Must-See Movie Review: Ohio Confidential – Expose Of Corruption In Local Politics – Bribery Legalized By SCOTUS – Part 2 of Dark Money Game Docuseries

Must-See Movie Review: Ohio Confidential – Expose Of Corruption In Local Politics – Bribery Legalized By SCOTUS

If you know anything about politics, by now you’ve heard of Citizens United.  In terms of freedom and equality, along with an equal footing for small and big businesses, this court ruling destroyed much of what made America great: politicians who couldn’t be bought by big business – or at least not openly and legitimately.  

Enter the conservative majority Supreme Court.  As discussed previously, and explicated in greater detail in part 2 of this series The Dark Money Game, this decision answered a question that was not before the Court: can the government regulate money being donated to political campaigns? The answer, in a disastrous decision, made bribery of politicians, including the newly minted and popularized term ‘primarying,’ when a big donor pours money into a rival campaign to unseat the incumbent, the normal and acceptable state of affairs.  According to CU and a later decision renaming rewards for political help gratuities, there was no such thing as political bribery, though it can be recognized as completely commonplace to anyone with a conscience and sense of justice.  

It also answers a question many of us have asked in recent years: Why do politicians always seem to vote against their constituents’ openly stated and obvious wishes.  The starkest and among the strangest stories to come out of this new political landscape played out in Ohio.  Rural, unassuming Ohio, whose facade hides one of the most openly corrupt local governments America has ever seen.  

We begin with the death of a prominent, well-known campaign finance individual.  This person facilitated lobbying.  You may know what this is, or you may have only the vaguest sense.  Lobbying is different from campaign finance only in its necessity to be recorded.  Lobbying isn’t always tied to an election. It can occur any time.  Whereas campaign finance is money donated by anonymous donors to a politician’s campaign for election.  In both types of money exchange, something is expected in return.  However, in campaign finance, this return on investment, as it were, is hidden from the American public.  If you want to know how much a politician received in lobbying funds from a particular company or individual, it’s public information.  With campaign finance, however, it’s very different.  The donors are completely hidden to all but the purchased politician.  

Enter Larry Householder. Ohio state representative in the 72nd district, elected Speaker of the House in his state.  Long time politician.  And perhaps the most corrupt person to ever hold public office- at least of those who ever got caught.  So what did he do exactly?  

Multiple things as it turns out.  First, he introduced and passed a near total abortion ban.  This ban led to the front page nationwide news of the 10 year old Ohio girl who was raped and had to leave the state to get an abortion for the pregnancy that resulted.  This was in opposition to about 80% of state residents who were in favor of keeping abortion legal. Against their wishes and over their protests, this law was passed.  It has since been defeated using that state’s Reproductive Freedom Amendment, passed overwhelmingly by the state’s residents in 2023. 

The next thing this politician did was to make a beautiful bill that would benefit ONE company, a nuclear power plant in Ohio. The nuclear power plant company not only helped Householder get elected, but they also paid him a bonus after the bill was passed.  This also became legal under a different Supreme Court case, as long as it was called a gratuity.  So politicians could be bribed to do what companies want, then they can even pay them for their good work doing what their donors who represent business interests want. 

The law was passed.  However, people in Ohio were not happy.  This bill clearly benefited one company, giving them millions of dollars.  It also clearly was corruption.  But the Supreme Court decision made this type of corruption legitimate.  

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The people of Ohio didn’t stop complaining.  They were able to start a petition for a referendum that would have put the question on the ballot for voters to decide whether the law benefiting the nuclear power plant stayed or was repealed.  And that’s where the FBI came in.  As the campaign to sign the petitions was underway, one of the lead organizers was approached by a political friend of his. He was asked to give over sensitive information about the status of the petitions in exchange for an undisclosed but substantial sum of money.  The person the request was made to called the FBI. 

This was the start of the largest corruption scandal case in Ohio’s history.  Fake donors were sent to the campaign finance director in order to get on tape the bribes offered.  Most important, though, were the conversations between the petition organizer and the politician who tried to bribe him.  He gave them fake information about their numbers and neighborhoods, all the while doing his very best to get the required 200,000 signatures needed to get the bill before the people.  

But then the ads started.  Blatant lies and half truths, even going so far as to accuse those knocking on doors of absolute malice.  Of course, with people believing advertisers as though they aren’t there to lie and manipulate, the signature campaign failed.  They weren’t even close.  But this story wasn’t over there.

As the investigation concluded, Mr. Householder and his co conspirators were charged with fraud and racketeering.  The case resulted in 20 years for Mr. Householder and five for the accomplice politician doing the bribing of the signature collector. 

Perhaps most astonishingly: as this all played out, another election came.  Despite the scandal and pending sentencing, and due heavily to gerrymandering, Larry Householder won once again.  For those who don’t know, gerrymandering is the practice whereby the political party that won the last race can redraw the districts to make it even more likely they will win once again.  The districts are redrawn in order to give more voice to the supporters of the winning party while at the same time further marginalizing those who lost the election. This practice explains why the same parties, who are disliked by their constituents and ignore their wishes, keep on winning.  They stack the deck so to speak.  It’s not even actually legal, but it becomes de facto legal.  

In this instance, the party was sued and ordered by the court to redraw the districts in a more fair manner.  They came back with the same map.  They just kept making worse maps, ignoring the orders of the court, until the election was very close. At that point, the court had to choose to hold the election with the garbage unfair maps or to cancel the election.  They chose to hold it, and this is the election won by Householder. The map issue still hasn’t been resolved, and it’s unlikely to change.  

So while Ohio has a somewhat liberal population, they have a staunchly Republican slate of elected officials. These politicians are beholden to their donors, not the people they serve, and they’re completely corrupt.  The next Larry Householder has already been elected, and may even be more corrupt than his predecessor.  But when bribery is legal, when corruption is accepted, and when gerrymandering is the rule rather than the exception, you get what you have in Ohio: a political class that ignores its constituents in favor of its corporate sponsors.  This serves to marginalize the people of that state, giving them no voice, while politicians make campaign promise after campaign promise they have no intention of keeping.  

This is a Must-See movie, and I would give it five stars:

Banner Image: Ohio Confidential splash screen. Image Credit – The Dark Money Game / Warner Bros Entertainment