Summit County GOP chairman eyes top job in Ohio Republican Party amid infighting

A Summit County Republican is looking to challenge the leader of the Ohio Republican Party as party officials contend with infighting ahead of the midterm election.

Bryan Williams, the state party's vice chairman and head of the Summit County Republican Party, said Monday that he plans to challenge Chairman Bob Paduchik at the state central committee's Sept. 9 meeting. The move comes weeks after the primary election for committee seats, which saw some establishment Republicans ousted by candidates who ardently support former President Donald Trump and oppose Gov. Mike DeWine.

The state central committee serves as the governing body for the Ohio Republican Party.

Equating the state GOP chairman to an "autocrat" with "top-down authoritarian control," Williams accused Paduchik of manufacturing disorder ahead of a November election that's likely to favor Ohio Republicans − provided they can stay organized.

"There's a large part of our party base that is so suppressed in part by ORP leadership issues that it's creating a distraction," Williams said. "If we elect new leadership in September, we can sprint to November with all hands on deck, engage with more party unity and more party excitement and enthusiasm."

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Paduchik took over as chairman in February 2021 after Jane Timken stepped down to run for U.S. Senate. The Akron-area native has a long history in Ohio Republican politics, having worked for leaders including Gov. Bob Taft and Sen. Rob Portman. He also ran Trump's Ohio campaigns — securing him Trump's endorsement for chairman − and served as co-chair of the Republican National Committee.

However, Paduchik's tenure has been marred by conflict that boiled over earlier this year when a divided GOP endorsed DeWine in the governor's race. DeWine's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and passive attitude toward Trump drew the ire of some Republicans who mounted primary challenges against him in the spring. A faction of committee members argued the party should not endorse in the race, as it declined to do for the U.S. Senate primary.

Instead, Paduchik held an endorsement vote behind closed doors, attributing the setup to previous meetings that were disrupted by members of the public. DeWine secured the endorsement in a 36-26 vote, a process that Williams said distracted the party from gathering resources to take on Democrats in November.

"Bob's insistence on having that endorsement, he actually embarrassed the governor because he demonstrated a vote that showed weakness," Williams said. "Mike DeWine was always going to win this primary in this three-way divided primary. He was always going to win this. And he would have won it, I believe, by a larger margin if we hadn't created this fracture at the state party level."

Williams and the Summit County Republican Party have bet big on DeWine, donating more than $1 million to his campaigns for attorney general and then governor since 2010.

GOP conflict hits Summit County race

The Summit County party boss also contends Paduchik meddled in state central committee races, including his own in the 27th district against Republican rival and former Cuyahoga Falls Mayor Don Robart. Robart is part of a group of establishment Republicans dissatisfied that Williams and the county party for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting state candidates, with nothing left to give local candidates, and tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees to sue Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who tried but failed to block Williams from a re-appointment last year to the county elections board.

Robart said Tuesday that he barely knows Paduchik and that the state chairman had "nothing to do" with his first-ever campaign for state central committee. For his part, Robart has criticized Williams for overseeing the county party while it put around $15,000 into the state central committee races to support, among others, Williams.

Paduchik declined to be interviewed through his spokesman, Dan Lusheck, who noted that the chairman did not issue official endorsements in the committee races.

"We are 70 days away from a historic general election," Lusheck said. "With so much on the line, Chairman Paduchik is singularly focused on electing Republicans up and down the ticket."

The committee is not scheduled to consider leadership elections at the Sept. 9 meeting, according to a meeting agenda released Tuesday. Williams and Paduchik appear to have conflicting interpretations of the party's procedural rules regarding what day the committee must elect its leaders.

If an election is held later and the controlling members of the Ohio Republican Party pick Williams, the leaders of both major political parties would be Summit County residents with Liz Walters running the Ohio Democratic Party. That was briefly the case last year when Timken stepped down, elevating Williams, then the vice president, to acting chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.

Haley BeMiller is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which serves the Columbus Dispatch, Cincinnati Enquirer, Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio.

Reach reporter Doug Livingston at dlivingston@thebeaconjournal.com or leave a message at 330-996-3792.

This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Ohio GOP chairman Bob Paduchik faces challenge from Bryan Williams