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At OHEA.org the May 3rd primary is just over a month away, but it's unknown when voters will decide some key races not on that ballot and majority party candidates for U.S. Senate and the Democratic nomination for governor face off on the debate stage.

All this week in the state of Ohio, welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

Early voting starts on Tuesday for the May 3rd primary, but right now, it's unknown when voters will decide Ohio House and Senate races.

They're not all on the primary ballot because there are no constitutional district maps.

And a panel of three federal judges declined to intervene this week, saying they'll wait until those maps are reviewed by the Ohio Supreme Court.

They are the fourth set of legislative maps, and they are approved by four of the five Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission just before Monday night's Supreme Court deadline.

The commissioners rejected maps created by outside map makers hired for $49,000 each to make new maps and do them in a public way via a live stream from a room at the state house.

Instead, the commissioners tweaked the third set of legislative maps, which have been ruled unconstitutional on March 16th in federal court.

A spokesman for Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who has voted for all the maps that's been ruled unconstitutional, said La Rose prefers a unified primary.

But House Speaker Bob Kopp, also a supporter of all the invalidated maps said on Wednesday majority Republicans have not proposed moving or splitting the primary.

By the time this show airs, things may have changed on the primary, but right now May 3rd is the date.

But another one that's come up is August 2nd.

The last possible date for a primary for this fall.

But La Rose, his office, also mentioned a May 24th primary, a date voters in Ohio might not associate with an election.

Democrats have proposed moving the primary to June 28th.

Aaron Ackerman is with the Ohio Association of Elections Officials.

The May 24th date in particular would only work if it is one unified primary with all contests appearing on it.

And it's hard to say because boards really are you know we have 88 county boards and they're just at different stages in their preparation and the difficulty associated with preparing for the election varies greatly from county to county.

And Ackerman says August 2nd is the preferred date of many elections officials, since it's already a special election date.

Speaking of elections, the candidates for U.S. Senate and the Democratic contenders for governor who are on the May 3rd ballot met in debates Monday and Tuesday at Central State University in Wilberforce.

The debates were presented by the Coalition of State News Organizations, universities and civic groups known as the Ohio Debate Commission.

The questions that were asked in the debates were derived and those submitted to the Ohio Debate Commission's online portal.

But there were some questions developed from recent news events.

The series started on Monday morning with the Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate Morgan Harper, Tracy Johnson and Tim Ryan.

With moderator Curtis Jackson of Spectrum News leading the questioning.

The candidates discussed the US Supreme Court the cost of health care, student loan debt and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

If Article five is invoked, should President Biden seek approval from both houses of Congress?

To act?

And if he does?

How would you vote on an authorization for the use of military force against Russia?

Thank you, Curtis.

I believe that he should come to Congress and I would support it.

I think we have democracy on the line here.

We have done a good job of getting the Ukraine some of the armaments that they need to push back.

Look, Putin is a butcher.

He's a killer.

He's a war criminal.

And he is slaughtering innocent people.

And I think we actually need to do more.

I think we need to figure out a way to get airplanes to Ukraine.

They are showing tremendous courage.

Zelensky is showing tremendous leadership.

The people on the ground are.

I believe that the United States has a responsibility to figure out how they can protect air support.

And I know some people say, well, Putin's going to escalate.

Putin already escalated.

He escalated when he bombed maternity hospitals.

He bombed hospitals, and then he bombed the most recently bombed a theater that he knew was filled with women and children.

He's telling his generals to kill innocent people.

I just don't believe that the United States can stand by and not at least help provide these folks with some air support that they would understand.

Not one, the no fly zone, but getting them airplanes to be able to protect themselves.

I just want to make one other point on this.

There is one country in the world right now that could pick up the phone and end this war, and that's China.

And they're looking the other way.

They're finding ways to support Russia and play both sides.

They want to defeat the United States and they're willing to slaughter innocent Ukrainians and help the Russians do that.

MS. Harper, how would you vote on an authorization to use military force against Russia?

