(upbeat music) (Graphic pops) (upbeat music continues) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal," I'm Steve Kendall.

We're just over a couple of months into 2025 and it seems like there's just continuous motion in Washington, D.C. and Columbus in all directions.

Joining us, the host of "The State of Ohio" Karen Kasler, and from BGSU, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

Thank you both for being here, appreciate it.

Karen, talk about the fact that down in Columbus, things have moved a lot faster than things happened in the previous General Assembly, and yet at the same time, there was something that happened in D.C. during the State of the Union that got everybody's attention in Ohio related to the Intel project.

So let's start with that and talk about how that resonated through the state legislature and the governor's office.

- [Karen] Well, we are moving a little bit more quickly because we don't have the Speaker's contest where you had, you'll recall two years ago, or maybe you won't recall two years ago, because it was two years ago, where there was a battle between the incoming speaker and then the speaker, Jason Stephens, who had kind of made some deals in the previous couple of weeks before to get more votes to become Speaker over Derek Merrin, who had won support from the Republican Caucus.

So there was this constant battle between Stephen supporters and Merrin supporters, and it kind of slowed down legislation.

That's not the case anymore.

Senate President Matt Huffman is now House Speaker Matt Huffman, and things are moving in a different pace.

Huffman is very closely aligned with the new Senate president Rob McColley, who's from Napoleon.

And so we expect to see a lot more things moving forward.

That's not to say that there aren't differences between the way the House and the Senate do things, but it is allowing for some things to move more quickly.

For instance, Senate Bill 1, which is the proposal on higher education that conservatives say will push back against liberal indoctrination on college campuses.

It bans faculty strikes, it bans most diversity, equity, inclusion programs, all of that, that's passed the Senate already and it's waiting for the House to move forward on that.

And then when it comes to Intel, in the State of the Union, or it wasn't the State of the Union, because the State of the Union's typically the one you do as the president after you've been in office for at least a year.

But his address to Congress, he talked about Intel and, well, specifically the CHIPS Act, which was the CHIPS and Science Act that passed, was signed into law under President Biden.

And it helped Intel, which had already broken ground in Ohio to make sure that it would have enough money and maybe even push forward its plan to build a big manufacturing, chip manufacturing plant here.

Well, Trump said in his speech to Congress that the CHIPS Act is a horrible, horrible thing, and encouraged Congress to pull back on it.

And that's kind of creating an issue for people in Ohio wondering what will happen.

I mean, the Governor's Office says that Intel had made commitments even before the CHIPS Act, but certainly Intel had said the CHIPS Act was key in making sure that it could do all the things that it wants to do.

So I think that there's a real concern here about what's gonna happen if the CHIPS Act is completely pulled back.

- Yeah, and I noticed that on your show, you interviewed the state senator from that area and he kind of walked a fine line talking about what he thought the president had said versus what I think most of us heard trying to sort of find that middle ground where he wasn't criticizing President Trump, but at the same time still saying, oh no, this is still gonna go forward.

This is still gonna forward.

Talk a little bit about that interview you had.

- Yeah, my colleague, Sarah Donaldson, interviewed Republican Senator Tim Schaffer, who was a strong supporter of President Trump.

And at first he was very kind of put on, I'm trying to think of the word that I want, he was a little bit standoffish about the whole idea that Trump had said this and maybe that Trump didn't mean everything that he said that he meant that the CHIPS Act could be completely pulled back.

But he said he, he feels that he doesn't think that Trump completely came out against the CHIPS Act as much as he's coming out against future legislation.

And Schaffer also said he had no concerns about what's coming out of Washington, but there are other people who are concerned, and certainly as things move forward, and we're getting a lot of uncertainty from Washington over the last couple of weeks here.

So I think that there are some questions, especially since Intel has already delayed its project.

Just in the last week or so, it pushed back its plans to have its first fabrication plant opened up.

And so, and Intel's been having some financial problems on the Wall Street level.

So there's some concerns here about what Intel is gonna be able to deliver.

- Yeah, and Nicole, as we talk about, there's always that situation with the president who talks and says what he says, and it puts a lot of his hardened supporters as Karen said, in an interesting position where they may not really agree with what he said, but they don't want to feel comfortable criticizing it too much.

