Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

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More at OHEA.org It was 20 years ago when Democrats last held the governor's office.

We'll look back at the political climate then and now.

Ohio's sales tax holiday is this weekend.

And the language for state issue three has been approved.

We have all of that this week in the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Jo Ingles, in for the vacationing Karen Kasler.

Members of the Ohio Ballot Board have given the green light for the language for issue three, which ask voters whether they should have to show government issued photo ID for any in-person voting that's already required in state law before and on Election Day, and it has been since 2023.

But majority Republicans in the legislature say a law isn't enough.

by enshrining this language in the Constitution.

We are really setting a for so that future general assemblies won't be able to go backwards, Right now, an Ohio voter generally needs a state driver's license or ID card, a United States passport or passport card, or a military ID, and issue three would make that harder to change.

Democrats have generally come out against issue three, saying it could disenfranchized some voters, and is an effort by the Republican majority to boost turnout.

It's bad every Democrat voted against this in the House and Senate, The Pew Research Center found that more than 80% of Americans in 2025 were proponents of photo ID.

Ohio State and local sales tax free holiday is this weekend.

I talked with Tim Lynch, policy director at the Ohio Department of Taxation, about the details on this year's shorter and more limited holiday.

So it's the back to school sales tax holiday meaning that we are going to exempt items from sales tax when you go and make your purchases.

In this case this year it's going to be on items of clothing $75 or less.

And that's on each item.

So sure, it's pants, shoes, socks, all of that are included.

And then school instructional materials like workbooks $20 or less, and then school supplies $20 or less for each item.

Crayons.

Markers.

Pencils, paper, notebooks, binders, pens, those sorts of things.

Does this include other things other than school supplies?

I mean, in clothing, those are obvious things.

But are there other things that may be included to.

If?

No, it's going to be that.

I know in the past, the last two years, we had an expanded sales tax holiday, which pretty much covered everything except for automobiles and alcohol and tobacco and those types of items.

But this is just clothing, school supplies, and school instructional materials.

So this doesn't include stuff for the dorm.

It doesn't include the hamper, the sheets for the bed and all that stuff.

Unfortunately, not this year, but good news, Joe.

Next year, the General Assembly has authorized the expanded sales tax holiday to come back in August of 2027.

Okay.

You had mentioned the tax free holiday last year.

It was a lot longer.

Tell me about what's going on.

Why is it so short?

Why is it so limited?

Yeah, the General Assembly a few years ago authorized and expanded sales tax holiday for 2024 and 2025.

In 2024, it was ten days.

It was 14 days last year.

In 2025, that sunset goes back to the original back to school sales tax holiday that we discussed.

So it's going to run August 7th through ninth Friday, August 7th, starting at 12 a.m.

through Sunday, August 9th at 11:59 p.m.. Okay.

Last year, meals purchased in restaurants were tax free, and that seemed to be some confusion.

There was some confusion about that because restaurants, some restaurants were continuing to tax those meals and didn't seem very well informed about it.

Is that the reason this year that the meals are not included?

No, I don't think so.

I think it was just set up originally by the General Assembly to sunset after two years and reevaluate.

You know, I think in 2024 we had a lot of confusion, especially with our, our friends in the restaurant industry.

I think we ironed everything out last year for 2025 for that, and we're looking forward to it again in 2027.

Another thing that's been confusing is people who own small businesses.

They might think that this is the time to purchase, you know, something new, a computer, a thing like that.

But the computers really are kind of exempted.

You can't you can't get the the yeah, computers.

I don't think you're going to find a computer for under $20 this year.

But, you know, next year or last two years, it would have been a good time to purchase those items if they were under the dollar threshold.

But, you know, small businesses still office supplies that are, you know, under $20 an item.

It doesn't matter how large the bill is when you put all those pens and papers, especially for your printer, your printer paper, together.

But they will qualify if they are purchasing them.

It's for all Ohioans, not just specifically related to children going back to school.

You cannot get the sales tax break on layaway.

And if something isn't in stock at the moment and you come back later after the sales tax holiday to get it with a rain check, you don't get the tax break there and either, right, if you purchase it at the time through the seventh through the ninth, you will get it even if it's out of stock.

If you paid for it, it will.

You know, you pay that bill, you will get the sales tax holiday, the exemption on it, even if you're picking it up later.

Okay.

And so it would apply to layaway that that you've already paid on.

It would just apply to the the part that you pay for if, if you, if you paid for it at the time, Friday, Saturday or Sunday during the holiday, it would be exempt.

Okay.

What if you get charged sales tax for something and you get home and you realize that they charged you?

Is there a recourse for getting that money back?

Yeah.

Through our website Gov Highlands, if they feel that they should not have paid sales tax on an item that it should have been exempted, they can reach out to the department and file a refund request from the department, and the department will, if it qualifies, make that refund directly to the individual Ohioan.

And we should say this is good for internet purchases as well.

The one thing that caught me by surprise, though, is shipping and handling charges for eligible items are not taxable.

So normally, yeah, shipping and handling will apply as part of sales tax if it is on taxable items.

