It was stupid.

So I was working as a, a union electrician apprentice at the time, and it was Friday night, I believe, and I got a video sent to me of grainy images at the Urban Meyer Chophouse that had opened in the Short North, which is, uh, Columbus' one trendy district.

And I actually knew a server there at the time who gave me the details, said they arrived with a local restaurateur.

Uh, they were noticeably intoxicated.

And knowing Urban, I knew how he was gonna play with it.

So on Monday, he addresses the team.

He gets up there, and he tells them basically, "Well, you know, I was out with my friends, and this young siren was trying to lure me onto the dance floor." I never thought I was gonna go like it did, but it became a national story, and I eventually lost my career in the electrician field over it.

As a Republican against Amy Acton, a Democrat.

[laughs]

So we had tacos for lunch.

And the guy-- There was one guy in there, he was asking, like he was telling his, his girlfriend.

He's like, "Girl," he's like, "You need to call..." Like, he got denied from a bail bondsman.

He was telling his girlfriend to like call ChatGPT, like, and ask who he was like supposed to call in this situation.

It's like, "Bro, you're gonna be here until the, in, until December." But, uh, yeah, it was Taco Tuesday, and I ate it, you know, and they were like...

I was like, "That wasn't that bad." And they, peop- my whole entire pod got pissed at me.

[laughs]

Uh, and you can take it anywhere you want it.

Uh, yeah.

I mean, uh, people probably originally remember me from Eleven Warriors.

Started from an unpaid position, worked my way up all the way to senior editor, 2018.

Uh, left that to go run for office in Piqua, Ohio, State House.

It was a very Republican-juiced district, which is why it felt as somebody like me to run.

Uh, planned to, you know, lose and then go work for somebody that I impressed in Columbus.

... problems with this bid for a National Women's Soccer League team for Columbus.

... were accrued that really makes this story, uh, special.

So I thankfully I married one of the nosiest women in Columbus. I call her my husband, uh, I'm the wife in this scenario. Uh, but she, she like was just looking into this candidate. Her name's Tara Ross, she's run... We have this fake ward system in Columbus, and where it's like you represent a ward, but the whole city gets to vote on it. So even if you lose your ward, you can still win power. And it was basically like we, we had concerns about her residency because there was nothing showing that she had moved into the district one year prior to the election as required. And it's like, okay, well maybe she has a lease or whatever, but like we're gonna, we're gonna challenge her residency and we're gonna like fucking make her prove it. And so in the course of the investigation, like we're onto this candidate and I... And like when I'm inside I kind of draw the attention, and she was outside, uh, my wife, Hilltop, husband, uh, she was like outside in the car and we were waiting till she, like Tara Ross was done and I'm like, texted her like, "Tara Ross is coming out." We got her license plate, and so we paid a private eye, I think it was $200 to run like a license plate report. And like Columbus has established this like Five Eyes type of surveillance with like plate readers, camera, r- like it's crazy what you can get from it. Um, but it turned out that she, like it came back like she had a suspended license. So at the board, at this board (laughs) hearing, uh, it's the Board of Elections is you're under oath, uh, she's a city attorney who like, it, it's whose job is basically, it's called the Property Action Team, which is basically to like enforce code violations on poor owners and slumlords. And, um, we have a back and forth. She produces this lease that showed she moved into the district one day prior to the deadline. Um, she was the ordained local Democratic Party. And I'm like, "Okay, that's cool." I was like, "Well, do you know your license is suspended?"And she's (laughs) like, "What?" And I was like, "Yeah, like you drove here on a suspended license." Like, "I saw you driving last week on a suspended license." And th- she gets asked about it and she like hem and haws. She's like, "I have no idea like what this is about." Da, da, da, da, da. Like, hems and haws. Uh, and then afterwards, I didn't see it, but I was told like she just breaks down into tears. And so, on the way home, we're like... She, um... Th- it was a, a kangaroo court. She beats the challenge. She moved in one day prior. Whatever, we're gonna challenge that in court too. But I was like, "What did she get her license suspended for?" And Hilltop husband like looked it up. Uh, like one of the things in Columbus, it's like, if you don't pay your parking tickets, she'll- they'll suspend your license. So, and that's public information. So we have her plate, so we entered her plate into the system and it was a goldmine. Like this broad had $3,975 of tickets. 50-

And who, I don't know, like, is this indicative of like a larger trend in American politics, of just like literally throwing disabled children under the bus to build this football stadium?

For sure. Um, you know, we've had in, in Ohio, we're at the tip of the spear when it comes to like the voucher system, and you know, which is basically just rich hand, uh, handout to rich families to send their kids to private school, um, already. And the, th- then these schools, they can discriminate against special needs students. And like even the charter schools, they don't want them because the costs are higher. And so we had Speaker Matt Huffman, who got elected, he could be speaker for the next eight years. Um, I call him a dome- in my opinion, he's a domestic terrorist because of this stuff here. He gets up there, he says, "Well, our school funding model, which is already insufficient enough," uh, they've made certain promises to these schools, um, into the future. He said, "It's unsustainable. It's unsustainable." And everybody's like, "Well, that's news to us." Um, you know, while you're trying to eliminate the property tax, and you're trying to eliminate, uh, the income tax. He got walked back a little bit about on that. And so in this budget, they've, like you said, they froze, they froze the cost at, uh, 200 and, or 2022. So basically, it is a spending cut. It's gonna cost, uh, the ho- fa- the house finance chair, it's gonna cost districts in his district, um, like $175 million, and just if that's passed like tomorrow. And so that was like already gonna be a fight on its own, because it's gonna hurt like, like you said, the special needs, the poorer students the most. That was already gonna be a huge issue. You've got Central Ohio's teachers unions, um, organizing against it, coordinating for the first time in their history, which is gonna be something really fun to watch. Um, but then last week, they come out, um, the Browns have been very open. They want this, they wanna move out of downtown Cleveland. They wanna move into like what I've described as an Amazon, uh, Amazon warehouse fucking a Cybertruck.