I was a few weeks into my summer internship at The Enquirer when reporter Victoria Moorwood approached me and fellow intern Carly Gist with a project. She wanted to learn more about who was behind the largest contributions funneling into the area's county commissioner races.
The three-person boards of commissioners manage budgets and contracts in Ohio's counties, including for county jails and courts. This November, voters will elect commissioners across the state, including in Greater Cincinnati.
Moorwood had just reported that a local developer donated $64,000 to a Warren County commissioner candidate. She found that the donor's company had bid on government-owned projects, and that it was the largest contribution in to a Warren County's commissioner in the past
decade.
She also found that, unlike in state and federal elections, there's no contribution limits for county commissioner candidates under Ohio law.
We requested campaign finance reports for every county commissioner candidate in Hamilton, Butler, Warren, Clermont and Brown counties from 2016-2026. The campaign finance reports included thousands of individual contributions given to candidates. We spent hours combing through all of them, recording any contributions that were $5,000 or more.
In the end, we found almost 200 large contributions to county commissioner candidates.
Some of the donors we recognized, like Cincinnati billionaire Carl Lindner III, who crossed the political aisle to give to Democrats in Hamilton County. Others were less recognizable, like an advertising group that ended up being tied to Buffalo Wings and Rings.
We reached out to donors who contributed over $10,000 in the local races to learn why they gave. One local political party told us a $19,000 donation was needed to oust a 15-year incumbent. A local real estate group said it seeks candidates that look to protect private property rights. A former Ohio representative said he hoped his over $13,000 would help fight against a "den of thieves."
We also contacted all the candidates who received these large donations. Those who responded told The Enquirer that they've never made promises to their donors. But a political science expert told us that large donations can make voters worry that people are buying votes and access with commissioners.
To let readers see who donated to their commissioners, we created a searchable database of individual contributions. We hope this reporting will let readers better understand who's funding these races, when they elect county commissioners across Greater Cincinnati in November.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Why we investigated donations behind Ohio commissioner races
