COLUMBUS – A super PAC that can raise unlimited sums from corporate donors has taken out ads targeting Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens and a top lieutenant amid the fight to stifle future citizen-led constitutional amendment campaigns.
In radio ads aimed at Stephens and House Finance Chairman Jay Edwards, a mysterious, newly created super PAC warns of “radical big money liberals who don’t share our values” trying to “bypass” both Ohioans and elected lawmakers.
While the scope and source of funding behind the Save Our Constitution PAC has not been publicly disclosed, a Cincinnati attorney with a history of running dark money organizations for anti-abortion organizations and activists on the Christian right handled the paperwork. The Columbus Dispatch reports that conservative megadonor Richard Uihlein is giving $1.1 million to the super PAC, although Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer have not independently confirmed as much.
The outside spending adds to pressure mounting on Stephens. While he has expressed ambivalence over the proposed constitutional change, the Senate has passed legislation proposing the idea and scheduling an August election to move it forward. Gov. Mike DeWine said he’d sign the legislation for an August election if it reaches his desk. About two dozen members of the House Republican caucus, which Stephens ostensibly controls, have signaled a willingness to ram the measure through with or without Stephens’ blessing. Meanwhile, 59 House Republicans – which is either enough to pass the bill or one shy, depending who you ask – signed on to a letter backing the idea.
The new rules making future constitutional amendments harder would apply indefinitely, but lawmakers want to pay $20 million to schedule an August election to ensure the rules apply to an effort to propose a constitutional right to abortion on the November 2023 ballot. Pro-choice organizers are actively gathering signatures to place the question on the ballot.
Lawmakers must pass legislation to schedule the election by May 10 if they want to pull off an August election, which would ensure the higher vote threshold applies to the abortion effort.
If passed, organizers will face more onerous requirements in the process of gathering the roughly 413,000 signatures needed to place questions on the ballot in the future. Should they succeed there, they would need 60% support on the statewide ballot versus the 50% required under current law. However, under the Senate’s proposal, the new signature rules would not kick in until 2024, although the increased threshold would.
‘Woke, radical out-of-state liberals’
The ads in support of the proposal were taken out by a super PAC, created March 31, called Save Our Constitution PAC. A Cincinnati lawyer named David Langdon handled the paperwork and took out the ads.
“Instead of leaders we elect making the laws, the Ohio Constitution can be bought by woke, radical out-of-state liberals,” the ad’s narrator says.
Federal Communications Commission disclosures show they aired at least on various radio stations in Jackson, Racine and McCarthur. Dave Anderson, a spokesman for the Energy and Policy Institute who focuses in part on money in politics, shared mailers from the PAC on social media as well.
Langdon serves as an officer for dozens of political entities, including the Center for Christian Virtue, a powerful Columbus lobbying force and backer of the proposal. He also incorporated three entities affiliated with Protect Women Ohio – a coalition of anti-abortion organizations that collectively committed $5 million to opposing the abortion access amendment – between February and April of 2023.
He was a lead author of a proposed amendment to Ohio’s constitution defining marriage as between a man and a woman, which voters passed in 2004, according to The Center for Public Integrity, a nonpartisan investigative news nonprofit.
Langdon didn’t respond to a phone call or email, nor did the CCV. Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is mentioned in the ad as fighting alongside Senate Republicans to pass the proposal, didn’t respond to an inquiry.
Uihelin is the PAC’s sole benefactor, the Dispatch reported.
Jeff Rusnak, a campaign strategist for the Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Health, an organization gathering signatures seeking a November referendum, called HJR1 an “attempt to silence the will” of Ohioans.
“The anti-abortion lobbyists, politicians, and extremists need to look in the mirror and recognize the hypocrisy of them funding their desperate campaign with millions from an out-of-state, out-of-touch billionaire extremist,” he said in a statement. “Just like their flip flop on August special elections, it’s funny how their own words do not apply to them.”
Catherine Turcer, executive director of Common Cause Ohio, a nonprofit that advocates for more transparency in money and government, noted the irony of organizers trying to change Ohio’s 111-year-old constitutional amendment language saying they are trying to “protect” the Constitution and calling those trying to preserve it “radical” while a super PAC pushes a constitutional change decrying the idea that the constitution could be “bought” by the radicals.
“It is always a challenge for Ohioans when there’s dark money in races because they can’t get to the source of information to consider who it’s coming from,” she said.
Coalitions dig in
The ad roughly tracks with Republican arguments backing the bill – that the current rules leave too much room for well-heeled interest groups to instill policy changes in the state Constitution. Some Republicans, but not all, have explicitly connected the resolution to thwarting the abortion referendum.
The anti-abortion, gun and restaurant lobbies have all aligned with Republicans on the matter. Two of them face active efforts to amend the constitution in manners they oppose – abortion access and (for restaurants) a proposal to raise Ohio’s minimum wage.
Democrats have universally opposed the resolution. They say Ohio Republicans, mere months ago, passed legislation getting rid of most August elections and that it’s hypocritical to schedule one now. They say the resolution is a simple power grab, as executed by a gerrymandered legislature.
A long list of organizations and people ranging from labor unions, to the ACLU, to all four living ex-governors have voiced opposition.
