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The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

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First energy won't face charges in the state's house.

Bill six, criminal investigation and the presidential race has a different look and feel from a month ago.

An expert in election analysis who hails from Ohio gives us his view.

That's this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

First energy will pay $20 million and continue sharing information with investigators, but will not face state criminal charges in the $60 million bribery scheme surrounding the billion dollar nuclear power plant bailout law.

House Bill six.

News of the settlement came, and the Securities and Exchange Commission filing, which noted the company's, quote, substantial cooperation in the case involving former executives Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling.

Former Public Utilities Commission chair Sam Randazzo was also charged before he died by suicide earlier this year.

First, Entergy admitted in 2021 that it bribed now imprisoned Republican former House Speaker Larry Householder and Randazzo to get and keep House Bill six, and agreed to a $230 million fine.

First, Entergy says in a statement that its new board of directors and executive team make it, quote, a stronger organization.

Today.

Democrats are blasting the settlement, saying it's not enough to offset what has become the largest corruption scandal in state history.

Oh, it was first week of recreational marijuana sales is in the books, with nearly 100 dispensaries statewide, selling $11.53 million in flour and processed products in the first four days.

The Department of Commerce's Division of Cannabis Control reports 173,043 units of manufactured product have been sold, as well as 1,285 pounds of plant material.

Sales of medical marijuana added another $8.3 million.

Average product prices skyrocketed about 20% from the week before.

The presidential race looks different now than it did a few months ago, with President Biden becoming the first president since 1968 and the eighth overall to leave the race.

The campaign has changed not just for Democrats, now led by Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

But for the Republican ticket, a former President Donald Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance.

Democrats are more energized and polls are reflecting stronger support, and Republicans are trying to hold earlier leads and are increasingly on the offensive.

Well, it's likely Ohio will still end up in the GOP column.

This could have a big impact on down ticket races, such as the U.S. Senate race and the few competitive congressional races.

This week I talked with Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabattus Crystal ball, the newsletter from the University of Virginia Center for politics, which analyzes campaigns and elections.

He is also an Ohio native So in this week's crystal ball, there's this line.

In the few weeks that Vice President Kamala Harris has emerged as Democrats standard bearer, she has reset the electoral map to some degree.

And she has pulled better than President Biden was performing before he ended his campaign.

So you got new polls that are showing that she and Donald Trump are locked in tight races in key swing states.

And I'm just wondering, has the race fundamentally changed here with the departure of Biden and with Harris then taking over in that role?

You know, the tricky thing about all this analysis is that, you know, I wish we could run the election in a lab experiment and simulate it and simulated under different situations and everything.

You could figure out, like what the different variables are like.

It's possible that if Biden stayed in the race, he still would have been able to consolidate the Democrats, and made this thing back into a 5050 race, although it's possible that he couldn't.

But what has indeed happened is that Harris is in, Biden is out, and Harris has consolidated Democrats in ways that, the party frankly needed to.

And Harris now is probably he leads in the national polls by some small degree and also seems to be leading basically in enough states to win the presidency.

But her leads are so small that I think the race is still, is still fairly characterized as toss up.

So in some ways, you know, you could argue that particularly in, you know, the depths that Biden reached after the first debate, that Trump had sort of moved into a leading position.

Now I think it's more 5050 and that we're looking ahead of the Democratic National Convention and whether and trying to answer the questions of whether Harris can improve our numbers a little bit more, because if she does, she might actually move into a favored position.

You know, as we get to Labor Day and Labor Day is typically the part, the time of the year where I think we start talking about the election and everybody starts getting involved, not just in political geeks.

Is it too early to be expecting that she could?

I mean, because Biden was losing to Trump in many key polls, is it too early to be talking about who's going to win this thing?

You know it very well.

Could be.

And you know, my sort of just basic I mean, we just have close elections.

The United States, generally speaking, we've seen, you know, this was set up to be a rematch between Biden and Trump.

now there's a new candidate, Harris.

But Trump is on the ballot for the third straight time.

I don't know if you'd expect Trump to do dramatically different than he did in 2016 and 2020.

I think you'd still expect to see the same basic patterns.