So that's a dynamic we seem to see a lot now.

- It is, especially with this administration.

And so members of Congress and members of state legislatures both kind of are playing to multiple constituencies, particularly if they're Republicans, they have to appeal to the current administration or risk really bad publicity either from President Trump himself or one of his associates, particularly Elon Musk, right?

And so Elon Musk has threatened a primary challenge for anyone who kind of puts up any resistance.

While at the same time they represent their districts.

And a lot of these pieces of legislation, like the CHIPS Act, bring a lot of money back to their districts.

They bring jobs back to their districts and grants and programs and their constituents like that.

And it's those constituents that keep them in office.

So there's a real tension for some of these elected officials.

- Yeah, and I guess if you're a sitting state rep, state senator, U.S. representative, you know, congressman, whatever, yeah, you have to walk that line of saying, I really don't wanna make my constituents too unhappy, but I also don't wanna make the current president too unhappy.

So, because either way, they could end up getting voted out of office, which no politician is all that excited about having happened to them.

- [Nicole] No, right, and there's that old adage of like members of Congress, and I think you can apply a little bit to state legislatures, right?

Members of Congress are single-minded seekers of reelection, and so they're gonna do things that keep them in office, which actually usually does mean constituent service, In this case, they not only have to appease those constituents who in some cases are showing up to town halls so angry that Republicans have been told to stop holding town halls, but also worry that someone is gonna fund a primary challenge, which is, and the primary is a very different audience than your general constituency.

And so there's a real risk for a lot of these elected officials right now.

And because there's so much uncertainty, so much unclear back and forth questionable statements and policies coming from different aspects of the executive branch, that I think both state and federal representatives are walking a really tough line.

- Yeah, yeah, Karen, when we come back and we can talk about this too.

One of the other things that's already started, and you know, there's been a sort of an endorsement already, is all of the statewide offices, including the governor's office, come up, not this year, but in '26.

And yet it seems like we're gonna vote on it this year, which is totally untrue because everybody's talking about, I'm running for governor, I'm running for this.

And yet those elections are more than a year away, a year and a half away.

So when we come back, let's talk about that whole dynamic about how quickly people have jumped in to try fill all these voids at the state level.

Back in just a moment with Karen Kasler and Nicole Kalaf-Hughes here on "The Journal."

You're with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Karen Kasler and Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

Karen, one of the things that I mentioned as we were leaving that last segment, everything shuffled around when J.D.

Vance became the nominee for vice president, and eventually became the vice president, that shuffled the playing field for the governor's race.

Mike DeWine, not gonna run again, but it seems like at least it feels like we're starting way early on the governor's race because it's not until 2026, and yet it feels like it's gonna be next week.

So talk a little about the dynamic that's going on within the Republican Party about who's gonna end up where and why we're starting so soon it feels like, - Well, this has been coming for four years, essentially, because the folks who are all in this five statewide executive offices, which are governor, attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, and treasurer, all of those gentlemen are term limited.

They're all Republicans.

And so they would all be looking for other opportunities.

Now, Mike DeWine, it's expected that he's not gonna run for anything else.

He's been very clear about, he's done almost everything at this point.

So it seems very unlikely that he would run for anything else.

And of course, like I said, he's term limited, he can't run for governor.

So for a while it looked like the race was gonna be Lieutenant Governor John Husted and Attorney General Dave Yost both running and the possibility of Treasurer Bob Sprague jumping into that race.

Then, like you said, when Vance got elected Vice President, well then DeWine appointed Husted to Vance's U.S. Senate seat.

And so that kind of opened up the race.

So it looked like Yost might be in the lead in that.

Then Sprague came out and endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy and a whole bunch of other people also endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy who had been leading up this DOGE effort that Trump had appointed him and Elon Musk to.

On Inauguration day, he stepped aside from that and said he was looking at other options in Ohio.

So right now the race appears to be Vivek Ramaswamy and Dave Yost far behind in terms of polling, in terms of money, race, that sort of thing.

There is another candidate in that race, former Morgan County School Board President Heather Hill, but she's way back from this.

And there's also this possibility, it's one of these things that we talk about here in Columbus that new Lieutenant Governor Jim Tressel could run.

He certainly has the name recognition.

