The Columbus Dispatch, the paper of record in Columbus, Ohio, posed an important question to their readers last week. Which do you care about more, an all-powerful man buying a meatball sub for a colleague, or sexually harassing people?
It’s a valid question if you’re a braindead ghoul who thinks that politicians need to be humanized and have their, “good qualities,” transposed over their malicious wrongdoings and flagrant violations of state law.
This is the essence of the Columbus Dispatch profile of Ohio State Senate President Matt Huffman. It’s also the product of shoddy access journalism with nearly no pushback or acknowledgment of his various wrongdoings.
They basically stole the concept of The Rooster’s Meet This Legislative Dipshit series except they decided to showcase that the dipshit actually was cool and good.
To really understand how terrible this article is I’ve decided to dig deep and break down just how bad it really is.
The Lima Republican, who most people couldn't pick out of a lineup, decides whether bills on abortion, marijuana, education and gun control ever get a vote in the state Senate.
And with enough GOP votes to override the governor, he can move election days, limit the powers of state officials and draw districts for 147 state and federal lawmakers.
This isn’t good, you guys realize this isn’t good right.
Huffman "deputizes" Republican senators as experts on issues like sports betting or legalizing the use of fireworks. They write the bills, handle the amendments and defend their decisions at private meetings. It's the way former House Speaker Bill Batchelder did things when Huffman was his No. 2.
Perhaps this is one of the myriad of reasons our state is ran like a shitty third rate Arby’s.
Huffman is a guy who knows what he believes. So don't mistake the Senate president's delegation strategy as moderation. He lets the people on his team take the lead, but the folks on the other side of the aisle don't have much say.
This is where the truly decrepit shit really starts. Huffman knowing what he believes doesn’t mean that he should be excused for just being able to run what’s effectively a uniparty dictatorship. The “folks on the other side,” have no say but why, Columbus Dispatch? Oh because they were gerrymandered out of existence by the Republicans, saying this in a cheery, “this is just how it happens,” way is a huge part of the problem.
There are eight Democratic and 25 Republican state senators. That's a supermajority, and the same dynamic exists in the Ohio House where the divide is 64 to 35.
"We can kind of do what we want," Huffman said.
It’s great that there’s no introspection here as to why this is the case, The Dispatch presents it as just a simple fact of life. It’s because of gerrymandering and nothing else.
His mother helped found one of Ohio's first crisis pregnancy centers after the Roe v. Wade decision legalized abortion in 1973. His father litigated a case against a local theater showing "obscene" movies all the way to the Supreme Court.
"Part of the pro-life culture is the belief that these are people and not just unborn fetuses," Huffman said.
No explanation as to what a crisis pregnancy center is (how many readers are aware of how they trick and deceive desperate soon-to-be mothers who aren’t aware of their options). Also his dad taking a local business to the supreme court isn’t some good local normal man thing to do. Not to mention the fact that fetuses by definition are not people.
He won't move legislation to increase abortion access in Ohio, and recreational marijuana will never get a vote while he's in charge.
“I don’t want anybody to misunderstand my position: I’m not going to bring it to the Senate floor,” Huffman told reporters in February. “If these people want to put it on the ballot, have at it.”
Both he and his predecessor made it clear that the gun control reforms Gov. Mike DeWine wanted in the wake of the Dayton mass shooting were nonstarters.
"I think that’s real leadership when you come out of the gate and say that," former Senate President Larry Obhof said.
I also think real leadership is seeing a mass shooter murder 9 innocent people and coming out of the gate saying you’ll do nothing. Thank you Dispatch!
Being outspoken on controversial issues gives senators in swing suburban districts cover. It protects them in elections. It helps Senate presidents maintain and even grow their caucus.
Yes it does, but why is this being presented once again as a good thing? Let the big man take “controversial” positions which are actually the mainstream to protect members of his party who fully agree with him isn’t some bold leadership.
But then Huffman assumed control of the Senate in January 2021 and made Senate Bill 22 his top priority. DeWine vetoed it, and the lawmakers overrode him. The bill became law less than seven months after Huffman became president.
"If it wasn’t for Matt Huffman, that bill wouldn’t be law today," U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, said. "They wouldn’t have been able to do it without his leadership."
If there’s one guy I really wanted to hear from here it’s Jim Jordan. Such courageous leadership to pass a bill in your supermajority controlled legislature to take power away from the sitting governor. Hurrah!
"I remember there was one night where I called him and said, 'Look, Matt, you don't have to stick with me. All these leaders in our state, they’re all for the other guy. I would understand if you didn’t want to stay with me,' " Jordan said. "And he said, 'I believe the same things you do. I'm with you till the end.' It was the kind of message I needed to hear."
Jordan never forgot it, and their two families became friends. He even encouraged Huffman to run for the Statehouse in 2006.
"He's a natural leader, and he cares about his community ...," Jordan said. "He’s the kind of guy you’re glad is in public life, public service because he’s in it for the right reasons."
This is a really heartwarming story. I wonder what Jim Jordan has been up to since then? He’s in public service for the right reasons, like ending women’s rights and allowing mass shootings to happen.
Democrats like Pepper don't see it that way.
They call Huffman a bully.
