Actor Ed O’Neill has played many roles. He was a losing presidential candidate on season six of “The West Wing,” only to eventually end up as vice president on the show. The anti-feminist, frustrated suburban shoe salesman Al Bundy, a former high school football star, O’Neill played on “Married … with Children” might have personified a future Trump voter. Not to mention his Jay Pritchett on “Modern Family,” who was supportive of his gay son and married to a Colombian immigrant, who would probably not be a MAGA cultist.
In real life, O’Neill campaigned for Barack Obama in his hometown of Youngstown, Ohio, in 2008, and spoke in support of Joe Biden at the virtual 2020 Ohio Democratic Party Convention. So it shouldn’t come as any surprise that O’Neill considered it “a slap in the face” when Youngstown State University’s Board of Trustees chose the election-denying, Trump-supporting GOP Rep. Bill Johnson to become its new president.
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O’Neill attended Youngstown State, where he was a defensive lineman on its football team, but he left before graduating when he was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1969. O’Neill was cut during training camp where the rookie class included defensive linemen “Mean” Joe Greene and L.C. Greenwood of “Steel Curtain” fame. O’Neill then went on to pursue an acting career.
In light of this, it was a big honor for him when he received an honorary doctorate from Youngstown State in 2013, but now the actor says he intends to give back the honorary degree to protest Johnson’s appointment as president. Johnson not only voted to overturn the results of the presidential election hours after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, but recently endorsed Trump’s presidential candidacy despite the former president’s four criminal indictments on 91 charges. O’Neill said in an interview Tuesday night on MSNBC’s “The Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell”:
“I was so disappointed when I heard about this decision. I frankly couldn’t believe it. …. We’re going with this guy who has no prior experience in higher education.”
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“He’s an election denier and he’s not the biggest fan of the gay community. He’s anti-choice. He’s just a polarizing far-right-wing fanatical guy. … The faculty, the students, the alumni—they don’t want somebody like this.
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“I was very proud of [the honorary degree], but I can’t keep it. It doesn’t mean anything to me now. That the university would do a thing like this, it’s a slap in the face to all of us. … I’m giving it back. I just have to find the right way to do it. I want everybody to know I’m doing it.”
Johnson is slated to take his post as Youngstown State president in early March. The university has more than 11,000 undergraduate and graduate students.
The one positive thing about Johnson taking the position at Youngstown State is that he will be stepping down from his House seat on Jan. 21, further reducing the GOP’s already razor-thin House majority. Johnson’s departure will leave the House with 219 Republicans, 213 Democrats, and three vacancies.
Republican Gov. Mike DeWine announced that a special election to succeed Johnson in eastern Ohio’s deep-red 6th Congressional District will take place on June 11, with a primary to coincide with the regular March 19 statewide primary. The district favored Donald Trump 64-35 in 2020.
In his MSNBC interview, O’Neill condemned the “secrecy” surrounding the board’s decision to appoint the Republican congressman to head the university, including the failure to announce if there were any other candidates under consideration for the post.
In November, there was considerable blowback from donors, alumni, and students when Johnson’s appointment was announced by the Board of Trustees. At the time, O’Neill declared he would return his honorary degree, calling Johnson’s appointment “disgraceful” and saying he was going to start referring to the school as “Trump U.”
A major Youngstown State donor Bruce Zoldan, the owner of Phantom Fireworks, who gave $5 million to fund a new student center, said he planned to stop donating to the university if Johnson became its president, according to the website Ideastream Public Media. Zoldan called it “an insult” to the university and community to appoint “an election denier” with “no background in … leading an institution of faculty and students of diversified backgrounds.”
The Ohio Capitol Journal reported in November:
Hundreds of students, alumni and staff signed a letter asking YSU not to pick Johnson and start the presidential search all over again with involvement from the university community.
“The Board’s refusal to incorporate the greater YSU community in its decision making flouts basic values of transparency, accountability and democratic participation,” the letter read. “The fact that Johnson’s positions are highly contentious — and directly relevant to the diverse interests and identities of YSU’s student body — increases the need for public vetting of his candidacy.”
The Capitol Journal quoted Johnson as saying at a press conference following his appointment:
“We’re not hiring a politician. We’re here to educate people, not indoctrinate them. … Everybody leaves their political and ideological beliefs at home, just like I did in the Air Force. Just like you’re asking me to do here. Everybody’s got their hair on fire because they think I’m gonna bring my politics here.”
The Capitol Journal said Johnson will receive a yearly salary of $410,000, more than double his annual salary of $174,000 for a House member.
In his MSNBC interview, O’Neill looked back at his 2013 commencement speech to graduates when he accepted the honorary doctorate. He recalled that he told the graduates that “you accomplished something today that I was never able to do which was graduate.”
Here’s O’Neill’s 2013 commencement speech at the college. It’s pretty amusing, as you might expect: