'Fringe partisan hack' who hates the post office tapped to fill GOP statehouse seat

Ohio Republicans tapped a post office-hating political consultant to fill a statehouse seat that opened up in a chain reaction series of events.

The appointment of Tex Fischer to the state legislature came as a result of the resignation of Republican congressman Bill Johnson on Jan. 21 to become the president of Youngstown State, which set off a scramble among state legislators in the months to come, reported The Vindicator.

“This is the complete upheaval in essentially two, three weeks,” Fischer said.

Michael Rulli was elected June 11 to serve out the remainder of Johnson's term, but he had to resign from his own state Senate seat, which was then filled by the appointment of Republican Al Cutrona, who resigned from a statehouse seat that was then filled with the appointment of the 28-year-old Fischer.

The district is currently the 58th, which covers areas south of Youngstown, but it will become the 59th district with November's election as a result of redistricting and will favor Republicans by 12 percent, based on voting results over the past decade.

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“I never envisioned doing this,” Fischer said. “I was happy to work behind the scenes. I got a lot of encouragement and decided to go for it.”

Fischer co-founded the political consulting firm H&F Strategies LLC, where he worked for Rulli, Cutrona and several other Republicans, and served as Mahoning County GOP first vice chairman, and he was the clear favorite among the 25-member Republican screening committee to fill the vacant seat and face off Nov. 5 against Democrat Laura Schaeffer, a Beloit councilwoman and integrated library systems administrator for the Public Library of Youngstown and Mahoning County.

“Mahoning County voters are going to have a choice between a fringe partisan hack who has only ever worked in politics and a dedicated public servant who doesn’t care what party you belong to and only aims to improve your life," said Chris Anderson, Mahoning Democratic Party chairman.

Fischer agrees that he supports defunding the U.S. Postal Service, which was a foundational priority in the Constitution, and the Internal Revenue Service because, as he says, he's a “fan of limited government.”

The newly minted state legislator also admits to flying the Revolutionary War-era "An Appeal To Heaven" flag at his Boardman home and using it as the background on his social media pages several weeks ago, as controversy swirled around U.S. Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito displaying the flag at his New Jersey beach home.

"[It was] a sign of protest for the people who flip out that it’s about insurrectionists," Fischer said. "As a history buff, I like the flag. I’m doing it now because it’s stupid that people are using it to tie in with insurrectionists. It has nothing to do with that. I love all variations of the American flag.”

The flag has become associated with Christian nationalists for about a decade after right-wing pastor Dutch Sheets, an influential leader in the the New Apostolic Reformation movement, appropriated the banner as a symbol of God's plan to restore the U.S. to its supposed Christian roots, and man y of the Jan. 6 rioters carried it at the U.S. Capitol.

“We’re confident that voters will be able to draw their own comparisons between someone who wants to defund the post office, who is proudly flying the flag carried by Jan. 6 insurrectionists and someone who has a proven track record as a bipartisan public servant," said Anderson, the local Democratic Party leader