“As we head toward an all important election this November it is very important to understand what happened the last time Democrats had control of our state government.  During Democrat Ted Strickland’s tenure as governor, Strickland appointed a treasurer by the name Kevin Boyce in 2009.  Boyce is now a Franklin County Commissioner (Columbus) and the husband of OH-13 Congresswoman, Emilia Sykes.  As treasurer, Boyce appointed a deputy treasurer by the name of Amer Ahmad.  Ahmad was given oversight of Ohio’s state retirement funds:  STRS, OPERS, SERS, etc.  During this reign by the Democrats in Ohio, there was a huge financial market downturn under the Obama economy. 

What made the market downturn substantially worse for teachers along with all state and local government workers was a felony “churning” operation set up by Ahmad to allow brokers to generate high commissions.  The high commissions went to bribes and campaign contributions for Democrats.  The criminal mishandling of repeated buying and selling (churning) of retirement assets also led to much greater losses.  State retirement accounts became severely underfunded because of this criminal operation.  The worst losses occurred in the teacher’s retirement fund, STRS.  Under the Democrats, teachers lost a third of the value in STRS with losses hitting 24-billion dollars. 

Our state retirement funds have never fully recovered from the debacle of the last Democrat administration in Ohio. While Amer Ahmad did get a conviction and 15-sentence for the scam, most of those involved did not see justice.

Teachers along with all state and local government workers must look at what actually happened in this state at the hands of Democrats.   Democrats simply can’t be trusted so don’t give them your votes!”

-Carey Coleman