So if you are purchasing online or if people still use catalogs, not sure if they still do, but if there are shipping and handling costs associated with it, if it is on an item that is exempt, then that portion of the shipping and handling will also be exempt from sales tax.

Not everyone is on board with sales tax holidays like this one.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy says while they're often promoted as helping families deal with high costs, they provide little lasting benefit but drain money from state and local budgets.

The 2006 Ohio gubernatorial election was a historic landslide.

Democratic former Congressman Ted Strickland beat Republican Secretary of State Ken Blackwell by 24 percentage points.

It was the last time Ohioans elected a Democrat for governor.

Four years later, Republican Governor John Kasich was elected.

Joining me now to talk about the dynamics of that race, Joan McLean, professor emerita of politics and government at Ohio Wesleyan University.

Joan worked on the campaign staff for vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro in 1984.

She's followed Ohio politics for many years, sharing her political knowledge to many national news outlets, including The New York Times, ABC news, and with statewide outlets like ours.

I asked her about the 2006 race when Strickland won by a large margin.

Term limited Republican Governor Bob Taft was involved in a scandal, and Blackwell had been at the center of controversies, too.

And I think that the perfect place to start for the 2006 election is to see what happened in 2005 that put the Republicans at risk.

And so, as you mentioned, Governor Taft was accused of having forgot or not even paid attention to the filing government laws for campaigns where you have to report gifts above $75 unless you've reimbursed them.

He had gifts, some say, totaling about $6,000, and those gifts were for dinners and outings and golfing and taking tickets for games and things of that.

Now, it might sound petty, but that was the ethical requirement.

And when a governor breaks an ethical requirement, it's a big deal.

And it was a big deal then.

So he was charged with, I think, having like 52 gifts that fell into that category.

And he eventually did a no contest plea.

I remember that, and really, his punishment was pretty light, even from a Democratic judge.

He was fined for $1,000 and required to make a written apology to the citizens of Ohio.

So I think one thing to put in place there is the real impact it had was on his reputation and his name and his reputation and name, and of the Republican Party maybe doing a little bit too much quid pro quo, at least the media and the Democrats, of course, raise that issue.

Yeah.

So Ken Blackwell, he had served two terms as secretary of state.

He was he came along.

He was the GOP nominee eventually.

But he was not a likable candidate for governor.

Right.

Right.

Part of it, again, is going back to the 2004 election.

He got accused of partizanship.

He got accused of tampering a little bit with the elections and accused what I mean by that is here you are, the secretary of State in charge of running fair elections, and you become the co-chair of the presidential candidate at that time, George Bush's campaign, not exactly nonpartisan.

Yeah, well, I remember that.

Yeah.

And also, he decided to invest in Diebold, which was the voting machines at the time.

Again, not a good look for Secretary of state.

And finally, and we've had this since then as a secretary of state, he weighed in on a ballot issue.

Yeah.

So in many ways, he was not living up to his responsibilities.

And so that too added to this notion of what are the Republicans doing?

And then when he's trying to run for governor and the Republicans are also facing this coin gate scandal.

Oh, yeah.

Coin, Kate.

And in which public money was said to be taken by a Republican master fundraiser.

I'm no Tom.

No.

And maybe used because he was a big contributor to contribute to other campaigns, instead of that money being used to make more money for workers compensation or workers in the Workers Compensation Bureau of workers compensation.

Yeah.

So that's a lot of stuff.

And you can imagine, I think the Toledo Blade in particular went on at heart, all the media markets did to expose this.

What is this is this graft.

What's happening.

So this is where we enter then the 2006 election with the Republicans already angered some, especially Democrats, but some good government type voters like we don't understand.

You've been governing for so long.

Is it now time to make a change?

And there had been a bitter Republican primary that year between Blackwell and then Attorney General Jim Petro.

Blackwell had they had some bad blood, right?

Yes, yes.

Some of it petty, some of it what you expect sometimes in a intraparty fight.

Yeah.

There was some.

Accusations that Blackwell had accepted money from offices and groups that he had hired and through contracts or who were involved in the elections and the carrying them out.

So again, he plus those two other scandals began to paint a picture.

And so really, what the Republicans were losing was the image of being the right people at the right time to be still governing.

At least I Democrats would like them to think that.

But then this they were it with their own actions.

Yeah, yeah.

So on the other hand, Ted Strickland, he won the Democratic nomination that year pretty easily, right?

Yes.

Tell us about that.

Well, he was appealing.

He had been a member of Congress.

He was appealing in interesting ways to rural voters, to city voters, to moderate voters, in the sense that, you know, the picture we just painted of chaos.

He was calm.

Yeah.

The picture we just painted of ethics problems.

He had none.

And I like to think of you'll think this is a funny term.

Earth, wind and fire.

I love earth, wind and fire.

The band that this is what happens to candidates.

Is that the fire?

If you need a fiery candidate for a particular election, and their wind kind of reflects that, then they're the right person.

But this needed an Earth candidate whose wind was calm and consistent.

What a neat analogy.

So this is what we were dealing with, and I think people responded to his reputation, to his humbleness, to his strong faith.

