Judging the Ads & Following the Money

Check out the ads and our attempt to find out who paid for them. This short video provides a quick summary of the dark money actors and their ad spending in the 2024 Ohio Supreme Court election and features Evan Vorpahl from True North Research.

While it wasn’t hard to find the contributors to the candidates’ campaigns on the Ohio Secretary of State’s website, it was more challenging to “follow the money” spent by independent groups. The well-known Ohio Chamber of Commerce created an obstacle to easy transparency by running ads via their affiliate Ohioans for Healthy Economy.   

Ohioans for a Healthy Economy and the Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative (RSLC-JFI) spent big in 2022 and did so again in 2024. Both organizations’ ads focused on the familiar “tough on crime” and safety/danger tactics with ads like “We’re Not Safe” from Ohioans for a Healthy Economy and “Strong Judges” from the RSLC-JFI. 

New “dark money” organizations came on the scene this election: the Frecka PAC, Ohioans United for Public Education, and Ohioans for Judicial Integrity. The Frecka PAC supported the GOP candidates and leaned into crime fighters on the state’s highest court with an ad literally titled “Law and Order.” Ohioans United for Public Education attacked Deters’ record as state treasurer with “Joe Deters is Corrupt.”  

Ohioans for Judicial Integrity ran four attack ads against the Republican candidates, focusing on corruption, voting rights, and Ohio’s reproductive rights amendment approved by voters in 2023.

Ohioans for Judicial Integrity, funded by Michael Bloomberg and other liberal-aligned groups, spent nearly $2 million in Ohio backing the Democratic candidates. 

Ohioans for a Healthy Economy Action reported spending over $2.3 million backing the Republicans in the race. The Chamber affiliate received $1 million from Richard Uihlein’s Fair Courts America, and had some other large backers including the Haslam family (which owns the Cleveland Browns) and billionaire politician Vivek Ramaswamy.

On November 5, 2024, in celebrating the Republican victories, RSLC released a statement describing nearly $1 million in spending in the race, “The Republican State Leadership Committee’s Judicial Fairness Initiative launched a nearly one-million-dollar independent expenditure campaign in support of Deters, Hawkins and Shanahan in the final days of the cycle that included a $600,000 investment on television advertising alone.”

For a deeper dive into the money spent to influence the Ohio Supreme Court races in 2024, check out Follow the Money. Experts Lisa Graves and Evan Vorpahl from True North Research also explored the impact of the deluge of money and wealthy special interests on our democracy in this video.

It’s Time to Shine a Light on Dark Money!

Groups and individuals take great pains to make it hard to see who is paying for ads by using SuperPACs and nonprofit entities to buffer and hide the source of funding. This makes it difficult for voters to figure out which candidates share their values and will work to promote the voter’s interests—not the interests of the dark money donors. 

Secret money in elections can hide conflicts of interest and can obscure the influence of the wealthy on courts and other elected officials.