Insight: Speaker’s views on DEI, marijuana, labor, CHIPS Act
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By Andrew Tobias | Signal Statehouse
OHIO – Ohio House Republicans picked their next speaker nearly two weeks ago. Heading into the closed-door meeting for the vote, Tim Barhorst’s allies were hoping he would win.
But the Shelby County Republican didn’t get a single vote. He wasn’t even nominated, which allowed Matt Huffman, the odds-on favorite to begin with, to win unanimously.
Here’s a quick look inside the unusual vote and what it might mean for everyday Ohioans.
Behind the door of the closed-door meeting
Barhorst arrived with a printed speech. But he never ended up giving it.
During the portion of the meeting to nominate leadership candidates, Phil Plummer, a Dayton Republican, nominated Huffman, according to people who attended. Jim Hoops, the House Republican overseeing the voting process, then asked if there were any other candidates. He waited for a while. Nobody spoke up. So voting closed and Huffman won unanimously.
In an interview, state Rep. Ron Ferguson, a Wintersville Republican who was a vocal backer of Barhorst’s bid for speaker, said he wasn’t involved with nominating Barhorst, so he couldn’t explain what happened. In messages to Signal Statewide, Barhorst chalked the episode up to miscommunication.
“We had a few nominators that were running late to the caucus meeting,” Barhorst said. “We had to shuffle the nominators, and nominations were closed before they knew what happened.”
Instead of nominating himself, he decided to concede.
Now, Barhorst said he plans to meet with Huffman sometime after Thanksgiving to hash out their policy differences.
“We both want the same thing as far as Republican caucus unity,” Barhorst said.
What policies Ohioans could see coming from the new speaker
If all goes according to plan, the vote means that Huffman will take over as Ohio House speaker in early January, taking the gavel from current Speaker Jason Stephens when the new legislative session begins.
The transition will put an end to two years of insider drama that began when Stephens became speaker in January 2023, thanks to a deal he made with House Democrats.
It also could have real-world policy implications. Here are a few examples of policies Huffman could end up moving once Stephens, who decided this month to drop his bid to keep his leadership job, is sidelined.
A top candidate is Senate Bill 83, a bill targeted at what Republicans describe as “woke” elements in state university administration. The bill would dismantle most Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs, require universities to create a mandatory American history class and create policies meant to prevent perceived liberal bias in classrooms, among other provisions.
The bill is a top priority for Senate Republicans, who approved it in May 2023 after numerous revisions. It’s stalled in the House, though. A House committee approved a revised version last December. But Stephens has never scheduled a vote from the entire House.
Huffman also is a vocal supporter of spending state tax money on private schools. The 2023 state budget bill, which Huffman and Stephens negotiated, lifted income caps on vouchers, leading the state to spend an extra $1 billion paying for kids to attend private school. Huffman could expand on this by backing a program to create education savings accounts for students or by expanding a program that spent about $5 million on private school buildings, for example.
Stephens, meanwhile, was skeptical of these policies – not enough to block them, however – a nuanced stance that explains how he got support from the Ohio Education Association, a large teachers’ union, while provoking a pro-privatization group that helped bankroll Huffman’s ascension to speaker.
Lawmakers could revisit Ohio’s marijuana laws
Another topic a Huffman-led House could end up tackling is marijuana. Huffman has talked about changing state marijuana laws since even before voters approved recreational use in November 2023. Huffman allies say that Stephens effectively blocked that from happening by putting Rep. Jamie Callender, a legalization advocate, in charge of negotiating the topic on the House side.
Ways that lawmakers could change the law include limiting marijuana product potency and changing what the state does with the taxes assessed on marijuana sales. Huffman’s selection also could dislodge a proposal backed by Gov. Mike DeWine to ban delta-8, the “diet weed’ synthetic THC products available in convenience stores. Talks on the subject have stalled since they were wrapped up in the broader topic of marijuana regulations.
One general subject to watch is any issue touching on organized labor. Stephens got his job with help from the state’s labor unions, which helped broker the support from Democrats. Huffman is a former supporter of a proposal to weaken prevailing wage laws, which require governments to pay union-scale wages on construction jobs and are backed by the state’s building trade groups.
Chips are down
Intel Corp. announced on Tuesday it had reached final terms with President Joe Biden’s administration to receive $7.86 billion from the federal CHIPS Act law passed in 2022, including to help build the company’s multi-billion dollar plant in New Albany.
The number is lower than the $8.5 billion the Biden administration originally announced, which the company said accounts for a $3 billion federal contract the company got from the Pentagon.
DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted spiked the football in a statement that also alluded to concerns the project might be in jeopardy due to Intel’s broader financial woes.
“The work to build the Silicon Heartland now moves forward with even more certainty, advancing our economic and national security to the benefit of the working people of Ohio and America,” DeWine and Husted said.
Signal Statewide is a nonprofit news organization covering government, education, health, economy and public safety.
