Explore every episode of the podcast Snollygoster | Ohio's Politics Podcast

It was what Ohio Democrats longed for and what Ohio Republicans dreaded. The blue wave crashed ashore and swept Amy Acton over Vivek Ramaswamy in the bitter race for governor.

Just one more weekend of muting political ads during football games and Jeopardy. Just a few more days for candidates to travel the state in their fancy buses to try to get their voters to cast ballots.

It has been an extraordinarily ugly week in an already extraordinarily ugly campaign for governor.

According to the RealClear Polling average, Sherrod Brown has a 3-point lead, and Amy Acton has a 4-point lead over Vivek Ramaswamy. The races are still toss-ups in a state that has been very solidly red for 10 years.

Two new polls show Amy Acton has a lead in the race for governor. A Suffolk University poll conducted for USA Today shows her with a 9-point lead over Vivek Ramaswamy, 50% to 41%.

Gasoline prices have fallen a bit over the past week. Here in Columbus, they have gone down from $4.50 a gallon to about $4.30 a gallon, so a 20-cent drop. Come next week, they will drop at least another 38.5 cents because Ohio lawmakers this week passed a suspension of the state's gasoline tax.

This week, the leading crypto political action committee, Fairshake, said it plans to spend at least $30 million to support Sen. Jon Husted and oppose Brown.

We have a new poll to give us an idea of where Ohio voters' minds are as we approach the start of early voting. It is hard to believe, but Ohioans start casting ballots in about two and a half weeks.

Ohioans will vote on whether to put in the constitution a requirement that Ohio voters show a photo ID before they can cast a ballot. It is Issue 3 on the ballot.

The race for Ohio governor is heating up.

The Democrat running for governor is doing her best to stay away from any kind of socialist label. She has taken some moderate stances in recent weeks.

What lessons can Ohio Democrats, or Ohio politicians in general, learn from Abdul El-Sayed's far-left progressive victory in that state's Senate primary?

Emily Moreno, in court filings, accuses Miller of physically abusing her and their 2-year-old daughter. Miller denies the allegations and says his ex-wife has mental health issues.

Next to rising gas prices and grocery prices, property taxes have loomed as the symbol of affordability in Ohio. Thanks to rising property values and voter-approved levies, property taxes have risen sharply in Ohio over the last few years.

With an open governor's seat and control of the U.S. Senate at stake, candidates running for major office in Ohio this year are attracting lots of donations.

This week, we discuss the race for the U.S. Senate and Sherrod Brown’s slightly risky new ad, where he takes on Jon Husted and data centers.

WOSU hosted a Politics and a Pint event last week. These events are a lot of fun. We get together at a Columbus-area brewpub and talk politics in front of a crowd of political junkies and public media fans.

DeWine’s change in position seems little more than symbolic. Republican leaders in the Legislature support the death penalty. There is no movement ready to put it on the ballot.

Gov. Mike DeWine has come out against Ohio’s death penalty. This week, the conservative Republican governor, who co-sponsored the bill that reinstated capital punishment in 1981, said Ohio should abolish it.

The effort to abolish Ohio property taxes has failed – at least for now. The group collecting signatures to put an amendment on November’s ballot says it has fallen short of the number needed to qualify.

For weeks, DeWine has faced criticism from his fellow Republicans over allegations of widespread fraud in the state’s Medicaid system. It started with a report in the conservative outlet The Daily Wire, which accused home health agencies of fraudulently billing the system that pays for healthcare for low-income and disabled people.

For the first time in eight years, Ohio will have a new governor. It will be someone from outside government: tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who briefly ran for president, or Amy Acton, who served in government for about a year.

The candidates are set for Ohio's general election in November. There were no big surprises in this week’s primary.

An important election is just around the corner. Ohio will elect a new governor and decide who will represent the state in the U.S. Senate. A new poll provides a snapshot of what voters are thinking, and the results are interesting.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy is out with a new ad where his wife shows off their new baby. In another ad, he goes after Democrat Amy Acton for her role in the COVID-19 shutdowns.

We look back at a time when Ohio was blue politically, or at least purple. We talk with longtime Democratic activist Dale Butland, who worked for U.S. Sen. John Glenn and has a new book out When Ohio Was Blue.