He was a minister, to his representation in Congress, what he did there, it was always consistent.

And so contrast that with what we just talked about with Blackwell.

And it's pretty easy to see why the election was a landslide.

He was from southern Ohio.

He was folksy.

He would tell the stories about being on duck, duck Run where he grew up, or in chicken coop.

Yeah, living in a chicken coop.

I mean, a lot of people found him to be very relatable, right?

Yeah.

And you would think that would not play in city environments.

But he also was whip smart.

And because he had that congressional record on the issues, he just had to reintroduce himself as someone who could take that skill and bring it to Ohio.

Yeah.

And Strickland one oh everywhere I think about 60%, 60.5% of the vote.

And, you know, all across the state.

And he got massive margins in Cleveland.

That's important right?

That's important.

It was important then.

It's important now.

But we don't always get the same results now.

Yeah.

Especially among the black population There were four statewide issues on the ballot in that election.

One ban smoking in public places.

It was approved, as was an issue raising the minimum wage.

Two others were rejected.

One was sponsored by bars and restaurants that would have not allowed the ban on smoking in public places to go forward, but would have restricted smoking more than it was at that time.

And then the other one that lost was an issue to put slot machines at the racetracks.

Do you think that those issues had anything to do with Strickland's victory in that race?

Well, I think that they had.

They certainly could have attracted more union voters and attracted more lower income voters for the minimum wage.

And that by margins.

Did they add they make the difference?

No, but they did get people out.

Maybe people who don't always vote were attracted to the minimum wage, or were attracted to make sure that smoking did or didn't.

I think it probably spent 5050 on that one.

Didn't happen.

So yes, on the margins, because it attracted those type of voters.

That was a period of time where there was a blue wave of sorts, mostly at the statewide level.

We hear of a national blue wave right now, but there's nothing that I've seen that suggests the headline.

The headwinds in Ohio are strong for Democrats right now.

What comparisons are you seeing between then and now?

Well, the universe was different.

Yeah.

In 2006, what can you take from 2006 and apply it now when it talks about a blue wave?

And I would say right now, not much, because from week to week, sometimes day to day, we don't know what the election is going to look like.

Some people don't even know if we're going to have an election, you know.

And so to extrapolate too much, I think isn't helpful, except that the structures there, the structure is that we don't have an incumbent running for governor because of the term limits.

What we do have is two candidates, neither of which have held political office before so but are known to voters.

And we'll have to see how that is.

And then we have Brown, who actually was on the ticket in 2006, and he defeated our current governor, DeWine, when he was a senator.

And now we have him as the challenger to an incumbent senator.

So there's some structural things that are there.

It's a midterm election.

But I don't think because of the craziness around the election process right now and voting threats to voting, changing voting, dairy, Mandarin, that we can take too much from 2006 and apply it now.

Scandal?

Maybe.

Scandal.

Yeah.

Well, you mentioned Sherrod Brown and Mike DeWine and being on the ballot against each other.

Sherrod Brown won 56 to 44% in that race.

There was the national scandal involving Republican Congressman Bob Ney, who had some Ohio ties at that time, and DeWine had supported President George W Bush support for a very unpopular war.

We see, you know, now that the Ramasamy has ties to the current Trump administration.

Trump has endorsed President Trump has endorsed Vivek Ramaswami.

Are there parallels between the candidates and the relationships with others in government that could affect an outcome?

Yes, I think those are going to be.

I mean, we have another war, too.

We do have another war.

We have another war.

War.

And it's unpopular.

It is.

And we have a president who is more likely to interfere at the state and local level than we've really seen before.

So those could play in all kinds of different ways.

So a Trump endorsement during this primary season has seemed to have been a very good thing.

As we get closer to the midterm elections, the electorate turn a little bit.

And so what the closeness is could be a positive, could be a negative.

By the time we get into the voting booth and we just won't know.

We won't know.

We won't know.

We get hints.

You know, you can go on the cook report and see where the rating or the House members in the Senate, you can go to poly markets and see who's betting on which candidate to win.

Poly markets was a better indicator of winning in our last election because there's money involved I guess.

How ironic.

Right?

Yeah.

So I just think that we have to be so careful.

There's so many things.

What would be similar scandal voting concerns?

You know, Blackwell had that problem.

We were concerned there were votes not counted.

There were over votes counted.

There were long lines.

Long lines.

And poor neighborhoods probably have more of an impact because they may not have the time to invest in staying.

One line was said to be 12 hours.

In 2006.

Yeah.

So that fundraising irregularity.

Yeah, we're going to have fundraising irregularities and look at the landscape on what you get to give money to and who gets to give it.

Corporations being treated as individuals and now being able to actually coordinate with candidates.

So that's going to happen.

I think the voters were angry in 2006 that they weren't being heard and represented, and I think the same now, but I fear that that anger is turning into fatigue.

You know, is there going to be the sense that epoxy on both your houses?

Oh, yeah.

Well, that could be and if that it's the case, then turn out becomes even more magnified.

Well, that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

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Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

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

More at Porter Wright.com.

Porter Wright.

inspired every day.

And from the 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