I think it was just going to be kind of another form of what happened in 2016 and 2020, and those both ended up being really close races in in the key states, the Electoral College, you know, Trump won Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by less than a point apiece.

And that was the difference between him winning and Hillary Clinton winning that that election.

and then in 2020, you know, the decisive states that that allowed Joe Biden to get to an electoral college majority were, you know, Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin.

Biden won all those states by less than a percentage point.

So I think we should expect this thing to remain close to competitive.

And even if Harris were to go ahead in the polls, you know, I wouldn't necessarily think of her as some sort of huge favorite, because, again, you could go back to 2016 and 2020 and find certainly large segments of that election where both Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden look like really significant favorites.

And that ended up being really close at the end.

So, I think we should just approach this with some caution.

But again, for Democrats who were despondent back in June and July, the situation does look better.

Is this really going to come down to those key swing states, which are primarily Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin?

Is it really going to come down to just those and specifically those blue wall states?

Yeah, I think so.

and I would add I would add a seven state to that in North Carolina.

That was, Donald Trump's closest win in 2020. and then those six other states were all Biden's closest win, states that he won.

But, where he did worse than his four and a half point margin, the national popular vote in, in 2020, you know, in our ratings, our electoral college ratings, you know, we have those seven states that, the six you mentioned are toss ups.

We have North Carolina's leans Republican, we have a single electoral vote in Nebraska's second congressional district.

Nebraska and Maine award, electoral votes by congressional district.

Every other state is winner take all.

And those are the only states we have an either Toss-Up or Leans, meaning the rest of the country we have rated as either likely or safe, Democratic or likely or safe Republican.

You know, when Biden was was at his weakest point, it looked like maybe New Hampshire was close, Minnesota was close, Virginia was close.

All states that where Biden did, you know, won by high single or even even low double digits in the case of Virginia.

but I think Harris has sort of stabilized the position in the states that weren't super competitive in 2020 and has really refocused the election again on these seven key swing states.

And maybe that single electoral vote in Nebraska's second district.

There are issues where voters say they prefer Trump.

Voters prefer Harris on other issues.

Which issues are going to be critical?

Is it still immigration in the economy, or are there other issues that are starting to come forward that you think are going to be key here?

Donald Trump still has an advantage, generally speaking, on the economy.

I think a lot of that was just kind of sour feelings about inflation.

now, Harris, you know, not actually being the incumbent may allow her to maybe distance herself from the administration's problems on that issue.

Of course, Republicans are going to they're going to do their best to try to not let her do that.

and, you know, immigration, Trump has a much bigger, a bigger advantage on, on that particular issue.

and I think we've seen that Democrats are kind of trying to move to the right to sort of address that particular issue.

I think the the tone of the immigration talk from Harris now is certainly different than what you would have heard during the 2020 primary season.

So, again, Republicans are going to try to pin her down to older positions that she has, and she's going to try to run as more of a, you know, as harder edge person on, border security.

and, you know, I think if the, if the election is really about people's sour taste, about the economy and immigration, that's great for Trump.

But there's all sorts of other issues, too.

I mean, abortion rights is a big advantage for Kamala Harris and the Democrats.

I think there continues to be kind of just sort of personal concerns that voters have about Donald Trump's fitness for office January 6th, and those sorts of things kind of play into that.

so it's, you know, our elections are yeah, they're based on issues, but a lot of them are kind of cultural, too, and personality driven.

And, you know, all of those things are going to go into people's choices.

And, you know, the voters who are truly persuadable.

Well, first of all, there aren't that many of them, although they do exist.

but also they don't pay as close of attention to politics as you and I and people watching this program generally do.

and so they're, they're really important, but they're also hard to reach.

And they might have sort of political views that, you know, again, the more the people who pay more attention to politics, they're usually like reliable Democrats, reliable Republicans, swing voters, they can go either way.

And they sometimes have a mix of political beliefs that, maybe don't make sense in terms of like where the parties are, but they make sense to those people.

And, they vote on lots of different, issues.

You know, one of the things that was a concern about Biden was just a bit too old to do the job, or a lot of people still felt that way.

