This is precisely why I value the measurement of corruption, which I talk about extensively in my book, The Gunfighter’s Guide to Business. For the last several weeks, people around me have been asking, “what is going on with our great Sheriff Jones” the Butler County figure that is internationally known for his support of President Trump. Suddenly he has thrown his support to Governor Mike DeWine and made a whole lot of other flip flop decisions that seem ultimately at odds with the MAGA movement. So there is a bit of a panic on the matter, which I have explained as a form of corruption that must be accounted for to understand the decision-making process of Sheriff Jones. Corruption isn’t always just about money, but in the case of Jones and DeWine, without a Trump in the White House, many in the Republican Party are drifting back into the cave of power for the sake of it, and that is why we are seeing rifts forming ahead of the Ohio primary coming up in May of 2022. Unless we have a way of understanding the nature of corruption, we would otherwise have no other means of comprehending these strange behaviors. Trump has at least three more years before he’ll have a chance to be back in the White House. Naturally, Jones must align himself to the world between now and then. Yes, he is perfectly willing to adjust his beliefs to the power void that has formed in Trump’s wake, and from his point of view, the smart money points at the current governor of Ohio, the most corrupt state in all of the United States, Mike DeWine.
As all this is going on, the challenging governor and my pick for the upcoming primary, Jim Renacci, is up 8 points over the incumbent DeWine. I had the opportunity to listen to Mike DeWine on many conference calls during the Covid mishap that his administration unleashed on Ohio. I have seen behind the veil just what an idiot DeWine was. I voted for him in the last election because he called himself a Republican. What I heard during the government-imposed shutdowns was a complete fool out of touch with reality. One moment in particular that impacted me was when I had to listen to Cedar Fair Amusements in May of 2020 try to explain their problem to DeWine about the trouble with not knowing when they could open their amusement parks because they had to hire, prepare their parks, and take all kinds of measures to get ready for a summer season that government had destroyed, and couldn’t give any guidance going forward. As a right-to-life governor, DeWine had put the pro-abortion Obama activist Amy Acton as head of his Health Department. She was running the state the way a stringy-haired pot-smoking hippie would run it, which was costing the business community billions of dollars during a lockdown over Covid that nobody could see the end of, especially Cedar Fair Amusements who ran a seasonal operation in two Ohio locations. It was worth hundreds of millions of dollars to them, and DeWine wouldn’t commit to anything to help them out. That was pretty much what DeWine said to everyone on those many teleconferences concerned over their businesses. His message was, we’re the government, and we’ll tell you when and what you can do and how long you can do it, and you’ll like it. Mike DeWine showed himself to be just as bad as the worst of Democrats during his first three years in office, and what he has done to Ohio will take decades to fix. So for me, it’s easy; Jim Renacci is the answer to the Mike DeWine debacles of the first term in office as governor. DeWine has been a disaster.
Sheriff Jones has been something of a thorn in DeWine’s side while Trump was in office. DeWine was one of the first in the country to attempt mask mandates leading all other governors to the mandate first, just as he did with lockdowns. Without DeWine, many other governors only fantasized about it. DeWine was the first to do it. He was also the first to unconstitutionally alter election laws which would then pave the way for massive cheating that the Democrats would perform later that year with mail-in voting to remove Trump from office before the courts could even process the assault. Sheriff Jones, who advertised himself as a “pro Trump” member of law enforcement, suddenly endorsed DeWine for governor after all that DeWine had done to Ohio. Why? Well, the first thing is that the DeWine money machine is kicking in. Corruption and DeWine are never far from each other, and Sheriff Jones is always attracted to a kind of power. I’ve known Sheriff Jones for several years and what’s most valuable to him is his brand. For instance, when his brand is aligned with the Trump White House, it’s a wonderful thing. But I’ve seen it negatively align with big government union business, especially in 2013 when he backed the Lakota school tax increase, which he put his name behind to get it to pass by the most narrow of margins. So the Sheriff isn’t always a hard conservative; he just plays one on TV and in public appearances. And with Biden in the White House for the foreseeable future and Jones up in years himself, he needs to protect his brand while the political world sets itself in a new reality.
What does Sheriff Jones like to do with his brand? Well, we have seen what he did to Thomas Hall, an Ohio Representative from Middletown who didn’t vote the way that the Sheriff wanted him to vote in Columbus, so the Sheriff used his name to berate the young man on WLW radio to thousands of people, personally attacking Thomas. Nobody elected Sheriff Jones to control other members of congress that we have elected to vote on our behalf. The Sheriff is supposed to take care of law enforcement concerns, not to dictate the terms of how other Republicans vote in our community by bullying them to his will. As a reaction to Thomas, the Sheriff went out of his way to put a primary candidate up against the Ohio Rep by dragging Matt King into the race, which naturally was pitting Republicans against Republicans on purpose for the intention of getting his way and making his point as being the “king maker” of the party, which put all kinds of people into a difficult position. Sheriff Jones didn’t care. He just wanted to show who had the power and what they had to do to kiss the ring to appease him, to hell what the voters of Butler County thought about the matter. That is why Jones had to align with Mike DeWine. Even though the governor is known to be attached to corruption, that power overflow gives Sheriff Jones the power to his brand that feeds his need to stay relevant as a man coming to the end of his career. Jones doesn’t have time to wait for Trump to be back in the White House. The need for power is always present, and DeWine is the quickest way to keep it.
Now, of course, Jones would never admit to any of this. I’ve spoken to dozens and dozens of people affected by this situation, and they don’t know what to think about it. They feel betrayed and don’t have the words to put to the matter. That is why I like corruption so much, because if we didn’t have some way to measure corruption, no matter what form it exists, we wouldn’t have a way to explain this behavior. From his big labor union perspective, everyone thinks they are doing right; Jones thinks he’s doing what’s right for the Republican Party. He’s a moderate at best, and Thomas Hall has turned out to be way too Trump for his taste, so he is taking action. DeWine loved the way Amy Acton’s hair smelled after she took a shower, so he gave her the keys to Ohio and let her destroy it. As a long-married guy who is a closet Democrat, DeWine thought Acton knew what she was doing, so he defended her against all those evil business leaders who were outraged that DeWine and Acton had closed them down over Covid. DeWine showed himself to be an idiot who thought he was doing right. That’s why we have elections so that when we learn these things about people, we can get rid of them with an option, in this case, Jim Renacci. But honestly, there is only one right, not the right that Sheriff Jones comes up with, or his new buddy, Mike DeWine. But in our Republic, for it ever to really stand, it takes the taxpayers and respect for their vote. If they pick Thomas Hall, it’s not for Sheriff Jones to decide otherwise. Or for DeWine to attempt to hide four years of horrible management of Ohio behind one deal from Intel worth 20 billion dollars and to ride it like a bucking bronco at a rodeo. Corruption seeks to hide its misdeeds behind a façade that, if you know what you are looking at, can tell you the truth about the matter and allow voters to understand who they are getting involved with. And that is why corruption is a lot better to understand than to pretend like it doesn’t exist at all.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 