Well, what Putin is doing is an absolute travesty.

Harming and killing Ukrainians just brazenly.

And we have to have a strong response And so that's why I have been outspoken about imposing aggressive economic sanctions against Putin and those around him who are enabling him.

And we need to continue to use all of our tools at our disposal to make sure that we are controlling that threat.

That is about Putin also growing in his alliances with the Chinese government.

And it is a threat to our global security and economy.

And so in addition to sanctions, I agree with what the administration has done so far in pursuing diplomatic solutions.

And if it comes to the place where we have to consider whether or not to use military force, then absolutely.

President Biden should come to Congress and ask for that authorization.

And we have to be serious about whether or not we're willing to use it.

And I would I would certainly be willing to consider that if it comes to it.

But we also have to keep in mind about what we've been through over the last 20 years as a country where we have seen a lot of military intervention that perhaps moved too quickly without always having the full information.

And I want to be clear headed to make the right decisions for our foreign policy.

That is why I've committed to not accept any money from any any sector, including the defense contracting sector that my opponent here today has taken over $400,000 from over the course of his career.

While we have seen so many so much harm to our economy and our people here at home.

Congressman, I'll give you a chance to rebut, but first, MS. Johnson authorization on the use of force of military force against Russia.

So first, we constantly need to keep the Ukrainian people in our prayers because what's happening to their country is devastating and tragic.

I am reminiscent of a song by War it says War.

What is it good for?

And the answer is absolutely nothing.

Now, President Putin isn't a dangerous man.

He's a strategic man.

And he knows exactly what he's doing.

He invaded Georgia, Crimea.

He was even meddled in our 2016 elections.

And now he's invaded Russia.

He's basically gone unchecked.

And we have to end his reign of terror.

And now he's threatening weapons of mass destruction.

Now I support the work that we've done.

And I support.

I want to applaud President Biden for sending our troops to Poland to assist in humanitarian crisis.

I support our government when they impose sanctions.

Cutting off the financial lifeline.

President Putin and his oligarchs.

I also supported the military in an economic and humanitarian relief that we provided to the country.

I believe at the end of the day, what's most important is that we keep United States safe.

We keep our troops safe.

We provide Ukraine with the resources to defend themselves.

And we work in accordance with NATO to make sure that the natal countries that surround the Ukraine are protected.

Thank you, Wisconsin Congressman.

Chancellor But yeah, I agree with MS. Harper being very judicious with how we use our military, which is why 20 years ago, I was very publicly out against the war in Iraq.

I thought that was stupid.

And it ended up costing us trillions and trillions of dollars that we should have used instead of building Iraq and Afghanistan.

We should have been building the United States on the issue of the contractors.

Do you want to respond?

Well, I just want to say Ohio is a state that has a lot tens of thousands of jobs that are directly connected to the defense industry, good-paying union jobs here in Ohio.

And I don't think we need to waste money, but I don't think we should immediately be pulling the plug.

These are businesses, of course, I'm going to work with them.

They're putting jobs into Ohio and employing Ohioans now quickly.

I have fought the Department of Defense on wasteful spending, including if it was an Ohio company.

So TransDigm, which was bilking the taxpayer, bilking the Department of Defense, I took them on and they ended up getting fined tens of millions of dollars for what they did wrong.

So you can have both a strong defense, create jobs in the United States and take on waste, fraud and abuse in the Department of Defense.

Monday night, it was the event I moderated the Republican debate for U.S. Senate, featuring all seven candidates together on stage for the first time.

J.D.

Vance, Mike Gibbons, Jane Timken, Josh Mandel, Mark Rokita, Matt Dolan and Neil Patel.

The candidates were asked about Ukraine, immigration, religion and government endorsements from controversial figures such as US representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene and Madison Cawthorn and former Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski.

And we led off the 90 minute debate with the questions submitted the most about the 2020 election and some fact-checking.

I want to start with an issue about which we received more questions than any other.

