me reinforcements, send me Bernie Moreno.”
Friendly reminder about Moreno:
Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno falsely claimed in a recent interview that Issue 1 — the ballot measure seeking to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution — would allow a rapist to “force” a woman to have an abortion.
The remark by Moreno, a businessman, is the latest from groups and individuals opposed to Issue 1 to mischaracterize the proposal by tying it to parental rights.
“As a dad of two girls, it’s about having that girl be able to be raped and having a rapist force her to have an abortion — all without your consent — as a minor,” Moreno said in an Oct. 12 episode of the RestoreLiberty.US podcast.
“That is insane. It is not representative of Ohio values. We absolutely have to make it clear that this ballot initiative has to be defeated. We have to vote no in November,” Moreno added.
Earlier in the podcast, Moreno mischaracterized Issue 1 as being about "on-demand abortion, late-term abortion, stripping parental rights.” If passed, he said, it will have “opened a door to transgender surgeries, transgender mutilation of children.”
Nonpartisan legal experts say his remarks are rife with inaccuracies and falsehoods.
And if you’re in Ohio, get ready to see this on your TV:
Health, Democracy and Freedom are on the ballot next year and we need to get ready to flip Ohio Blue. Click below to donate and get involved with Brown and his fellow Ohio Democrats campaigns:
U.S. Senate
Sherrod Brown
Congress
Emilia Sykes
Greg Landsman
Marcy Kaptur
Shontel Brown
Ohio Supreme Court
Lisa Forbes
Melody Stewart
Michael Donnelly