The 2028 presidential campaign likely will start about a year from now, but Democrats are not waiting to take on a likely candidate: Ohioan and Vice President JD Vance.

JobsOhio is in the news not because of a big new project, but because of the role, however small, it played in the sudden resignation of Ohio State University President Ted Carter.

As electric bills rise and data centers start to encroach upon suburbs and farmland, politicians are hearing from voters and starting to ask if data centers are worth it.

While its end was unusual, Ted Carter’s tenure may not be all that uncommon. The job has always been difficult, but it seems to be increasingly challenging. To examine the politics of being a college president, Josh Moody, reporter for Inside Higher Ed, joins the show.

Ohio’s congressional delegation largely split along partisan lines in reacting to the attacks on Iran. Vice President JD Vance once strongly said the US should not get involved in endless wars, but supports the president in this case.

Les Wexner answered questions from members of the House Oversight Committee for about five hours about how much he knew about the sex offender and what role he may have played in Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking.

University officials say they are considering all the facts, and they have a process to consider the requests to remove Wexner’s name from the medical center, the arts center, and the football complex.

The Tax Foundation says Ohio has the eighth-highest effective property tax rate in the country. Some residents are fed up. Citizens for Property Tax Reform member Beth Blackmarr joins the show.

AEP seemed to survive the storm pretty well, at least in Ohio. But the utility made news when Governor DeWine mentioned his administration is trying to keep AEP's headquarters in Ohio. The company is looking to possibly move out of its 31-story headquarters in Columbus.

It has been an eventful year for the Trump–Vance administration. We’ve focused more on Trump than Vance, but Vance has been more visible than many vice presidents.

Protests continue in Minnesota and across the country. Here in Central Ohio, there is no sign of intense ICE activity, but detentions continue. Ohio State students protested the school, including the Border Patrol, at its career fair this week. Officials continue to warn protesters not to get in the way of any enforcement activity.

The new year started with a firehose-like stream of political news. Venezuela, ICE activity, the tragic shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis and false daycare fraud claims in Ohio have dominated the news.

A new poll from Emerson College in Boston shows some interesting trends that likely give Ohio Democrats hope and give Republicans pause.

The public authority that owns the arena says it needs 400 million dollars—more than double the original cost—to renovate it. And it’s looking for taxpayers to pick up much of the tab.

Tim Ryan, the former congressman, former presidential candidate and former U.S. Senate candidate said he will not run for governor.

President Trump campaigned on releasing the Epstein files and then refused to do so. He tried hard to persuade Congress to drop its demand to release them, but he failed. Then, the president reversed course and told Republicans in Congress to vote to release the files.

To examine the implications of the Democrats’ wins and look at how Ohioans voted on higher taxes for government services, we welcome our panel of experts: Statehouse reporters Laura Bischoff, of the USA Today Ohio Bureau, and Jo Ingles, of Ohio Public Radio, as well as Democrat Jo Mas and Republican Mike Miller.

For those of us tired of talking about redistricting, we’re happy. The Ohio Redistricting Commission has approved a bipartisan map and the issue appears settled for six years. But we might be the only ones who are happy.

We have a good snapshot of how Ohio voters are feeling, a year out from the election that will decide the governor’s office and Congress. Bowling Green State University is out with its latest poll.

For homeowners worried about skyrocketing property tax bills, a radical solution is gaining traction, but experts warn that abolishing these taxes could cause Ohio's income tax to increase drastically.

There’s no sign of a compromise in the government shutdown. Democrats in the Senate are blocking a funding bill, demanding that Republicans agree to reverse looming Medicaid cuts and extend Obamacare health insurance subsidies.

It’s a Politics and a Pint edition of Snollygoster. As we did in August, we gathered about 200 of our closest friends at Seventh Son Brewing in Columbus, where we talked politics while enjoying craft beers.

The murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk fueled a lot of hyperbolic rhetoric and some serious consequences.

It has been more than a week since an assassin shot and killed conservative activist Charlie Kirk in Utah. President Trump and Vice President Vance have implied the violence was the result of far-left rhetoric, and they promise to crack down on liberal groups.