Huffman forced the resignation of two State Board of Education members, not because they lacked the qualifications to serve, but because they refused to repeal an anti-racist resolution.
Let’s look at the framing here. “Democrats” don’t see it that way, “they,” call Huffman a bully. Reading this is like looking at a both sides brain tumor, it’s only democrats who would possibly feel that way, forcing someone to resign because they won’t repeal an anti-racist resolution is only bothersome to democrats and not just bad in general.
Huffman doesn't think he's gerrymandered anything. The independent mapmakers weren't finished by the court's deadline, so he used another map.
He also has a theory that proportional representation could mean Republicans deserve 81% of the Statehouse seats because that's the percentage of statewide elections they've won in the last decade.
There’s absolutely no pushback here to what he claims. Yes, the mapmakers weren’t technically finished by the deadline, this is because according to one of the mapmakers himself in ABC 6, “Johnson was quoted as saying, they "were not going to finish a map before the Court’s midnight deadline without more direct guidance from the Commission members’ staff.”
There’s also no pushback here to this absolutely blatantly unconstitutional “theory” that has been repeatedly thrown out by the courts and is absolutely insane. No, the amount of statewide seats you win is not proportional. How hard is it for the DIspatch to push back on this. It is common fucking sense.
A panel of three federal judges ordered the state to use an unconstitutional set of Statehouse maps for 2022 if they can't reach a deal by the end of May. The Republican chief justice who keeps siding 4-3 with the Democrats on Ohio's highest court will retire at the end of this year.
It's entirely possible, Pepper said, that Huffman will get the maps he wants in 2023. "If you don’t take the keys away from this guy, we’re going to keep doing this.
Literally just bragging in his own puff piece about the blatant lawbreaking he’s doing knowing that it’ll change soon. There are 0 references in this entire article to how Huffman should be held in contempt of court by the Supreme Court of Ohio after his repeated questioning by him as to why he shouldn’t be held in contempt.
Huffman has a little more than two years left in the Ohio Senate before term limits push him out, and he hopes to be remembered for his work on school choice.
He's called the "school voucher guy" around Columbus and has spent most of his political career lobbying to expand both the performance and income-based EdChoice scholarships.
Hmm this is interesting, is there a story lately about how school choice has done in Ohio? No mention here, but ECOT didn’t have um the best track record. Oh what’s that, Huffman took tens of thousands of dollars from ECOT’s founder! Surely the fact that he’s taken at least $50,000 from school choice lobbyists and CEO’s has nothing to do with him being known as the “school voucher guy.”
It's a world view Senate Minority Leader Kenny Yuko, D-Richmond Heights, can respect.
"Do we agree on politics? No," Yuko said. "But he's a man of strong convictions."
Not every Catholic agrees on every issue, but "he’s a family man. He loves his wife, loves his kids. For me, that’s important," Yuko said.
Not a criticism of The Dispatch here, but a criticism of feckless Kenny Yuko. I do not care how “strong” a man’s convictions are if his convictions are dogshit. I do not give a shit about how much he loves his wife and kids, that isn’t some grandiose concept. You’re supposed to love your wife and kids! Grow some fucking balls Kenny.
Huffman can also take a joke.
The Cleveland Democrat once pretended to end negotiations over a meatball sub.
"I said, 'I'm out of here. I can’t sit at the table with Matt Huffman,'" Yuko said. "Matt’s looking at me. His people are looking at me. I said, 'He clearly did not come here to negotiate in good faith.'"
Any true Lima native who was serious about cutting a deal, Yuko continued, would have brought meatball subs from one particular Italian restaurant.
Huffman looked a little perplexed and told him, "Kenny, they've been out of business for 20 years."
Yuko laughed and thought that would be the end of it, but a delivery guy knocked on his door with a styrofoam cooler a week or so later. Huffman tracked down the grandson of the deceased restaurant owner and paid him to cook a batch.
"He played along," Yuko said. "And then really played the ace up his sleeve."
This story is incredibly fucking stupid and gets even worse in a minute, just wait.
He impersonates former governors and once introduced Gov. John Kasich by imitating his voice. But Huffman's sense of humor has landed him in hot water.
During a goodbye party for a GOP staffer, Huffman reportedly cracked a joke with a veiled reference to a four-letter word for a female body part.
Yuko called it vulgar and inappropriate. Democratic women told reporters it made them feel like "zero tolerance" didn't mean anything because Huffman and others never faced consequences beyond having to apologize.
The juxtaposition here between how good and cool it was that he bought a sub for Yuko but how he had 0 consequences for making democratic women Senators grossly uncomfortable is astounding. Slipping that in at the very end of the article is dogshit journalism at his finest.
I could write more and more about how terrible this puff piece is but I’ll save you the trouble of reading. The paper of record, since 1871 in Columbus, spent 1,600 words singing the praises of the Senate President who clearly has grossly violated the law. It really can’t be showcased anymore how far The Dispatch has fallen more than that. What a damn disgrace.
This is one in what will not be a regular series of newsletters. I am lazy, employed, and don’t particularly enjoy writing for free. With that being said I am continuously grateful to all of my subscribers and encourage you to read my work in the Columbus Jewish News and my upcoming feature essay in The Forward.
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