After the Ohio Elections Commission (OEC) ruled 6-1 in a full hearing that “non-profit” Clocktower Collaborative was an unauthorized PAC, the dark money group and its contributors are trying to discount their illegal activity.
Leading the charge is State Senator Casey Weinstein. Instead of acknowledging that it was wrong and he will learn and not be involved in a dark money group again, Weinstein is attempting to distract, deflect, and distort the truth. He wrote the check from his campaign account and it was on his own report, but it doesn’t discount that he wrote a check to a 501c4 that was actually an illegal PAC days after he sent an email from its leader detailing the nefarious plan.
The timeline of events proves that he is lying.
Hudson Ward 3 Councilman Skylar Sutton, who was targeted by Clocktower Collaborative, shared the list of donors on his Facebook page. Thanks to the OEC complaint, the donors are now public record. This led to a discussion on the closed Facebook Group Hudson Roundtable. That’s when Weinstein, who is both a donor and a recipient of the organizational and planning emails for the dark money group responded.
There are issues with Weinstein’s statement. Hudson United was a legal PAC. It followed the law, unlike the dark money group he is involved in. Weinstein was also on the Clocktower Collaborative planning and organizational emails, along with candidates Mike Bird, Patricia Goetz, Madeline Lepidi-Carino. As a state legislator who has run numerous campaigns, Weinstein is aware of the law. He likely just didn’t think he would get caught.
The first Clocktower Collaborative email was sent to Weinstein on July 29th (see below) and his donation to the illegal PAC is dated August 4th, 2023. It was clearly something Weinstein wanted to support as he got out is checkbook days after getting the solicitation email from Jane Howington that is below along with his check.
Hypocritically, Weinstein was slamming “dark money” on social media at the time he was contributing to this illegal dark money PAC
In same Hudson Roundtable thread, Weinstein took the “kill the messenger” approach. In typical fashion, his accusation is filled with mistruths. Weinstein who just was outed as a participant in an illegal PAC, claimed Skylar Sutton was violating the First Amendment by not allowing comments on his post about the donors and the OEC decision. Elected officials are able to turn off commenting when they create a post, but they cannot turn it off after discussion has begun. Weinstein himself has a history of deleting his social media posts that have gone sideways. After being caught in a lie about Summa Hospital staff being attacked by people who refused to mask during the pandemic, Weinstein deleted the post, violating the First Amendment rights of all the people who commented. And that’s just one example. There are many other screenshots of posts that Weinstein has deleted.
Since the Hudson Roundtable is mostly an echo chamber for Weinstein thanks to Administrators blocking and banning people who are critical of the truth adversed politician, he can often get away with lying and misleading.
Weinstein is trying to whip up his internet mob against Councilman Skylar Sutton for sharing the names of the donors. But, this is public record. It is not a secret list. They donated to an illegal dark money group. Weinstein is skilled at playing the victim role. He and his allies were caught funding an illegal PAC and now he is attempting to distract by championing his dark money allies. The victim card is not going to work this time.
Clocktower Collaborative isn’t the first non-profit that became involved in a Hudson campaign cycle. It followed the footsteps of Hudson Forward Together, which conveniently had many of the same players involved as Clocktower Collaborative. The difference is that Clocktower Collaborative was challenged at the Ohio Elections Commission. It is a laborious and lengthy process to bring a challenge forward, almost certainly ensuring that the dark money group will be able to continue through the election.
That’s why this case was so important. Perhaps political actors like Casey Weinstein, Jane Howington, George Roth, Bill Wooldredge, and Tom Bevan will learn their lesson and do things legally next time.
Have a tip? Email Clocktower44236@gmail.com