He has a lot of positive goodwill around the state.

He has not ruled it out, but he is not said he's running.

So yeah, it is early, but it's because so many people are now trying to find new jobs next year and it takes so much money to win in Ohio that all this stuff had to start early.

- Yeah, and the Jim Tressel thing is interesting because he sort of was a surprise as the appointee for Lieutenant Governor to replace Husted, but he does have statewide name recognition.

He ran Youngstown State University, so he's done a lot of things too.

So that's kind of a wild card that hangs out there as well as you mentioned.

Nicole, is it unusual to see this kind of activity this early in any race?

And I know Karen already raised the fact that you gotta raise a lot of money, but is this typically the way this has happened?

- It's pretty early.

Nothing is quite typical.

- [Steve] But there are no rules anymore.

- Yeah, but it is pretty early.

When Vivek Ramaswamy pulled out of the DOGE effort, I said, "Oh, he's worried it's gonna get weird."

And because he has made it very clear that he does have future political aspirations and he does aspire to elected office, my guess is he saw the writing on the wall for how weird this was gonna get and wanted to be a little bit free of any potential blowback from that, because there is blowback.

And so I think he wanted to be a little bit free from that and he was able to, I think, pick up Trump's endorsement pretty early on.

Now he can always change that endorsement.

We still have a really long way to go, but I think he was looking to give himself a little bit of distance from that.

The risk with any current federal, like presidential administration is that when those midterm elections come around, which is when all these statewide offices are up as well, is usually we see the party that is not in power do pretty well because no matter what the administration is, it's really hard to deliver on all the promises that you made during the election season during your campaign.

And so voters tend to bring in a couple more people of the opposing party.

That also we see that happen at the state level a little bit.

And while Republicans pretty much have a lock in Ohio, you wanna kind of separate yourself as much as possible from any blowback from the current presidential administration while still riding on any of kind of any of their successes or popular policies or the popularity of the outgoing Governor.

Ohioans tend to like Mike DeWine, he has done literally everything there is to do from like, the most local level to both houses of Congress to previous statewide elected office to like he's done everything, right?

And so he has that kind of long political history that most of these other candidates wouldn't quite have.

And I can't think of any other governor with that extensive of a political history at every level.

So it's gonna be a little bit different, but I think given our current political environment, starting this early makes sense.

But that's a long campaign.

- [Steve] Yeah, a lot can happen, a lot can.

- Voters get tired and there's a lot of, it can just, it can keep getting weirder.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah, Karen.

- [Karen] I think it can be confusing because people do think the primary is this May, and it's not, it's next May, but just by comparison, I recall there was a four-person primary for the Democratic nomination in 2018 to run against Mike DeWine who had teamed up with John Husted to eliminate a real, there was a contested primary, but that was the real contest in that.

And that happened in 2017 where you had the candidates, the four candidates come out then.

And then just looking back at the last time, Nan Whaley announced that she was running in April of 2021 for the November 2022 election.

But then she got a primary opponent in August of 2021.

So it's early, but it's not outrageously early, I guess.

- Okay, yeah, and I guess too, I know that you mentioned the fact that, you know, Dave Yost got his name in there right away.

And I know, and we're gonna have a short thing, we'll have to go to a break in a second, but the situation, I know you asked him this question he's gonna treat, I swear I heard him say he thought he could run as an outsider 'cause you posed the question, outsiders seem to have started to do well in Ohio and talking about Trump and J.D.

Vance, that kind of thing.

So when we come back, let's talk a little bit about the fact that Dave Yost, who's been a Republican elected official for quite some time, thinks he can run as an outsider against Vikek Ramaswamy, because that's an interesting position to try and take.

So when we come back, we can talk about that dynamic within the Republican side of that issue as well.

Back in just a moment with Karen Kasler and Nicole Kalaf-Hughes on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Nicole Kalaf-Hughes and Karen Kasler.

Karen, we were talking about the governor's race.

You interviewed one of the candidates.

You mentioned Dave Yost.

I thought it was interesting, and I mentioned this as we were leaving the last segment, he's going to try, because he's gonna try and position himself, it seems, as an outsider running in Ohio.

And he mentioned the fact that, well, a lot of the people within his own party, you know, challenged him on things and now they're lining up against another opponent.