Harris has her own set of problems, but she doesn't have that specific problem.

So that's, at least helpful to the Democrats that, Harris is just seen as sort of a more capable, energetic, person.

When you talk about people who have differing views on things, sometimes they're drawn to third party candidates.

The latest polls show that the third party candidate, specifically Robert F Kennedy Jr and Jill Stein, don't appear to be having as big a role in this campaign that some people were worried about.

Some people were very concerned about the spoiler roles that either of them could play.

Do you think that either of them are going to gain traction and potentially be spoilers?

well, look, it's it's still quite possible and actually probable that whatever share of the vote the third party candidates get in a given state will be larger than the margin of victory for either Harris or Trump in those states.

And you particularly think about, like, you know, a Wisconsin that was decided by less than a point in both 2016 and 2020. that said, I think that that third party candidates were sort of poised to play a bigger role in this election, in part because so many voters, maybe 15 to 20% of the electorate, had an unfavorable view of both major party candidates.

which was also true in 2016 with the Clinton versus Trump choice, and 6% of the whole electorate voted for Libertarian Gary Johnson, Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, or a variety of other options.

in terms of third parties.

But even then, you know, 6% of the electorate voted for third parties.

That means 94% stuck with the major party choice.

And what we see now is that Trump's favorability is actually a little bit better than it's been in the past.

It's it's, his unfavorable is like 7 or 8 points higher than his favorability, which is not good.

But it's also not like a double digit underwater gap, which is where Trump has been for a lot of time in his as a, as a, you know, major political figure, which is going on a decade now, really, in American politics and Kamala Harris, you know, her favorability was stuck in the high 30s or unfavorable was over 50 when she was, you know, just the running mate.

but she's improved that pretty markedly since she became a candidate.

Her favourability is still underwater, but generally only, like, probably like 4 or 5 points.

So there are some voters who have an unfavorable view of both candidates.

But very relatively few of them, particularly compared to 2016 and where this race was earlier in the cycle.

That removes some of the oxygen for the third party voters, because back in 2016, the lion's share of the people who voted third party were the people who had unfavorable views of both candidates, the so-called double haters.

There's just fewer of them now.

We see it in the polls.

You know, Robert F Kennedy Jr would sometimes hit double digits in polls.

Now he's down to more like 5%.

And to the extent he's taking support from major party candidates, it generally hurt Trump a little bit more than Harris, which is which is not necessarily how it was before.

and, you know, Jill Stein and Cornel West and Chase Oliver, the libertarian candidate, you know, where they're on the ballot.

They're they're I feel pretty confident saying they're going to get a percentage point or less.

So I would say at this point, I would think the total third party vote will be smaller than it was in 2016, but they'll still be present.

But they're they're definitely just just spoilers at this point.

When you talk about favourability and views of candidates, we're still learning about Harris's running mate, Tim Walz from Minnesota, the governor there.

And we're also, of course, in Ohio, very familiar with Trump's running mate, Ohio Senator JD Vance.

In this weeks crystal ball, there's this line.

It's worth noting that even the home state vice presidential bonus is disputed, let alone some sort of broader regional benefit.

We would also question a broader Midwest electoral appeal for the GOP nominee, Ohio Senator JD Vance.

You don't think JD Vance has broad Midwestern electoral appeal?

Well, I don't, and I wouldn't say that about Tim Walz either.

I just don't think that, the running mates really matter all that much.

You know, Trump, he had this interview a few weeks ago with the National Association of Black Journalists and he sort of kind of crassly said, hey, running mates don't really matter all that much electorally.

I think he was actually right about that.

some of the research backs that up.

You you can argue that sometimes there's a, there could be like a little bit of a home state bonus.

But of course, you know, hioh is not at the center of this election the way that it's been in the past.

it would be a big surprise if Donald Trump didn't win Ohio.

Likewise, Tim Walz for Minnesota.

that's a state that if a Democrat doesn't carry it, they're going to go down, defeat.

The Democrats have won Minnesota in every election going back to 19, 1976. although sometimes it's been close.

but if Harris needs a little boost from Walz in Minnesota, she's got much bigger problems.

