COLUMBUS — A pair of Republican state lawmakers on Tuesday called for slamming the door on foreign dollars funding Ohio ballot issue campaigns, a reaction to last year's reproductive rights fight in which money from a Swiss billionaire may have helped to fund the “yes” side.
“The Sixteen Thirty Fund, associated primarily with Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, has contributed significantly to Ohio races,” Sen. Rob McColley (R., Napoleon) said. “The Sixteen Thirty Fund, in an Associated Press article just last year, was noted to have received $200 million since just 2016 from Hansjorg Wyss.”
He said the entity spent $13.2 million last year on Ohio ballot issues. The Washington-based “dark money” nonprofit was a major financial supporter of Issue 1 that etched a right to abortion access in the Ohio Constitution.
The just-introduced Senate Bill 215 would require ballot campaigns to be political action committees, with its officers attesting under penalty of perjury that the campaign has not received money from foreign nationals. The definition of a foreign national would be expanded compared to federal law to include permanent U.S. residents who are not citizens.
“We don't allow non-citizens to vote. Why would we allow non-citizens to influence our elections?” said Sen. Theresa Gavarone (R., Bowling Green), a bill sponsor with Mr. McColley.
It is already illegal for foreign nationals to contribute to political candidate's campaigns.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose, the state's chief elections officer and currently a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, proposed a variation on this proposal two weeks ago. This bill does not include everything he proposed, and Ms. Gavarone said she had not worked with him in drafting this bill.
Catherine Turcer, executive director of government watchdog Common Cause, said the bill does not go far enough to address weaknesses in Ohio's campaign finance law.
“The idea of banning foreign influences in our elections makes complete sense,” she said. “The challenge that I have is what is being proposed only addresses ballot measures and, unless we have better transparency in our whole campaign finance system, it's really hard to catch misdeeds.”
The Ohio Elections Commission would enforce the law.
The senators said they made the Sixteen Thirty Fund an example because its connection with Mr. Wyss has been widely reported. It is common, as demonstrated with three ballot issues last year, for money to come into Ohio campaigns from outside the state.
The senators declined to say how far back into the contribution chain a review could go in determining whether money funding a ballot issue campaign originated from outside the United States. For instance, would the Catholic Church, a major supporter of the effort to defeat the abortion constitutional amendment, have to demonstrate it had not received money at some point from the Vatican?
“The Catholic Church is not solely in the United States,” Ms. Turcer said. “Where did that money come from?”
In addition to the campaign phase, the prohibition would also apply to funds used to gather signatures to put a question on the ballot in the first place.
Former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges are currently serving 20 years and five years, respectively, on federal racketeering conspiracy convictions. They stemmed from a bribery scheme that at least partly involved efforts to kill a petition effort for a ballot campaign that could have subjected a $1.3 billion nuclear plant bailout law to voter repeal.
FirstEnergy Corp. and a then subsidiary that owned the plants were able to secretly funnel millions into that effort because Ohio law does not require certain nonprofit corporations to disclose the sources of their funding.
“It's now 2024,” Ms. Turcer said. “Larry Householder was arrested in July of 2020. We have adequate evidence that we need greater transparency and need to do something about dark money.”
First Published January 23, 2024, 11:23 p.m.