Can he really run himself as an outsider being that he's been served the state in a lot of ways and very productively in a lot of ways?

- Yeah, I thought that was kind of an interesting answer saying that his opponent has never won elections.

He's won elections, but he's gotten opposition from people in his own party.

So he can be an outsider in that regard.

And I just think that's an interesting way to look at things.

I did ask him also if it's frustrating after being in office for so many years, I mean, he ran, he was two terms, eight years, as auditor, two terms, eight years, as Attorney General.

If it's frustrating to see people who he's served in those executive offices with line up behind Vivek Ramaswamy.

And he said he is proud of the endorsements that he's gotten already.

So I think it's gotta be a little bit difficult for him.

And one of the things I think is a real thing to think about here is that the leader of the Center for Christian Virtue, Aaron Baer, came out and endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy.

And here you've got Dave Yost who has talked extensively about his Christian faith and Vivek Ramaswamy is Hindu.

And so here's the leader of the Center for Christian Virtue endorsing the Hindu candidate over the Christian candidate.

And so I think that that's something worth noting anyway.

- Yeah, and I think he mentioned too that he's been very much supportive of religious freedom rights.

So yeah, that does seem like an odd twist in terms of that endorsement going to the other candidate because he's been at the forefront of a lot of challenges to things where things that he viewed as infringement on people's religious freedom, so.

- Now, Aaron Baer says that's not the endorsement of the Center for Christian Virtue.

It's his own personal endorsement, but it does indicate how influential that group potentially is here in this space.

- Yeah, and you know, Nicole, when we talk about endorsements, I mean, how much weight do they carry in modern elections?

It used to be that if a newspaper endorsed a candidate, that was a big deal.

Is it as important as it used to be or not because it's fragmented a lot now?

- I think it's going to depend a little bit in this instance because it is fragmented.

The media landscape is completely different than it was when like so much of the foundational political science work on endorsements was done.

We were looking at a really different media landscape.

I think it's gonna depend because this is a really long campaign.

And the risk that you take as either a group or an individual endorsing a candidate in what, March, before a primary the following May is that something comes out that you don't expect about their background and less so when you have someone who's been in state politics for a long time.

- [Steve] Because they've been vetted to some degree.

- Yeah, and they're a very known quantity.

But when you have these people who are, not to reuse the term, but more actual outsiders, and people who are new to politics who have not run an elected office, they can have stuff in their backgrounds that you don't necessarily expect.

And so I think some of these endorsements that are early may be a little bit fluid or you may not hear much about if stuff comes up.

If stuff doesn't come up and it just kind of runs as a very kind of bland campaign, maybe it won't be different.

But what you, I mean, we're so early and we know that spiciness sells in the media, so I imagine that these campaigns, particularly as we do get closer and as they get more competitive, will get pretty spicy.

Right now, voters, I don't think voters know enough to know what they know, what they don't know yet.

And it's really hard to kind of project a year and a half out.

- Right, yeah, and Karen too, you mentioned that there's a, you know, people were lining up and there were candidates who are out there on the Republican side and on the Democratic side that probably in most cases, a lot of people have not heard of statewide and maybe not even regionally to some degree.

So talk a little about the landscape both on the Republican and the Democratic side about who's running and does anybody recognize their names?

- Well, I mean, the Republican candidates automatically come in with an advantage because Republicans have won statewide races about 89% of the time going back to the nineties.

So they come in with an automatic advantage.

And you've got, again, Dave Yost running for governor along with Vivek Ramaswamy, and then Secretary of State, Frank LaRose is running for State Treasurer.

You've got Senator Kristina Roegner running, I'm sorry, I'm already getting confused.

Frank LaRose is running for auditor.

Senator Kristina Roegner is running for Treasurer.

You've got a lot of things.

Auditor Keith Faber is running for Attorney General.

You know, everybody's moving around here.

On the Democratic side, we've only had three candidates come forward.

DeWine's former Health Director, Dr. Amy Acton, running for Governor, Cincinnati Oncologist Bryan Hambley running for Secretary of State.

And then former representative Elliot Forhan, who had some real beefs with the House Democrats in his last term in office, he's running for Attorney General.

