Co-Founder @ Flashpass: The Antidote to AI Doomerism. Co-Founder @ Bowers Hinman Capitol Affairs. Former Director of OH House Speaker’s Office
Columbus, OH
Joined December 2025
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People got worked up over this! To be clear, I don’t have any inside information and am not advocating for or against anything here. I’m just interested in the going’s-on at 1 Capitol Square.
Ohio’s election is over.
Democrats took the Governor’s race.
What happens next?
Over the next few months, the Republican legislature’s lame-duck supermajority will look to dismantle executive power.
Essentially all of Ohio’s gubernatorial authority is statutory, not constitutional.
- Appointment authority
- Contracting authority
Just about everything short of controlling the National Guard.
This means that the legislature can:
- revoke it
- amend it
- seize it
- abolish it
The election was sensational, but the really interesting part comes next.
This is a really great pick. John is a tremendous Ohioan.
NEWS UPDATE: Governor-elect Amy Acton on Thursday tapped John Haseley to lead transition efforts and launched a website calling for applications from individuals seeking to join her administration. bit.ly/4ixnutx
Ohio’s election is over.
Democrats took the Governor’s race.
What happens next?
Over the next few months, the Republican legislature’s lame-duck supermajority will look to dismantle executive power.
Essentially all of Ohio’s gubernatorial authority is statutory, not constitutional.
- Appointment authority
- Contracting authority
Just about everything short of controlling the National Guard.
This means that the legislature can:
- revoke it
- amend it
- seize it
- abolish it
The election was sensational, but the really interesting part comes next.
For those of us hoping for a calm lame duck session (oxymoron), it seems we’re in for anything but.
Acton’s victory over Ramaswamy makes her the state’s first woman to be elected governor. It also sets up something Ohioans rarely experienced: a rival party with a major lever of power inside a state government.
signalohio.org/amy-acton-win…
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s not in small-town Midwestern nature to share your politics with strangers.
“After more than 85,000 phone calls and nearly 50,000 text messages, a potential problem emerged.
Democrats were far more enthusiastic about taking the poll than Republicans were.”
washingtonpost.com/politics/…
Speaker Huffman showed up to the Ohio Nuclear Alliance launch and told the room he thinks 100 years from now the majority of energy will be nuclear.
I've spent enough time in the statehouse to know what a statement like that means. It tells the whole building which way the calendar is about to move.
Ohio is chasing reshored manufacturing that runs on power, and all roads lead to more generation. That means cheaper energy for families and enough supply to keep the facilities coming.
Will Hinman retweeted
What polls can't compensate for is the fact that normal, small town Midwesterners don't care to share their political preferences with strangers. It breaks cultural norms.
Ohio is one of the hardest states in the country to poll, and recent cycles show the polls overstating Democrat support.
Part of the problem is who picks up the phone. Guys like me enjoy talking to pollsters. Normal people don't.
I said on TV this weekend that I think the polls will be far off in this race, and that it'll be a good surprise for Republicans.
Workforce policy people talk about stackable pathways constantly.
A certificate here, an apprenticeship there, a degree across town.
Then visit a state's education website. A landing page linking to thousands of programs, nothing tying them together.
The learner is left to guess how any of it stacks.
Causation not coincidence
Obama rallied for Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown — their odds fell anyway mrf.lu/2HB05
My theory on political advertising is that the calendar matters more than the budget.
Voters don't tune in before Labor Day.
Campaigns buy airtime all summer anyway, so the spots run and nothing registers.
Then kids go back to school and people start forming opinions. Whoever happens to be on the air that week looks like a genius.
You can buy airtime whenever you want, but people still won't pay attention until they've decided to care.
I’ve said this for weeks… spend $200,000 on a minuscule amount of ads leaking to non voters, or spend $200,000 shifting perceived momentum on a “prediction” market the media reads as gospel. Easy choice for a D operative
The Dems are flooding prediction markets with bad bets to shift perceptions of reality.
It only would cost $200,000 to change Talarico’s odds from 50 to 67%
That’s a fraction of the 114 million spent on Talaricos campaign and more effective than road signs.
People don’t believe polls but prediction markets create more certainty, because who would throw away money right?
The best we can do is make their marketing stunt as expensive as possible by placing more bets on Paxton and collecting.
Once election results hit the odds will be revealed to have been way off base and the Dems will use it as a call to regulate prediction markets.
Will Hinman retweeted
The Dems are flooding prediction markets with bad bets to shift perceptions of reality.
It only would cost $200,000 to change Talarico’s odds from 50 to 67%
That’s a fraction of the 114 million spent on Talaricos campaign and more effective than road signs.
People don’t believe polls but prediction markets create more certainty, because who would throw away money right?
The best we can do is make their marketing stunt as expensive as possible by placing more bets on Paxton and collecting.
Once election results hit the odds will be revealed to have been way off base and the Dems will use it as a call to regulate prediction markets.
BREAKING: James Talarico surges to new all-time high in odds to win the Texas Senate race.
67% chance Talarico flips Texas blue.
🔗 polymarket.com/r/TexasSenate
Our product process at Flashpass is reverse engineering government.
I listen to state agencies, legislators and employers describe what's missing in the workforce, then carry it back to our tech team.
Build what the state actually needs instead of pitching what you already made.
The bar to get on TV is way lower than people assume.
Stations need guests. Producers are actively looking for people to put on air.
Reach out, build the relationship, show up prepared. They'll give you time. You don't need to be a polished TV persona.
I can't write a line of code, and this year I've been more involved in product than at any point in my career.
Turns out translating between a customer describing a problem in their own words and a person who can build the answer is a technical skill too.
Just not the one I expected to learn as a founder.
I've done about two dozen TV appearances. Election nights, the RNC floor, regular commentary in Columbus.
Never had a minute of media training. I'm not even that good at it.
People underestimate their abilities constantly, then wait for permission that isn't coming.
Will Hinman retweeted
Trump’s decline in popularity is more concentrated in suburbia and much less pronounced in the Ohio Valley, where he’s still relatively popular… so not sure this tracks.
Hot take: government procurement rewards first movers more than the private sector does.
Bureaucrats are risk averse by design. Getting a state past its first hesitancy toward something new is the hard part. Once you clear that hurdle, you become the vendor they trust to operationalize, and competitors have to clear that same wall from the outside.
The product gets you in the door. The trust keeps everyone else out.