We Need All Hands on Deck to Save Ohio from Corruption (Part II of Why I'm running for Ohio Dems Chair)
If we can democratize the Ohio Democratic Party, we can democratize Ohio, and if we can save Ohio, we can save America
Fellow Ohioans,
Ohio used to be the most important swing state. We voted for the winner of every presidential election between 1960 and 2020, by which time Ohio had swung so red that the rest of the country gave up on us. But as longtime journalist Doug Oplinger warned in April 2024: “Ohio remains the bellwether for America’s mood, the mood is anxiety, and left unchecked anxiety can abandon democracy — or even smash it.” Now our entire country is at risk because billionaires and their pawns have exploited our anxieties to turn us against each other, with Ohio as the epicenter for corruption. We need to wake up to a political realignment that is no longer about “right” against “left” – it’s about a corrupt cartel of elites against everyone else. If we can democratize the Ohio Democratic Party (ODP) to more authentically represent The People, we can liberate Ohio from Republicans’ corruption in 2026 – and America can Re-Declare our Independence from a wanna-be king as we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Our Nation’s Founding.
As I shared in Part I, I was inspired by Barack Obama’s 2004 speech calling for Red States and Blue States to unite as the United States. As a closeted high school student in 2004, I saw our state torn apart by a demeaning and cynical plot to help George W. Bush win Ohio, and thus the presidency, by turning out his base to scapegoat queer people with a ballot measure to ban gay marriage. It worked – and it’s the same strategy Republicans have been using to win red-leaning states like Ohio ever since by promoting a culture of ignorance and intolerance (as I wrote about for the Truman National Security Project) so that wealthy elites can take advantage of us by cutting services and exploding our national debt with tax cuts for the rich. It’s gotten so bad that most Republicans are just empty suits who turn a blind eye while their donors dodge paying taxes and then reward their donors with public subsidies at the expense of taxpayers – just look at Ohio’s Chartergate and FirstEnergy scandals, or listen to Cuyahoga County Dems warning how the billionaires who own the Browns are bribing our Statehouse to pay for a new stadium. Democrats must earn more Ohioans’ trust and rally all of civil society to take a stand against Republicans’ corruption in order to win in 2026 and beyond.
Many of us who have lived and worked abroad, or have studied history, have seen this story before. I was naive when I moved to Beirut to teach history and civics at the beginning of the Arab Spring; America’s efforts to encourage democracy abroad have failed because we’ve been taken over by the same types of oligarchs that exploited tribalism for their own selfish gain to dismantle the Lebanese state and replace it with systemic corruption. The Lebanonization of America has been accelerated by Republicans in states like Ohio defunding public health, public schools, libraries, clean energy, etc while privatizing hospitals, schools, and public utilities for personal profit. Worse, some Republicans have started behaving like Hezbollah by threatening to hold the rest of us hostage to a violent extremist minority unless we capitulate to corrupt elites’ demands. But Ohioans aren’t going to lay down and take it – we are already peacefully protesting against the billionaires trying to suppress us, and we shouldn’t be afraid to name and shame them: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Dick Uihlein, Leonard Leo, and Republicans’ presumptive nominee for Ohio Governor Vivek Ramaswamy need to take their HANDS OFF OHIO!
Democrats can’t sit on our hands while Ohioans’ futures are stolen from us. We can’t wait for good billionaires to bail us out or for the pendulum to swing back in our direction. Ohio Republicans are rushing to pass even more voter suppression laws (like Senate Bill 153) to further corrupt our state and shield themselves from accountability. We need to build people power and attract investments by inspiring Ohioans to mobilize all hands on deck to democratize Ohio. If elected Chair, I will propose a grand bargain to the ODP’s Executive Committee (EC) and to all parties, clubs, and individual Ohioans across the political spectrum: Help Ohio Democrats win a trifecta in 2026, and we will Fix Democracy First so we can make our system more truly free, fair, and responsive to the will of The People.
What would a more truly democratic Ohio look like? Democrats could learn from Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Lessig’s “Fix Democracy First” campaign by supporting a platform that includes:
☆ Campaign finance reform to limit the corrupting influence of big money.
☆ Redistricting reform to limit the harms of gerrymandering.
☆ Open primaries and easier ballot access to allow more diverse parties and independent candidates from across the political spectrum to have a fair chance to compete and elevate their ideas.
☆ Instant Runoffs with Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) so voters can have more choices without worrying about spoilers – and so we can dilute the corrupting influence of our current system and make all races more free, fair, and competitive while upholding majority rule. As the American Bar Association recently summarized: “RCV is an improvement over plurality voting with clear benefits in terms of representation, campaign quality, mobilization, and turnout.”
☆ Stronger voting rights and systems like automatic or same-day voter registration like other states have proven successful without fraud – so we can liberate Ohioans from Republicans’ Jim Crow style attempts to suppress voter participation. Dems should be adopting ideas from members of the Ohio Voter Rights Coalition instead of helping Republicans pass laws to suppress them.
Dems also need to learn to organize Ohio more as a state with diverse regions historically shaped by immigration, transportation, and markets – and each with distinct needs at local levels – in order to rebuild the party from the ground up instead of trying to impose a one-size-fits-all model from the top-down. Whatever works for Franklin County isn’t necessarily good for Ohio’s 87 other counties, or vice versa. We need to bridge the urban-rural divide by giving more freedom to individual counties to promote the issues that resonate best with their voters, while also recognizing that urban and rural counties share overlapping interests within regions. As the book Buckeye Battleground explains, Ohio was a microcosm of the United States when properly understood as five distinct regions. For example, Northeast Ohio is more culturally connected to New England because it was settled as part of Connecticut’s Western Reserve and connected by canals to New York, whereas Southwest Ohio is more culturally connected to the South because its waterways led to the Mississippi and New Orleans. So while rural counties like Portage and Warren may have commonalities even though they’re on opposite ends of the state, they must also be understood in relationship to their urban neighbors like Cuyahoga and Hamilton counties. This is why it’s so important for Dems to empower local leaders to lead at the local level.