- [Steve] Ah, okay, so some familiar names there, some not so familiar names.

Switching gears just a little bit, and I know you covered this on your show as well, it wasn't that long ago that the state of Ohio, the citizens passed a marijuana law, okay?

And now the legislature is playing around with that a little bit.

So talk a little about that dynamic, the changes maybe being made and how that flies maybe in the face of what voters thought they voted in versus what it's now sort of evolving into.

- Again, not a huge surprise because when voters approved this law, a law, not a constitutional amendment, in 2023, lawmakers made it clear, Republican lawmakers made it clear that they wanted to make some changes to it.

And they can because it's a law, not a constitutional amendment.

And so there were Republicans in the Senate who wanted to make some changes that didn't get through.

The House really didn't take it up in part because of that whole Speaker's battle that we talked about earlier.

But now you have the House and Senate both have come forward with proposals to make some changes in this law.

In the House version, it does regulate this Delta-8 THC, which has been called Intoxicating Hemp.

It's really largely unregulated in Ohio, something that Governor Mike DeWine has been pushing for that's in the House.

In the Senate, here are other changes.

It's likely in the budget that you're gonna see changes to where the tax money goes.

When voters approved this tax, it was going to this fund to help people who had been convicted of marijuana crimes, start businesses and that sort of thing that will likely be moved into like a local government fund or something to fund jails or things like that.

So there are a lot of things that are moving here, and I think that this time it probably will go forward where it didn't in the last session.

- And Nicole, I know we talk about the fact too that a lot of times citizens actions voting things in and then changes made at the state level or at the federal level, move that democratic process away from the voters.

Is that sort of what this feels like in a way or not?

Or is this this just sort of business as usual?

- So I think to voters, it may feel that way, if you realize that you were not voting on a constitutional amendment, no, this is not, this is very different than what you see in some states where voters pass constitutional amendments, including in Ohio to enshrine reproductive rights, birth control, and infertility care into their state constitutions.

And then legislators try something, get sued, because it is a protected constitutional right in that state.

This was not that, because this was put on the ballot just as a state statute.

It was a law.

The legislature was like, yeah, we're gonna change that.

And so I think for some voters it feels that it's unfair, that it feels that, well, this isn't what people voted on.

And well, I mean, you're kind of right.

But if you wanted a constitutional amendment that couldn't be touched by the legislature, - [Steve] You should have made it a constitutional.

- [Nicole] then you should have made it a constitutional amendment.

And I think that would've changed the political calculus around it a little bit.

But I do think for the most part, voters it is because the initiative process is challenging for voters in a lot of ways.

We've talked about that on this show before.

We've seen examples of it.

I think people kind of see what's happening and they may think like, this isn't what I voted for.

But this is legit.

And it is likely, like, as Karen said, it's likely gonna go through in some form.

The details are gonna kind of still get hammered out between the House and the Senate.

But this is exactly what the legislature said was gonna happen.

It still will change access that Ohioans have, you know, from before the citizens voted.

- [Steve] At all.

- But it's not a open like constitutional amendment to enshrine, you know, recreational use laws there.

- Gotcha, yeah, now, Karen, we've talked about the things that have been going on.

What's the next thing that's impending down there, the next big thing that will the general assembly will move on that they haven't done so far?

Is there something out there that we should look for and say, oh, this is the next big thing they're going to tackle?

- Well, there's a lot of movement, a lot of pressure to do something about property taxes.

That's a very complicated topic because you move one thing in property taxes, you affect so many other different areas.

So that's something we keep watching.

The Governor's State of the State is this week.

And so we'll be interested to hear what he has to say.

Used to be a much bigger deal where governors would propose all sorts of ideas and everything.

It's now more along the lines of just kind of outlining accomplishments and what's ahead in the budget.

So, and that's the, the other thing, the budget, that's the thing that makes a big difference coming up and that's moving through the House and the Senate.

It has to be signed and in place by the end of June.

- [Steve] Okay, great, good, well, we'll leave it there.

We'll get back together after some of those other things happen and talk more about what the landscape looks like.

Thank you, Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, Karen Kasler, thank you for checking in for Columbus.

We appreciate that.

You can check us out at wbgu.org, and of course each week on WBGU-PBS, we will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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