Issac Adi: The Superstar of Lakota

I’ve been a fan of Issac Adi, the very bright star within the Lakota school district running for the school board. He’s talented, smart, hardworking, extremely likable. He’s just a beautiful person in all the ways anybody could hope.  But I was wondering if it was just me who thought that way.  After all, I’ve been hoping for good conservative candidates to run for the Lakota school board for years.  And when we did get them on the school board, the current board would assassinate them in radical ways to get rid of them.  However, I learned just how well-liked Issac Adi was at a recent GOP event where many top-level office holders attended to speak and celebrate the fall ahead of the upcoming election.  Usually, when these kinds of big GOP events start, current officeholders are announced for recognition, and when they called out Issac’s name, the whole crowd erupted into applause.  People knew Issac and were cheering him on for a position that may be one of the most demanding offices to penetrate with Republican representatives in the state, the Lakota school board.  Issac was doing well, and people see that he is one of the brightest hopes yet of properly managing Lakota’s school board that we’ve had in years. 

The GOP has endorsed candidates before, but mainly in the past, school boards were considered non-partisan as schools were supposed to be above and beyond politics.  Schools were always supposed to be for the children, and the school board members ideally would always put kids first and their family’s needs as priorities.  I know many administrative roles in public schools, and they aren’t blatant Marxists looking to overthrow America.  But the teacher’s unions are, and they run the schools, all public schools.  And by default, when one side tries to play nice, and the other side wants to play with every dirty trick in the book to win, guess who has the advantage?  I was at a recent school board meeting with Lakota’s board, and I listened with great pain at the excuses for Covid quarantines causing work stoppages and how intrusive the masks were.  The superintendent at Lakota isn’t a crazy radical. Still, he does try to make everyone happy, and there is no other way to make anybody happy because of the teacher’s union’s demands.  They want progressive causes like mask mandates implemented, and if they don’t get their way, they will make life miserable for everyone. 

I was thinking of what a positive person Issac is after watching him getting his picture taken with Jim Jordan of Ohio.  Jordan is an international celebrity because of some of the disputes he has been involved in over the years, and oddly as it might seem for a school board candidate, but Issac looked very much at home with Jim Jordan.  It was easy to see Issac in a dispute with the LEA union without things getting to the point where everyone left that evening angry at each other.  Jordan has a skill where he is a likable person even when he’s arguing with someone.  That is a skill missing on the Lakota school board since I started paying attention to it decades ago.  Issac has the presence of a superstar, and his likability personally rubs off on everyone.  Issac would be uniquely qualified to ease tensions instead of exacerbating them when dealing with some of these problematic school business issues.  It was apparent when Issac was around high-profile politicians that he had the same skills, which is something to get excited about.

As ugly as politics can sometimes get, that event where Issac Adi and Jim Jordan were both at was a friendly reminder of what is possible in politics.  Regarding Lakota, the teacher’s union has made doing any business with the public school such a miserable experience.  But when you take a break from the arena and take some time to have a nice meal together and enjoy a sunset, the GOP in Butler County is such a tremendous asset to the community.  Most of Butler County, where Lakota schools are located, is populated with Republicans.  The goal of the teacher’s union is to take all they can for their members and to turn more children of Republicans into Democrats, which is why they want to mask mandates, same-sex bathrooms, and start sex education in the 3^rd grade.  Then they want infinite amounts of money spent on their unionized employees and impose more tax on properties to pay for it.  Only the best of any person could have the will to deal with them.  Yet it is because of events like the GOP gathering we had recently in Monroe, Ohio, that puts in place so many good officeholders, and it’s exciting to see that Issac Adi will be one of them. 

When I talk about politicians, I often talk about their shelf life, the amount of time it takes the system to grind people down from hopeful managers into spit out garbage.  Then, term limits should remove them from office, but all too often, we will get another two decades out of officeholders that stay in those positions.  But in Butler County, we’ve managed to get many good officeholders through a lot of community engagement. I’ve watched them come into the office and do great work for a long time while still having shelf life left in their lives.  Issac has quickly found a home among the GOP and has embraced it so authentically that it will only continue the great reputation that the Butler County GOP already has for a track record.  People like Jim Jordan don’t and can’t come to every event they are invited to.  Neither can Frank LaRose.  But that they come to Butler County often says so much about how important the region is on the stage of national politics.  People like Issac Adi keep that prospect fresh on everyone’s minds as the GOP grows into the future. 

Best of all, Issac is not a phony, and there isn’t any temptation of him becoming one.  That is another trait of Butler County office holders that is a recent trend.  I wouldn’t have been able to say the same thing ten years ago, but I can say it today.  I can’t think of many politicians in Butler County who are phonies, and I would attribute that top to bottom to the structure of the Republican Party.  From the donors to the ground walkers.  When everyone gets together as we did on that night Issac Adi and Jim Jordan took a picture together, the world is easy to see that it’s worth fighting for.  And when so many good people get together in one place, the problems are much easier to see in all their purity.  Once the conflict with a teacher’s union starts making things murky, at least we can know that people like Issac won’t be pushed off by themselves to be ridiculed by the union activists.  He has a support system that is a relatively new thing and combined with his great personality; he will help make that Lakota school board something special instead of the monstrosity it is today.  But it all starts with a rising new star, and for all our benefit, Issac Adi is there, shooting across the sky, and I look forward to what the future that comes from him shows to the world. 

Rich Hoffman