A group of concerned Republicans sent out a letter out on January 19th, expressing outrage over the actions of the twenty-two Ohio House Republicans that joined the Democrat Party in selecting the Speaker of the Ohio House. "The obvious conclusion is that these 22 turncoats are more aligned with the interests of the Democrat Party than they are with the majority of the Republican Caucus. In joining the unanimous selection of the Democrat Party these officials abandoned the voters who elected them to be their voice."
The full text of the letter is here.
We have been told that if you do not like how your representatives vote, then vote for new representation. In 2022, the State of Ohio did exactly that. We have 67 House members that won as Republicans, but instead of getting progress on the agenda items that matter to us, 22 members have decided that the majority of their peers are wrong and have instead become part of the Democrat Party! This must not be allowed to continue!
The Ohio Republican State Central Committee censured these individuals in the meeting on January 6, 2023. Hamilton County is "represented" by Bill Seitz and Cindy Abrams who were part of the minority of Republicans that went back on their word to support Derek Merrin after he won the vote of the caucus on November 16th. At the Hamilton County Central Committee Meeting on February 2nd there was a vote on a similar resolution of censure for the 22 Democrat aligned reps and an expression of No Confidence in Seitz and Abrams. We had 50 sponsors for this resolution but the final vote of the committee was 47 for and 78 against. (Some of the sponsors were unable to attend the meeting.) Abrams and Seitz spoke of their reasons for this maneuver - basically they felt left out of the process by Merrin and were going to lose their leadership positions and they felt that having a speaker that was termed out after 2 years was not desired. They continue to profess that "no deals were made with the Democrats" which is incredibly difficult to believe. We will see if any of the conservative agenda is advanced by this coalition with the Democrats.
The full resolution is available here.
