Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter and writes from Ohio University.
The U.S. Supreme Court has refused to review the conviction of former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder on federal corruption charges.
Result: Householder, a 66-year-old Republican from Perry County’s Glenford, must continue to serve the 20-year sentence he’s serving in Elkton’s Federal Correctional Institution in Columbiana County.
You don’t have to like Householder (and lots of people don’t) to believe his 20-year sentence, imposed in 2023 by a federal judge is excessive.
A non-violent flim-flam
Yes, Householder was convicted of public corruption – passage of Ohio House Bill 6, of 2019 – a big-dollar windfall for the Akron-based electric combine, FirstEnergy Corp. (which includes the Illuminating, Ohio Edison and Toledo Edison companies).
House Bill 6 was at the heart of Ohio’s most corrupt Statehouse scam in 223 years of statehood. Lost somehow is the fact HB 6 couldn’t have become law without the votes of some General Assembly Democrats – and the signature of Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. (Since then, HB 6 has essentially been repealed.)
Still, the disproportionality of Householder’s sentence in obvious. In Ohio, someone convicted of “standard” murder (as opposed to aggravated murder) is eligible for parole after 15 years in the jug. If murder can send you away for 15 years, how does a non-violent flim-flam (no matter how big) get you 20?
The Supreme Court’s refusal to review the legal ins and outs of Householder’s conviction is now irrelevant. What remains on the table is whether the sentence is fair.
Yes, Householder could be – to deploy polite words – insufferably, relentlessly, ambitious and arrogant. And his disrespect for the late Jo Ann Davidson, a Reynoldsburg Republican, House speaker from 1995 through 2000, one of Ohio’s greatest public servants, was contemptible.
Now, Davidson’s official portrait is back in the House chamber (Householder had removed it) and Householder’s a guest of the Bureau of Prisons.
For too long.
Who is running for office?
Tuesday is primary election day, and Democratic voters have several contests to decide.
One’s for the Democratic nomination for attorney general. (GOP incumbent David Yost is barred by term limits from seeking a third term.)
Contenders for the Democrats’ A.G. nomination are former state Rep. Elliot Forhan, who represented a suburban Cleveland district in Ohio’s House for a term before failing to retain it, and fellow Democrat John J. Kulewicz, a member if Upper Arlington’s City Council and retired partner in the big Vorys law firm. The GOP nominee will be now-State Auditor Keith Faber, of Celina.
Forhan and Kulewicz are both Yale Law School graduates. Kulewicz has been endorsed by, among others, the Ohio Democratic Party; the Ohio AFL-CIO; and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce PAC.
Tuesday’s other Democratic primary is between Bryan Hambley, a suburban Cincinnati physician, and state Rep. Allison Russo, of Upper Arlington, once leader of the Ohio House’s Democratic minority.
Hambley was an energetic volunteer in 2024’s statewide fair-General-Assembly-districts ballot issue, defeated thanks to trick GOP-engineered wording. The Ohio Democratic Party is neutral in the Hambley-Russo primary , but Democratic former Gov. Richard F. Celeste has enthusiastically endorsed Hambley,
Lest we forget
May 4 is the 56th anniversary of the killing of four Kent State students by National Guard troops ordered to the campus by Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes, desperately seeking a GOP U.S. Senate nomination he lost to former Gov. Bob Taft’s father.
Those killed by the guard:
The guard also wounded nine students, including Dean Kahler, of East Canton, whom a National Guard bullet paralyzed from the waist down. He later was a two-term Athens County commissioner.
The President’s Commission on Campus Disorders – Richard M. Nixon appointees – said this: “The indiscriminate firing of rifles into a crowd of students and the deaths that followed were unnecessary, unwarranted and inexcusable.”
In 1979, the Controlling Board, the Statehouse’s balm squad, paid $675,000 (perhaps $3 million today) to settle a lawsuit filed against Rhodes and guardsmen by wounded students and the survivors of students the guard killed.
Taxpayers paid the $675,000 – not Rhodes, not the guardsmen. Then, as now, that’s what passes for accountability in Ohio.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Householder’s 20-year sentence stands — but we all know it isn’t just | Opinion
Reporting by Thomas Suddes, Columnist / The Columbus Dispatch
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