So I'll ask this question in a way that represents many of them.

It's about the 2020 election.

There were more than 60 lawsuits filed by former President Trump and his supporters challenging the validity of the election, all in states that he lost.

None of the cases were judged to have merit.

Many were tossed out by federal judges who had been appointed by President.

Trump claims that in some states more votes were cast than the number of registered voters have been examined and found to be false.

With those facts established, you still claim the 2020 election was stolen.

And if so, can you cite specific verifiable facts?

And Jane Timken starting with you?

There's no doubt in my mind there were irregularities and fraud in the 2020 election when I was chair of the Ohio Republican Party, I worked with the Trump campaign and recruited over 300 attorneys and poll observers to be on the ground to watch what the Democrats were doing to our election.

That's how I delivered Ohio for President Trump.

And in fact, I caught a Democrat operative in a congressional candidate pushing ballot harvesting.

And I referred that person to the attorney general.

There's nothing more important than election integrity.

And as I said, there's lots of people who talk about election integrity.

I'm the one that actually did it.

And I'm proud that I delivered Ohio for President Trump by more than eight points.

It's because I put in the work to make sure we had a safe and secure election Neil Patel, you have 90 seconds.

The 20, 20 election I said was stolen.

I was actually campaigning for President Trump across Ohio and 20 And I see you actually by 11 p.m..

I went to the bed the election night.

I thought the president bill winning.

Next morning I wake up everything.

I change.

I got a surprise and I said, my God.

And then we're told slowly but surely we're finding out.

You mean like Georgia?

100,000 90,000 people voted even.

Not even the ballot.

Some of them totally across the United States.

Almost, I can say more than 300,000 registered voters then been cast out.

That's exactly.

I got heartbreaking.

I thought, what's going on with this election fraud across Ohio?

Virginia.

I'm sorry.

Pennsylvania and then Arizona.

All the all the state I think that was stolen.

And that's when I can say that to you.

Thank you very much.

Just a reminder, the claim that Mr. Martell has just said has been fact checked and no evidence has been found to support it.

That was a false statement.

But we're moving on now to Mike Givens, I was Donald Trump's Ohio finance co-chair in 2016, and I supported him throughout that election in the end the 2020 election.

There are problems with this election.

5 million more people voted than were registered to vote and that's according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

There's a problem.

We need to investigate it.

The January six commission should be investigating that instead of some false accusation of some type of insurrection.

Recently, there was a Wisconsin special counsel that discovered that a great good number of nursing homes in Wisconsin voted at 103% of their occupancy, and they all voted for Joe Biden.

We're going to have to investigate these things.

But even beyond the numbers, the fact that Hunter Biden's laptop was suppressed for virtually anybody to find out, it's been estimated that one out of every six voters would have changed their vote if they knew that somehow President Biden was implicated in some of the scandals that are outlined in that in that laptop.

We've got to have fair elections.

We need to make it easy to vote and hard to cheat.

And again, the claim that Mr. Gibbons just made about more ballots cast than registered voters has been fact check and no evidence has been found to support it.

We're moving on.

Josh Mandel, you have 90 seconds.

Josh Mandel, we we've been having these debates all over the state.

We've had a lot of candidate forums and repeatedly over and over and over with all of us on stage.

There's only one candidate up here who has the courage to say what I'm about to say.

And every time I say it, the liberal media gets triggered.

And every time I say it, the squishy Reiner Republicans like Mitt Romney and Adam Kinzinger, they get triggered, too.

But I want to say it very clearly for all the rhinos out there and all the media elites out there, The 20, 20 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump.

It was stolen in a variety of different ways.

Ballot harvesting in places like Philadelphia, in places like Pittsburgh, in places like Detroit, Michigan, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

I'm the only candidate on this stage who's taken the time to go out to Maricopa County to see with my own eyes where they were all in the vote.

