Protect Freedom and Make Government Answerable

Reserve force for real harm, respect voters, protect due process, and require government to show its work.

I am a Libertarian because I believe individual liberty matters even when exercising it is unpopular. I also believe freedom carries responsibility, and government has a legitimate role in protecting people from violence, fraud, abuse, and other concrete harm.

The same standard should apply no matter which party holds power: define the harm, use the least destructive effective response, protect due process, and tell the public what government did in its name.

Prison for danger, not every mistake

Ohio should reserve prison for people who endanger others, not every person who makes one low-level, nonviolent mistake. Unnecessary incarceration is expensive, disrupts families and employment, and can make successful reentry less likely without making the public safer.

I support:

A presumption of diversion, restitution, treatment, or supervised community sanctions for first-time, low-level, nonviolent offenses.
Judicial discretion to impose prison when a judge identifies and explains a real public-safety reason.
Expanding Ohio's existing Targeted Community Alternatives to Prison framework while giving participating counties the resources and flexibility to supervise people safely.
Reserving prison capacity for violence, serious fraud, repeat predation, and people who repeatedly refuse less-restrictive sanctions.
Publishing recidivism, restitution, employment, and treatment-completion results so successful programs can grow and failed ones can change.

Mercy without accountability is not justice. Neither is imposing the most destructive punishment simply because it is available.

Reducing unnecessary incarceration is not the same as reducing consequences for dangerous people. I want police, prosecutors, courts, treatment resources, and prison capacity focused on violence, repeat predation, serious fraud, trafficking, and people who pose a demonstrated risk to others. Victims deserve timely information, restitution where possible, and a justice system that treats their safety as a core measure of success. Less state force against conduct that does not seriously harm others should mean more attention to the people who do.

Honor the marijuana vote

Ohio voters legalized adult-use marijuana in 2023. The General Assembly had a responsibility to create workable safety rules, not use technical regulation to recreate prohibition after losing at the ballot box.

Senate Bill 56 preserved home cultivation and created useful rules for product safety, impaired driving, sales to minors, and a path to expungement. It also created new technical offenses involving where lawful marijuana came from, how an opened product is transported, where an adult may consume it, and how products are stored.

I support repealing provisions that criminalize harmless adult conduct while keeping clear rules against:

Impaired driving and use in an operating vehicle.
Sales to minors.
Unsafe, mislabeled, or deceptively marketed products.
Trafficking outside the legal system.
Packaging or advertising designed to attract children.

Record sealing or expungement should be automatic and free for past low-level conduct Ohio has chosen to legalize. Adults should not go to jail for conduct Ohio voters deliberately made lawful.

Protect the Second Amendment and build a culture of responsibility

I am a gun owner, an Army veteran, and a father. I support the Second Amendment as an individual constitutional right. I oppose broad bans on commonly owned firearms and government firearm registries.

I have also lost fellow service members to suicide involving personal firearms. That experience is why I reject the idea that every useful safety measure is an attack on gun ownership.

My approach is to:

Require strong due process before the state restricts a person's rights because of criminal conduct or an acute crisis.
Incentivize voluntary training, secure storage, locks, safes, and responsible firearms stewardship.
Strengthen suicide-prevention and mental-health resources, including voluntary temporary off-site firearm storage during a crisis, with clear procedures for lawful return, so firearm owners and families can create time and distance before a temporary crisis becomes permanent.
Focus enforcement on violence, threats, trafficking, and prohibited possessors rather than treating millions of responsible owners as suspects.

The goal is not prohibition. It is a culture of discipline, training, secure storage, and responsibility.

Focus criminal law on real harm

Protecting children from real abuse and obscene conduct is a legitimate responsibility of government. Criminal laws addressing those harms should be clear, narrow, and enforceable.

House Bill 249 instead became another broad symbolic fight while Ohio families were dealing with housing, healthcare, rising costs, and declining trust. It passed the House in March 2026 and remains before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Jean Schmidt cosponsored it and voted for it.

I oppose vague criminal statutes written to generate headlines. If conduct is harmful enough to criminalize, the law should identify that harm clearly and target it narrowly. Of all the problems facing Ohio families, this should not have been among Columbus's highest priorities.

Ohio deserves leaders focused on real threats and real problems.

Enforce the one-subject rule

Major policy should not be buried inside unrelated legislation or added at the last minute to a must-pass bill.

I will support narrowly written legislation with:

A public amendment history.
A plain-language summary.
A complete fiscal note.
A local-impact analysis when communities will bear new costs.
Enough public time to read major changes before a final vote.

When a bill combines related provisions, the relationship should be clear and stated. Voters should never have to accept a bad policy because it was hidden inside funding for an unrelated necessity.

Show the work and protect the taxpayer

Every major public contract, subsidy, tax incentive, mandate, exemption, and special carveout should be searchable online.

I will push to:

Identify who receives each public benefit and its full estimated value.
Define measurable results before money is committed.
Use automatic clawbacks when recipients do not deliver.
Require major tax expenditures and special exemptions to prove their value periodically or expire.
Publish actual results, not only the promises made at the announcement.
Explain not only how I voted, but why.

Ohio has already ordered agencies to reduce regulatory restrictions. Counting fewer words in the administrative code is not enough. Reform should be measured by whether an ordinary person can understand the rule, receive a timely answer, correct an honest mistake, and do something lawful.

Protect personal data

Accurate public records and voter rolls matter. So do privacy and transparency.

When government collects or shares personal information, the public should know:

What data is collected and why.
Who can access or receive it.
How long it is retained.
Whether it can be sold, matched, or used for another purpose.
What safeguards, audits, and penalties prevent misuse.

Government should collect only what it needs to perform a lawful function, not build permanent dossiers merely because technology makes it possible.

Use license-plate readers to find suspects, not track everyone

Automated license-plate readers, including Flock systems, can be useful when police are looking for a specific vehicle. They should not become a searchable history of where every innocent person drove.

I support a BOLO-first model:

Compare plate reads in real time against a lawfully authorized be-on-the-lookout list.
Discard non-matching reads after the shortest technical period reasonably necessary to operate and audit the system, rather than retaining them as a general travel database.
Allow legitimate hits to be retained when they are tied to a documented investigation.
Require clear legal authority and a documented reason before a plate is placed on a watch list, with periodic review and prompt removal when the basis expires.
Log and audit every search and every user with access to the system.
Require judicial authorization before government uses historical plate data to reconstruct a person's movements when the search is not based on a live BOLO hit or a legally defined emergency.

Technology should make it easier to find someone police are actually looking for. It should not make every driver a permanent suspect.

Keep local decisions local

Land use, zoning, and local development priorities should generally be decided by the communities affected. The state should protect constitutional rights, set clear baseline rules, and prevent actual discrimination or abuse. It should not use funding threats to force uniform local choices.

That principle applies whether the issue is development, election administration, or another matter Ohio's Constitution leaves to local self-government.

How I will represent District 62

As a Libertarian, I would serve alongside Republicans and Democrats. That means I can evaluate ideas on their merits and work with anyone serious about improving Clermont County.

I will:

Maintain regular public office hours.
Consult local governments, employers, schools, nonprofits, and residents before introducing legislation that affects them.
Publish major priorities, progress, and unresolved obstacles.
Give credit to good ideas regardless of which party proposed them.

My goal is simple: listen, solve real problems, and put the long-term interests of our communities ahead of party incentives.