And again, I just don't see there being some sort of, like, special appeal for either Vance or Walz.

in the Midwest, you know, Vance is roll out, I think it's fair to say has been rocky.

His, his unfavorable party in national polls is higher than his favorability.

was I'd say the jury is more out.

Part of it is he hasn't, you know, been around in the race as long as Vance has been.

His numbers are kind of lukewarm, you know, is maybe some polls will say is favorability slightly higher than it is on favorability?

Some of them show it basically mixed.

so I would I just would want to give it more time.

And of course, you know, Vance got picked on a Monday and then he was given his convention address on Wednesday.

You know, Walz has this longer lead up to his convention speech, the Wednesday of the Democratic convention.

so we'll see how that's received.

you know, I, I it's always the case the presidential candidate's speech is the most important.

And Kamala Harris will be giving that on Thursday.

But, ultimately, I just don't think their running mates make that big of a, big of a difference.

Let's talk a little bit about Ohio.

It used to be about whether you wrote a book about that as a matter of fact, as an Ohio native, it was a swing state as well.

I know Democrats are looking at all these and thinking, maybe Ohio is in a position to be either a bellwether or a swing state or both.

Again, do you see any evidence of that coming forward in any polls?

I don't really think so.

You know, there were some New York Times reporting, there's a really great article, I think is by Maggie Haberman.

Jonathan Swan.

last weekend, just looking at some of the turmoil, the Trump campaign since Harris got in and there was a little nugget in there about how some internal Republican polling had Trump presumably leading, but under 50% in Ohio.

I don't know if I would make all that much of that.

My guess is that Trump would still win Ohio by, you know, 5 to 10 points.

You know, maybe it falls a little bit outside of that range, but it was eight points in both 2016 and 2020. and, you know, it's it's kind of like when Biden was really struggling and we were talking about always like Virginia going to be a swing state this election.

you know, if Ohio were to fall into that position, that would, of course, broadly be really bad for Donald Trump, because if if Ohio was really competitive, presumably that would mean Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota were all, you know, clearly going Democratic for, for president.

So I really think that that's happening at this point.

but Ohio does have a lot, you know, a lot of interesting races going on beyond the top of the ticket.

Of course, the Senate race, one of the most important in the country.

And, you know, for Sherrod Brown, the fewer crossover votes he needs to get, you know, fewer Trump voters he needs to attract, the better he is.

Of course.

And that leads right into my next question.

Has all of this potentially changed the US Senate race?

We Brown has been leading in most polls, what few polls we've seen, but it's a it's a really tight race.

Yeah.

And look I mean you know, we're in an era where, it used to be very common for states to vote for one party for president, the other party for Senate.

Ohio had done that on, you know, numerous occasions in the past.

you know, you think back to like, Howard Metts and bomb winning reelection and in 1988, pretty easily over a then fairly young George Voinovich, just going way back into the history here.

but, but and that sort of thing used to be a lot more common than, than it is, than it is today.

and, you know, I think Sherrod Brown, I mean, polls indicate he is capable of generating that crossover kind of appeal.

It's just that the worry, I think, for Democrats would be that as the presidential race kind of solidifies, Moreno rises up to meet Trump where he's at in the polls.

And maybe Brown is able to get that kind of crossover support.

He's Brown seems to be holding his own based on the public numbers that we have.

but I think it's still pretty clearly a toss up kind of kind of race.

And that certainly explains why it was Senator Sherrod Brown has been saying he's not going to go to the Democratic convention.

You have other candidates in the congressional races that are tight.

Marcy Kaptur, Amelia Sykes, kind of distancing themselves a little bit from what was Biden now potentially distancing themselves from Harris?

Yeah, that's right.

I mean, it's it's it's a classic story.

You know, when you're a, an office holder in a district or a state that doesn't necessarily favor your party for president, you want to localize the race and the other party wants to nationalize the race.

I think we saw that that was a that was a very obvious kind of theme of the Tim Ryan JD Vance race in 2022.

Tim Ryan, I think, performed pretty honorably in that race, given, how the rest of the ticket won and Republicans won the other races in the state, by much more convincing margins that they advanced it.