I'm the only candidate on this stage who's calling for an audit of the vote, not just in Arizona, but in Pennsylvania, in western Michigan, in Wisconsin, in Georgia, and in every state in the nation.

Now, listen, a lot of the squishy rhino Republicans, they say, well, you you can't audit the states where Trump obviously won.

My feeling is, of course you can, because he probably won by a higher margin than was even reported.

We cannot move on from the 2020 election.

We cannot look forward or move forward until 20, 20 is fully investigated.

And everyone who cheated in 20, 20 is prosecuted.

Again, several claims Mr. Mandel made have in fact checked with no evidence found to support them.

We're moving on now to Mark McCarty of 90 seconds.

Can we just stipulate that when I'm going to say it's not going to be fact-checked by you, it's a sign So I want to correct something.

I've been saying that the election was stolen from Donald Trump since two or three days after the election.

It's on video, it's on Rumble, it's on YouTube.

I've got the receipts.

This is a problem that we've we've had in America.

We've got Hunter Biden's laptop.

We've got a made up dossier that started.

Believe it or not, in the Ukraine.

We've got whistleblowers who made up conversations about Donald Trump with President Zelensky of Ukraine.

And the media continues to say that none of that is true, even though the FBI, in the case of Hunter Biden's laptop says it is.

We have a problem.

We've got the greatest country in the world.

We live in the greatest state in the world, or we wouldn't be here.

And we are part of the greatest political party ever invented by man.

And all three of those have been hijacked by corrupt leadership.

I want to go to Washington and eradicate that kind of thinking, personality and lack of ethics in Washington, D.C..

I guess I don't have to say it since you already said it.

There we go.

Fact check.

We just say 15 seconds.

J.D.

Vance.

90 seconds.

Well, first, I want to echo something Marc said.

So the Josh has this talking point that he's the only person who says that the election was stolen from Donald Trump.

Marc just said, and I say it all the time, right?

I think the election was stolen from Trump and specifically Karen, I understand why you got your job.

And you've got to sort of throw out the fact check one and hope that it disappears.

All the problems that happened in 20, 20.

But let me offer there three very specific problems in the 2020 election.

And I don't think you'll be able to fact check them because they're actual facts.

One.

Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, put $435 million to buy up boards of elections all over the country in big battleground states.

Independent studies have shown that the money Zuckerberg spent bought Democrat votes and suppress Republican votes.

Number one, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court has itself.

It's a Democrat leaning Supreme Court has held that the Pennsylvania election was not conducted in compliance with Pennsylvania's state constitution.

Or state laws.

And number three, they censored, as Mike said, the Hunter Biden laptop story, which, again, independent analysts have said cost Donald Trump millions upon millions of votes because the technology companies would not.

Let us talk about the fact that Joe Biden is the leader of the world's biggest crime family.

Those are three facts that cannot be fact checked.

And this goes back to the point I made about the difference between talking point politicians and substance politicians.

If we don't get to the bottom of what happened in 20, 20, we need to be able to speak about what actually happened and how we're going to get to the bottom of it.

First of all, I'm done with an election season in this country.

Ladies and gentlemen, let's go back to having an Election Day.

There are a lot of other problems that go from that, but at the end of the day, there were problems in 20, 20.

We can't be afraid to talk about them.

And again, there are a couple of statements that have in fact checked no evidence found to support them.

Let's move on out to Matt Dolan.

Which ones, Kerry?

Let's move on to Madeline.

All right.

So the lanes are pretty clear here.

Let me be very clear.

Joe Biden is the legitimate president of United States.

My problem is he's a failed president.

And everyone up on this stage wants to go to Washington to look backwards.

Well, if you're a family out there fighting inflation, it costs more to put food on your table.

Cost more to put gas in your car there.

You're worried about your security because we have a party that defunds police.

You're worried that our borders is wide open and more drugs are coming into this state than ever before.

That's what I'm going to Washington to go fight.

We need to look forward as Republicans and stop the Biden administration.

But then even more so, we need to prepare for the 20, 24 election and looking forward.

