Between now and 2033, Ohioans will have elected one, maybe two, successors to lame-duck Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. Voters will also have elected one, maybe two, successors to Republican U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance.
As for the state Senate, GOP-run for 35 years, including four with its gavel in Huffman’s hand? The Senate that’s supposed to be the House’s legislative counterbalance? Fat chance: The Senate’s next president will be Huffman protégé Rob McColley, of Northwest Ohio’s Napoleon.
Bottom line: Matt Huffman, age 64, is becoming – maybe already is – the go-to Statehouse Republican in an Ohio where the GOP notches gains every election.
It’d be easy to quip that, in making Huffman speaker, House Republicans may be reinstating the strong-arm leadership they detested in Riffe. That’s incorrect. One: Huffman’s slightly subtle. Two: He seems to have an ideological core; Riffe, best described as a Harry Truman Democrat, didn’t fret over ideas.
Huffman (a Notre Dame grad with a University of Cincinnati law degree) whose father, the late Lawrence S. Huffman, was Allen County’s prosecuting attorney, grew up around GOP politics.
Matt Huffman’s uncle, the late Robert J. Huffman Sr., of West Milton, was Miami County prosecuting attorney; a prominent Ohio GOP leader; an early backer of Ronald Reagan; and a close ally of the late Rep. Robert E. Netzley, a 40-year House member who incessantly fought state spending and taxes. (One of Robert J. Huffman’s sons is Matt Huffman’s cousin, state Sen. Stephen A. Huffman, M.D., a Tipp City Republican.)
Matt Huffman likely is best known, outside the Statehouse, for ardently gerrymandering General Assembly and congressional districts to all-but-guarantee that Republican candidates win. (And yes, that was something Speaker Riffe did for Democrats.)
A couple marquee policy issues with which Huffman’s speakership will likely wrestle: One is Ohio’s “school choice” program, which offers pupils state-financed vouchers to attend non-public schools. Huffman ardently supports vouchers. Voucher foes say they violate the Ohio Constitution; don’t expect Ohio’s GOP rubber stamp, the state Supreme Court, to agree.
There’ll likely be a bid during the 2025-26 session, first of Huffman’s speakership, to abolish Ohio’s income tax. According to the Policy Matters think-tank, if Ohio did that, “the state would have to cut almost a quarter of its spending to balance the budget ... That would be the same as completely cutting state funding for public K-12 education.”
If, as an offset, Ohio boosted its combined state and local sales tax rate (in Montgomery County, it’s 7.5%) that’d increase the tax burden on lower- and middle-income Ohioans.
Debate on Ohio’s income tax should confront this irony: The GOP-run legislature OK’d Ohio’s state income tax in 1971, at Democratic Gov. John J. Gilligan’s behest, only because of “yes” votes from six GOP senators (including future Senate President Stanley J. Aronoff, of Cincinnati) and 13 House Republicans (including future Minority Leader Corwin M. Nixon, of Lebanon).
In contrast to House stalemate this session due to a GOP split – which helped Huffman pry the speakership from another Republican, incumbent Speaker Jason Stephens, of Lawrence County’s Kitts Hill – the 2025 session, first under Huffman’s gavel, should be fast-paced.
That doesn’t mean its agenda won’t be calculated. Calculation got Matt Huffman where he’ll be in January. Calculation will help him stay there.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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