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Ohio Auditor Comparison
Ohio’s Auditor is the chief accounting and compliance officer for the state, responsible for auditing public offices and entities to ensure that public dollars are being used responsibly and in accordance with the law. The Auditor can go after those who erroneously get state funds or who misappropriate money.
Annette Blackwell
Blackwell has served as Mayor of Maple Heights, Ohio, since 2016. Before being elected, she worked in the private sector, focusing on financial and tax matters. After being elected Mayor, Blackwell worked to turn her city around from the financial turmoil it was dealing with. This resulted in her winning the Clean Audit Award after helping the city recover financially. She is running for Auditor to promote transparency in how public funds are spent and to help safeguard local community funds.
Frank LaRose
LaRose is the current Secretary of State; he previously ran and lost the race to be a U.S. Senator. Now that he is term-limited and can no longer be Secretary of State, he is running for Auditor instead. His campaign message in the race is about financial transparency, but as Secretary of State, his main focus has been on elections, in which his record is one of making it harder to vote and inserting partisanship into his office.
TRANSPARENCY IN GOVERNMENT
Annette Blackwell
Blackwell will focus on making sure the government is transparent and efficient and that taxpayers' funds are used properly. She will lean on her professional background in the finance world, including working for Deloitte and Ryan to do the job of Auditor, as well as using her experience in helping turn around the finances of her hometown.
Frank LaRose
LaRose has campaigned as Auditor on transparency and accountability, but often his attempts are selective and weaponized. As Secretary of State, he exposed the privacy of 8 million registered voters by sharing our voter information with the federal government. In 2024, he was in search of “noncitizen voter registration” fraud that didn’t exist, and even his office called it “exceedingly rare.”
VOTING RIGHTS AND ELECTIONS
Annette Blackwell
Ohio’s Auditor sits on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which decides which elected officials voters can elect based on their address. Blackwell is endorsed by Ohio Citizens Action, an organization that prioritizes protecting Ohio’s democratic process and voting rights.
Frank LaRose
As Secretary of State, LaRose has a clear record of making it harder to vote and putting a partisan finger on the scales. He supports the current gerrymandered maps and used his office to reword the Issue 1 ballot language (which sought an independent commission to draw up districts) to be more confusing. He also pursued voter purges and limited early voting, resulting in unequal access to the ballot