And I'm going to go to set an agenda.

Good conservative policies Guess what?

Some of those policies are the Trump policies that I got done right here in Ohio, if you like less taxes, if you like less regulation, if you like giving parents more ability to choose where their schools go, where excuse me where their kids can go to school.

If you like a government that funds and backs the police That's what this election is about.

Looking forward, taking control of Washington, setting an agenda, putting conservative Republican principles in place and take back this country.

Then on Tuesday night, the debate between the Democratic candidates for Governor John Cranley and Nan Whaley.

They were asked about gun violence, abortion rights, clean energy, as well as energy costs, police reform and qualified immunity.

And about the corruption scandal that surrounds the sweeping nuclear bailout law known as House Bill six, which resulted in charges against Republican former speaker Larry Householder and ex Ohio Republican Party chair Matt Burgess, both of whom said they're innocent, and others The most important thing we can do is fire Mike DeWine.

Mike DeWine appointed the utility commissioners that gave us HB six, which, according to the FBI, is the most corrupt bill in the country.

This is a bill that raises everybody's monthly energy bills to bail out a coal company and Indiana.

But that should be no surprise because a couple of years ago, he was an apologist for econ.

The previous worst scandal in the history of the state.

Mike DeWine has consistently overseen corruption.

And guess what?

Over time, the average person is poorer.

Than they were before he got into public life or before he became governor relative to the national economy.

In Cincinnati, it's been the opposite But the first thing we're going to do, like Dick Celeste, the great Democratic governor, is fire the utility commissioners because they're not, you public utility commissioners.

They're private utility commissioners.

When Dick Celeste ran, who was elected in 1982, he said he would fire the utility commissioners and he did.

And at midnight, when I'm sworn in, I will fire the utility commissioners and replace them with commissioners committed to clean energy, protecting the consumer.

And we will reinvest in renewable energy.

And in all cases, we will act honorably and ethically and put the people first.

His corruption led to taking money out of your pocket to give to the special interests.

Teresa Feder and I have a different idea, which is take money from the special interest.

Thank you, Mr. Quinn.

Create a dividend for you.

Same question.

Do you, Miss Willie, the last few years in Ohio State politics has been a corruption fueled nightmare.

What would you do to restore faith in state government in general and specifically at the state House to be named as Ohio has as the most corrupt state house in the country.

Takes a lot of work by the FBI, frankly.

And any corruption, big or small, is a breach of trust in our communities and in our democracy.

And frankly, Mike DeWine has been has been complicit in this whole piece He got first energy to fund his campaign.

And in return, he gave them everything they wanted, including $1,000,000,000 bailout.

We're paying every single month on our electric bill.

He they wanted their top lobbyists to be the top utility regulator done when first energy settled with the Department of Justice in the largest settlement in American history from this corruption scandal.

They admitted that they paid the guy $4 million to look out for them, not us.

And look, this has been going on for decades.

These guys, big donor electronic classrooms of tomorrow where they had no students sucking money out of public schools, big donor payday lenders, egregious interest rates sucking money out of our of out of our poor our communities.

The first thing I did when I announced I was running for governor was to put forward an anti-corruption plan to make sure the politicians don't police themselves, that we make sure that we stop the revolving door.

You can work for the government or you can work for corporations.

You can't work for both.

And making sure that there's transparency on who's who's spending money in our campaigns.

Ohio deserves so much better than the corrupt government they're getting from the statehouse.

It's possible that the incumbent in the governor's race was only about 5 minutes away from the debate site at his home in Centerville.

But Mike DeWine declined the invitation to join the Republican debate for governor that had been planned for Tuesday morning.

Then his opponent, Jim Rannazzisi, dropped out and it was canceled.

Joe Blystone had committed and Ron Hood never responded.

That's it for this week.

My colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television, thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at State Newstalk.

And you can follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio.

Comes from medical mutuel providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter right is all legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Puerto Rite dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org