Dems shouldn’t wait to practice what we preach; we can rebrand locally and make Ohio Dems more competitive by democratizing our party with help from the People Power, Change model in 2025 in order to recruit and run stronger candidates in 2026. That includes:
☆ Decentralized transformational leadership instead of transactional or adversarial relationships with EC Members and Ohio’s 88 County Chairs. Instead of trying to control the party from the top-down or limit leadership to a small group of individuals who helped fundraise for each others’ campaigns, a good Chair knows how to delegate and empower other leaders to lead locally – based on shared values like integrity and empathy – so they can listen and respond to their communities and help rebuild the party from the ground up.
☆ Full-time year-round organizers who are from Ohio and can grow authentic relationships in their communities by listening to, elevating, and responding to the needs and concerns of their neighbors instead of just relying on so-called “coordinated campaign” consultants to parachute in the last few months before Election Day.
☆ Professional development and leadership training for our County Chairs, EC Members, and Organizers. I learned about Teddy Roosevelt Progressivism from my high school history and government teacher, who became my friend and mentor. After he retired last year, he has been my leadership coach. I’ve talked with him about providing Resilient Leadership Training starting with all 88 county chairs, in five regional cohorts, so they can be supported with professional development skills that could help them reduce anxieties, lead with conviction, and stay connected with each other and their communities to build stronger teams. I also support fellow candidate Kim McCarthy’s proposal for more formal mentorship relationships between more experienced chairs and chairs who are looking for help.
☆ Competitive primaries with instant runoffs to uphold majority rule. Ohio Democrats should be at least as smart as Virginia Republicans who used an instant runoff with ranked choice voting (RCV) to nominate Glenn Youngkin, who flipped their governor’s mansion red a year after Biden won Virginia by 10 points. Several Democratic state parties already benefit from using RCV in their primaries, and more and more Dems from Tim Walz to Joe Manchin have become vocal supporters. RCV allows the most competitive candidate to rise to the top in a crowded field and incentivizes civility between candidates as they compete to be voters’ backup choice if they can’t be their first in order to win a majority. With RCV, a greater diversity of candidates can run and elevate their ideas without worry about spoilers. Instead of young people or women or minorities being told to “wait their turn” behind someone assumed to be “more electable,” RCV allows voters to decide who is really most electable through the election. Since the EC recently took a positive step by forbidding the party from endorsing candidates before primaries, RCV would be a natural next step to democratize the ODP so voters can vote for who they really want without interference from party bosses – which would help us recruit and nominate stronger candidates.
This is the type of all-hands-on-deck strategy that Democrats and all Ohioans need to save ourselves from Republicans who have turned our state into a joke. Ask any young person, and they’ll tell you Ohio is a national embarrassment. Ohio Republicans get rich treating politics like a dark money game while they carelessly damage real people’s lives. Ohio will continue to suffer corruption and brain drain unless or until we defend ourselves with peaceful resistance.
I understand the temptation faced by some Dems who are so desperate for a win, they’d settle for a “Blue MAGA” style Chair who sees himself as a “street fighter” – even though he’s actually been fighting against Dems and our natural allies by colluding with Republicans and their dark-money donors to subvert the Ohio Constitution, threaten Local Home Rule, and suppress voters’ choices. While a long-time insider and fixer could provide valuable help and advice to whoever becomes Chair, Democrats cannot afford to further tarnish their brand by making the face of the ODP a weak bully who behaves like a cheap imitation of Donald Trump. Ohio Dems need a Chair with the courage, conviction, and credibility to speak truth to power and lead a resistance against Republicans’ corrupt autocracy.
Ohio needs bold leadership to remind us of our roots so we can unite for the common good: Ohioans ran the Underground Railroad to help enslaved peoples escape to freedom. We fought and died to abolish slavery and preserve the Union. We invented the airplane and the lightbulb. We were the first to broadcast rock and roll on the radio. Our feet were the first to step on the moon. We protested against our fellow Americans being sent to die in pointless wars, and we were shot and killed for peacefully protesting by our own government. Ohio Democrats should carry the torch of freedom forward by being the Party that truly fights (with words, not weapons) for liberty and justice for ALL.
What gives me hope? The biggest success “our side” has had in the last 10 years was the August 2023 Special Election that Republicans forced on Ohio with their dark-money-backed attempt to squash Ohioans’ constitutional rights for ballot initiatives. More than 57% of Ohioans saw through Republicans’ propaganda and voted to reject their autocratic tricks:
My promise to the ~147 members of Ohio Dems’ Executive Committee who will conclave on June 10 is this: If you make democratizing Ohio my full-time job and help implement our plans, we will win a trifecta in 2026.
I’m still listening and learning from EC Members, and I invite them to speak with me if they haven’t already. In Part III, I will expand on my plans for Dems to win Ohio in 2026 if they elect me to serve as their chief cheerleader and champion…
Cheers,
Kyle
P.S. Learn more about me and support my work at HermanForStow.com
Yours is a fantastic platform & much needed for Ohio. It’s tough to read in white print.
Awesome :) Let me know how I can help !