Of course, Ryan was also the the strongest Democratic candidate on the on the entire ticket that year to, the Democratic statewide ticket in 2022.

But, you know, Kaptur is running in a district that Donald Trump won for president, merely cites is running in a district that Joe Biden won, but only by a few points.

you know, Sherrod Brown, will definitely have to carry both of those congressional districts in order to win statewide.

And in fact, just carrying them may not be enough for him to win statewide.

so I think that for for those House members, they want their numbers to look more like Browns numbers than they probably do by, Harris's numbers.

Although Harris probably would at least carry Ohio 13, the Akron can see that it is running.

And given that Biden won that as well, Ohioans will also be voting on a redistricting amendment to change the whole process of drawing lawmakers district lines.

After several years of litigation over the congressional and legislative district maps, do you think that that will have any effect on the race, and what do you think it would have, an effect if it does, you know, in a presidential year, you expect a presidential election to drive turnout?

and so I don't necessarily think they're going to be people coming out to vote on redistricting who would already be coming out to vote for president.

Is it is ultimately kind of a niche issue, even though it's a really important issue, how the lines are drawn, really can help determine the size of majorities and determine whether, the minority party in this case, the Democrats would have a shot of winning, a state legislative majority at some point in, in the, in the coming years, although even on the maps that this commission would draw, you'd expect Republicans to still be favored in the state legislature, just maybe not quite to the large extent that they are, that that they are now.

but, you know, ballot issues are, there's not great research that indicates that they really drive turnout.

Again, particularly in a presidential year.

Kind of the classic example of that from Ohio is the same sex marriage ban that voters approved in 2004.

And, you know, Republicans wanted that on the ballot.

I mean, of course, people's opinions about same sex marriage was way different and way more conservative 20 years ago than they are now.

but there's this sort of there was this sort of suggestion at the time that, oh, well, Bush won Ohio because gay marriage was on the ballot.

And I just that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.

in terms of the research that was done after the election, in Ohio, for lack of money, actually, this is kind of a kind of a wonky inside baseball way of looking at it.

But in the book I wrote about Ohio, I know, you know, Carrie, actually, by historical standards, John Kerry actually performed pretty well in Ohio in 2004. which, you know, doesn't suggest that Republicans had some sort of an unnatural advantage or something in the state because of the ballot issue.

So, you know, I don't know necessarily what the prospects of the registering issue are.

but I don't necessarily think it has a bearing on the other races.

Now, if it passes and there are new maps, that, of course, has bearing on the state legislature and the congressional maps for for 2026 and beyond.

And finally, overall, what's your feel of this race?

Is it feeling like 2016, 2020, 2008?

Does it have its own feel?

I mean, do you get any signs that, of nostalgia in looking around at what's been happening overall?

you know, I do really just think it's it's sort of it's sort of the end of the the Trump trilogy.

I guess if he loses, maybe he runs again in 2028.

But, you know, he's the he's the through line for all of these elections.

And Trump has had a tremendous effect on American politics and the way that people vote.

he has, you know, changed the his changing of America's political coalitions is change a political map.

You know, again, Ohio was this bellwether state, maybe at a slight Republican lead lean before Trump at the federal level.

You know, now it has a more significant Republican leaning.

The same thing is true of Iowa.

meanwhile, you know, a state like Virginia, a state like Georgia, state like Arizona, those states have, you know, become less Republican in the case of Virginia, actually Democratic leaning, there's this trade off in the electorate, that that Trump helped to sort of accelerate, and, and so, again, I think that I think we're, you know, 2024 to me is just but another version of, of the of these Trump elections.

Sabato Crystal ball has Ohio as a toss up in the U.S. Senate race, and is a safe Republican state in the presidential contest.

Republicans have won more than 80% of statewide elections since 1990.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State news.org or find us online by searching.

State of Ohio show.

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Look for it every Monday morning wherever you get your podcasts.

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

Okay.

This is.

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Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter Wright is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at porterwright.com.

Porter Wright inspired Every day in Ohio Education Association, representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at OHEA.org.