Snollygoster

This week, we discuss the race for the U.S. Senate and Sherrod Brown’s slightly risky new ad, where he takes on Jon Husted and data centers.

WOSU hosted a Politics and a Pint event last week. These events are a lot of fun. We get together at a Columbus-area brewpub and talk politics in front of a crowd of political junkies and public media fans.

DeWine’s change in position seems little more than symbolic. Republican leaders in the Legislature support the death penalty. There is no movement ready to put it on the ballot.

Gov. Mike DeWine has come out against Ohio’s death penalty. This week, the conservative Republican governor, who co-sponsored the bill that reinstated capital punishment in 1981, said Ohio should abolish it.

The effort to abolish Ohio property taxes has failed – at least for now. The group collecting signatures to put an amendment on November’s ballot says it has fallen short of the number needed to qualify.

For weeks, DeWine has faced criticism from his fellow Republicans over allegations of widespread fraud in the state’s Medicaid system. It started with a report in the conservative outlet The Daily Wire, which accused home health agencies of fraudulently billing the system that pays for healthcare for low-income and disabled people.

For the first time in eight years, Ohio will have a new governor. It will be someone from outside government: tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who briefly ran for president, or Amy Acton, who served in government for about a year.

The candidates are set for Ohio's general election in November. There were no big surprises in this week’s primary.

An important election is just around the corner. Ohio will elect a new governor and decide who will represent the state in the U.S. Senate. A new poll provides a snapshot of what voters are thinking, and the results are interesting.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is out with a new ad where his wife shows off their new baby. In another ad, he goes after Democrat Amy Acton for her role in the COVID-19 shutdowns.

We look back at a time when Ohio was blue politically, or at least purple. We talk with longtime Democratic activist Dale Butland, who worked for U.S. Sen. John Glenn and has a new book out When Ohio Was Blue.

The 2028 presidential campaign likely will start about a year from now, but Democrats are not waiting to take on a likely candidate: Ohioan and Vice President JD Vance.

JobsOhio is in the news not because of a big new project, but because of the role, however small, it played in the sudden resignation of Ohio State University President Ted Carter.

As electric bills rise and data centers start to encroach upon suburbs and farmland, politicians are hearing from voters and starting to ask if data centers are worth it.

While its end was unusual, Ted Carter’s tenure may not be all that uncommon. The job has always been difficult, but it seems to be increasingly challenging. To examine the politics of being a college president, Josh Moody, reporter for Inside Higher Ed, joins the show.

Ohio’s congressional delegation largely split along partisan lines in reacting to the attacks on Iran. Vice President JD Vance once strongly said the US should not get involved in endless wars, but supports the president in this case.

Les Wexner answered questions from members of the House Oversight Committee for about five hours about how much he knew about the sex offender and what role he may have played in Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.

University officials say they are considering all the facts, and they have a process to consider the requests to remove Wexner’s name from the medical center, the arts center, and the football complex.

The Tax Foundation says Ohio has the eighth-highest effective property tax rate in the country. Some residents are fed up. Citizens for Property Tax Reform member Beth Blackmarr joins the show.

AEP seemed to survive the storm pretty well, at least in Ohio. But the utility made news when Governor DeWine mentioned his administration is trying to keep AEP's headquarters in Ohio. The company is looking to possibly move out of its 31-story headquarters in Columbus.

It has been an eventful year for the Trump–Vance administration. We’ve focused more on Trump than Vance, but Vance has been more visible than many vice presidents.

Protests continue in Minnesota and across the country. Here in Central Ohio, there is no sign of intense ICE activity, but detentions continue. Ohio State students protested the school, including the Border Patrol, at its career fair this week. Officials continue to warn protesters not to get in the way of any enforcement activity.

The new year started with a firehose-like stream of political news. Venezuela, ICE activity, the tragic shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis and false daycare fraud claims in Ohio have dominated the news.

A new poll from Emerson College in Boston shows some interesting trends that likely give Ohio Democrats hope and give Republicans pause.

The public authority that owns the arena says it needs 400 million dollars—more than double the original cost—to renovate it. And it’s looking for taxpayers to pick up much of the tab.

