Ohio Republicans Said Nothing About Max Miller for Two Years
Then his numbers collapsed. Cliff Schecter on the state where courts get ignored, maps get rigged, and abuse allegations get absorbed.
by Cliff Schecter
Ohio Republican Congressman Max Miller recorded a video recently to protest his innocence in his alleged and now infamous spousal and potential infant-abuse case.
He would’ve come off as more believable if he’d just run a black screen with no audio.
This extra-Y-chromosomed whinger—who transmitted vibes of wanting to commit acts of violence against the camera he stared into with the anesthetized eyes of a shark—of course said no abuse took place. Uh huh.
Sadly, this is not just the story of a particular MAGA-humping, bottom-barrel huckster. But part of a web of cruelty, abuse, dishonesty, hypocrisy and lack of accountability that infects any entity when authoritarianism takes hold. So let’s back up for a second, and take into account where this took place. Ohio.
But, first, I want to tell you about a very different Ohio, one to which I happily emigrated nearly two decades ago. A true swing state, friends. Really—you can look it up!
I arrived in the heart of it all, as residents of the Buckeye State call Ohio, during the 2008 campaign cycle. My wife grew up here, so this crotchety, cursing-by-the-bushel, New Yorker moved to Cincy to raise my kids and perhaps a little hell in what was then one of the two most crucial states in the country politically. I was recruited by the Ohio Democratic Party to run a secretive opposition research and earned media operation literally out of the basement of party HQ.
God that gig was fun.
The task in front of us: win back 4 swing state house seats and take back a majority for the first time since 1994. We toiled from our banal, bare-walled basement office and visited our candidates in targeted races around the state to share media advice. We worked to find the goods on our opponents to strengthen our messaging. And we injected it into the political bloodstream via creativity and pageantry to drive the message home about Republican proto-Epstein-class corruption, socially-retrograde positions, and basic dickishness.
My happiest moment was watching then Senator Obama win the presidency—in a big way—that night. But I must admit my most personally satisfying was not just securing the four seats we needed to take back the state house, but seven overall. One of which was solely my decision to target, based on the hard-charging candidate, changing demographics in her district, and the Obama-effect.
On election night we won that one by 40 votes. A month later it would be certified after numerous recounts.
But I’m sure glad I didn’t know then what I know now.
Republicans—with Koch Brothers funds, support from the Forrest Gumps of GOP corruption (they turn up everywhere in history), and Republican House Minority Leader, John Boehner, from Southwest Ohio and badly wanting to be Speaker—made Ohio a key state in which they strategized a sneak attack on the redistricting process. A plan you’re now all-too-familiar with, to gerrymander themselves into power. January of that year saw Citizens United pass the oligarch-stenched Supreme Court, and suddenly it was raining men. Or money.
Sorry, I got mixed up with my Lindsey Graham retrospective.
So Ohio became one of many one-party protection rackets with a state flag, but pretty much nothing else that resembled a republic. Republicans gerrymandered Ohio so obscenely that the Ohio Supreme Court—with the vote of a Republican Justice— struck down their Statehouse maps five times and their congressional maps twice. So what did they do? They made small changes to run out the clock, mostly ignoring the court. In other words, they ran elections still using unconstitutional, rigged maps and kept most of their power anyway.
Sure, democracy in Ohio hasn’t technically ceased to exist—you can still put on a charming “I Voted” sticker—but Republicans have worked tirelessly to ensure actual voting rarely threatens their control.
This led to the inevitable corruption of a one-party state. There was the FirstEnergy scandal, which federal prosecutors described as likely the largest bribery and money-laundering scheme ever perpetrated against Ohioans. Roughly $60 million in dark money helped an ass-hat named Larry Householder become speaker and ram through a billion-dollar utility bailout, paid for by—you guessed it—Ohioans! Householder’s predecessor, Cliff Rosenberger, resigned after the FBI raided his home and storage unit. Householder’s farm was also raided before he was convicted of racketeering and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
Two consecutive Republican Ohio House speakers had their property searched by the FBI. Hell, if they can make it three in a row they may even get a free set of steak knives! Seriously, if there were any justice in the world, the Ohio GOP would be forced to replace its elephant logo with a federal search warrant.
And sadly, the rot wasn’t confined to bribery and election theft.
This is where we return to the story of Max Miller—which includes, and yes, it is insane—drug abuse, spousal abuse, an online profile of an ostensibly married, Republican “family man” at a gay hook-up site, and donations to all of them by one of Jeffrey Epstein’s closest pals implicated in the Epstein files.
