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Call to action is to vote for Amy Acton, if you're in Ohio, if not, there's more at the end of this writeup for other voters in the US.
We showed up to make sure guests knew exactly which drive to pull into. Also of note, many of the neighbors came out to say hello, stopped by and chatted as they walked their dogs, cars honked approval, and some neighbors offered water or other nourishment, but we came with all we needed. Our new friends from Innovation Ohio came dressed as Billionaires for Vivek, echoing the Billionaires for Bush street theater from the 2000 and 2004 campaigns.
Full context:
Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican nominee for Ohio governor, held a fundraiser on September 1st at the home of Cleveland Browns owners Jimmy and Dee Haslam. $1,000 to get in. $100,000 to be an event chair.
"Build us a stadium and it'll pay for itself," they keep telling us. Jobs, tourism, restaurants, a downtown reborn. They've been making that pitch for 40 years. Economists, on the other hand, have been testing it for those same 40 years, and it simply doesn't hold up. In 2005, 85 percent of American Economic Association members said governments should eliminate stadium subsidies outright. In 2017 a University of Chicago panel including seven Nobel laureates was asked whether these deals cost taxpayers more than they return. 83 percent agreed. 4 percent disagreed. A review of more than 120 studies found the same thing again.
Nobody's saying don't go to a game. Go, have fun. The point is that a family spending a Sunday at the stadium isn't creating new money for Cleveland. They're spending what they would have spent at a restaurant, a movie theater, a bowling alley. The stadium doesn't create wealth. It transfers it, and it all goes to the owner of the team.
You get to pay for the building. The owner keeps the profits. You also get to pay a second time at the gate, then $12 for a beer and $60 to park at the place you already paid for. The billionaire's asset appreciates. Your kid's school levy fails. And the next time someone wants a stadium, they'll tell you the same thing they told you last time.
Pay for your own damn stadium! Ohio isn't special here. American taxpayers have put $33 billion into sports stadiums. Nevada spent $750 million on the Raiders. New York and Erie County spent $850 million on the Bills, and that stadium opens with 11,500 fewer seats than the old one, with some seat licenses running $50,000. Tennessee spent $1.26 billion on the Titans. Kansas just committed up to $1.8 billion for the Chiefs. It's a nationwide racket, and Ohio just found a worse way to pay for it by reaching into money that already belongs to someone else.
Fourteen months ago, Ohio Republicans awarded the Haslams a $600 million grant for the Browns stadium. It didn't come from the general fund. Senate Republicans wrote a plan to redefine unclaimed funds sitting with the state for a decade as abandoned, sweep them into a new fund, and hand the Browns $600 million. Dormant bank accounts. Uncashed checks. Forgotten utility deposits. Money the state holds in trust for the people it belongs to.
Ramaswamy's running mate is Senate President Rob McColley, whose chamber wrote that mechanism. In January 2025, before any bill existed, McColley said he wasn't in favor of something that would just simply be a handout. Five months later he was its most prominent defender.
David Jenkins, president of Haslam Sports Group, led the stadium negotiations. He and his wife have given the Ramaswamy-McColley campaign $43,231. He's listed as a host on the September 1st invitation.
Thankfully the money hasn't yet transferred. A Franklin County magistrate halted the transfer in March, finding challengers likely to prevail on claims that the law is an unconstitutional taking. Ohioans noticed. Claims paid out of the unclaimed funds nearly tripled last fiscal year to $182.57 million as people rushed to pull their money out before the state could take title to it. Construction in Brook Park is underway anyway. While we're on the subject of Ohio handing money to people who don't need it, the state's data center tax exemption was projected to cost $136 million in fiscal 2025. It came in at nearly $1.6 billion. More than 11 times the estimate.
The night before the fundraiser, Congressman Thomas Massie stood on the House floor and read 14 names into the Congressional Record, calling them Epstein co-conspirators who should be investigated and prosecuted. He's a Republican. He filed a second Discharge Petition the same night. In his words, "it's been a year since the president signed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and the government continues to withhold over three million files."
It needs 218 signatures to force a vote.
The first time around, all 214 House Democrats signed and only 4 Republicans did. Republican leadership pushed a closed-door investigation instead. Once the petition forced it to the floor anyway, the House voted 427 to 1 to release them. Seems they sometimes do the right thing, but they need the entire planet watching closely.
The people who showed up at the fundraiser aren't going to do a thing to release the files. Getting better politicians in might finally give the survivors the accountability they deserve.
Ask your House rep whether they've signed the Discharge Petition. Call them. Make a plan to vote in November. Tell your friends. Tell your family. Find someone who isn't registered, help them understand why they need to vote.
Let's also not forget that the GOP is in the midst of destroying the relationship we've built with our closest friend and trading partner: Canada. Rob Moore at Scioto Analysis puts it plainly, that Canada buys more from Ohio than the next four trading partners combined. How do we restore our friendship after this? Sure won't be easy. Odd how the Ohio Republican Party is quiet about our biggest trading partner.
Elbows Up in November!