Tim Ryan, the former congressman, former presidential candidate and former U.S. Senate candidate said he will not run for governor.

President Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files and then refused to do so. He tried hard to persuade Congress to drop its demand to release them, but he failed. Then, the president reversed course and told Republicans in Congress to vote to release the files.

To examine the implications of the Democrats’ wins and look at how Ohioans voted on higher taxes for government services, we welcome our panel of experts: Statehouse reporters Laura Bischoff, of the USA Today Ohio Bureau, and Jo Ingles, of Ohio Public Radio, as well as Democrat Jo Mas and Republican Mike Miller.

For those of us tired of talking about redistricting, we’re happy. The Ohio Redistricting Commission has approved a bipartisan map and the issue appears settled for six years. But we might be the only ones who are happy.

We have a good snapshot of how Ohio voters are feeling, a year out from the election that will decide the governor’s office and Congress. Bowling Green State University is out with its latest poll.

For homeowners worried about skyrocketing property tax bills, a radical solution is gaining traction, but experts warn that abolishing these taxes could cause Ohio's income tax to increase drastically.

There’s no sign of a compromise in the government shutdown. Democrats in the Senate are blocking a funding bill, demanding that Republicans agree to reverse looming Medicaid cuts and extend Obamacare health insurance subsidies.

It’s a Politics and a Pint edition of Snollygoster. As we did in August, we gathered about 200 of our closest friends at Seventh Son Brewing in Columbus, where we talked politics while enjoying craft beers.

The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk fueled a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric and some serious consequences.

It has been more than a week since an assassin shot and killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah. President Trump and Vice President Vance have implied the violence was the result of far-left rhetoric, and they promise to crack down on liberal groups.

Lawmakers have begun the arduous process of drawing congressional districts for Ohio. Ohio Democrats did not support the two congressional maps passed four years ago. Because of that, the state’s constitution requires lawmakers to draw new ones this year. Ohio House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn joins the show.

In this episode, we revisit last week’s Politics and a Pint event held at Seventh Son Brewing in Columbus.

With a campaign video and email early Monday morning, the former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown announced he will take on Senator Jon Husted next year.

Brown is going to run for the U.S. Senate, the place he walked out of just eight months ago after losing a re-election bid to Republican Bernie Moreno.

The drama over legislative district mapmaking isn’t limited to Texas, where Republicans and Democrats are in a standoff over efforts to redraw lines. Once again, Ohio lawmakers are drawing legislative districts.

There have been major developments in the ongoing lawsuit against Ohio State University by sexual assault victims of former OSU team doctor Richard Strauss.

Ohio is in the early stages of a major fight over property taxes. Thanks largely to rapidly rising home values, property taxes have jumped on average about 25–30% in recent years. Homeowners are mad, especially those on fixed incomes who have no plans to move and cash in on their home’s equity.

Once labeled a cow-town, known mainly for its college football team, Columbus is asserting itself as a major regional and national city and the growth projections are kind of startling. But is Columbus ready?

Gov. DeWine signed the biennial budget into law and made 67 line-item vetoes. He nixed a plan to allow counties to reduce property taxes if school districts had a lot of money in their savings accounts. But the richest Ohioans get a 20% income tax cut.

The Ohio Democratic Party has a new chair. Amy Acton is building a campaign to run for Ohio governor. And everyone is waiting for Sherrod Brown to announce his plans.

The third version of the state budget is out, and it proposes cutting taxes for any Ohioan making more than $100,000 a year. The State Senate would do that by flattening the state income tax.

Taxes have come to dominate the political debate in Washington, and they loom as a growing concern at the Ohio Statehouse.

Attorney General Dave Yost has dropped out of the campaign for governor. Yost said his steep climb to the nomination had become a vertical cliff. For now, Vivek Ramaswamy’s path to the Republican nomination for governor looks clear.

A panel of experts breaks down President Trump's falling approval numbers in polls and the uncertainty over tariffs.

A new poll shows Trump has a 47% approval rating while 48% disapprove—a statistical tie—but that number is down 7 points from February. The poll’s co-director, Bowling Green State University political science professor Robert Alexander, joins the show.