The Donor Who Wrote the Bill

Ross Larue farms in Madison Township, Ohio, population 1,461. Twice he gathered enough signatures to force a public vote on rezoning farmland next to his. Twice the vote got blocked. Then, last November, he read a developer's application that said the rezoning was "exempt" from referendums under "newly revised Ohio law."

He wondered who revised it. The answer, sitting in 383 pages of emails released under a public records request, is a lobbyist for Anduril Industries, the $60 billion weapons company that is building a five-million-square-foot drone and missile plant on the fields around him.

The lobbyist wrote the amendment. The chairman's office ran it through the state's bill drafters. It rode a 5,000-page budget into law. Nobody in the statehouse put their name on it. That is the story, and it is not complicated.

Read the lobbyist's email to the chairman's office yourself, on page 38 of the released file.

Here is what is proven, from the documents themselves. On Wednesday, April 2, 2025, Gross sent Stewart's aide, Jared Ysseldyke, an email with the subject line "Anduril- Zoning Amendment." He said "Bill" had already given Stewart "a heads up that this was coming." The next morning at 5:39 AM he followed up: Bill had talked to the chairman, and the chairman "would be supportive of this amendment for the omnibus bill."

Attached was a document titled "HB 96 - Omnibus Amendment Issues." Item one explained the purpose in plain English: the landowner where Anduril will sit "has experienced several citizen initiated referendum[s]." That "poses a significant risk to the Anduril project." The fix: zoning that is "part of a megaproject is not subject to a referendum."

Read that again. The stated problem was not traffic, or water, or permitting delay. The stated problem was that citizens kept petitioning for a vote. The amendment solved the citizens.

Stewart chairs House Finance, where the budget is marked up. He represents Pickaway County, where the plant sits. The referendum language was not in the February version of HB 96. It was on page 811 of the version his committee reported out. He was one of three House conference managers on the final bill, enrolled June 30, 2025. Stewart, his aide, and Anduril all declined to answer Inkstick's questions.

Now the part the title promises. I could not verify a direct check from Anduril or Palmer Luckey to Stewart's state campaign; Ohio's Secretary of State campaign-finance portal was down for maintenance when this issue was reported, and I do not print what I cannot open. What I can open is the FEC.

Luckey, Anduril's founder, gave $200,000 to Trump 47 in June 2024, $100,000 to the Thune Victory Committee that October, $132,900 to the RNC in May 2025, and $93,300 to Grow the Majority plus $90,500 to One Team Senate Majority in March 2026. Anduril's corporate PAC raised $218,667 this cycle and spread it across both parties, including Ohio's two senators and the Dayton congressman who chairs defense oversight. This is a company that funds the party that runs Ohio, and that party's governor called its plant "the largest job creation project in state history."

That is the reported and proven layer. The alleged layer, which BTP is arguing rather than proving, is that no one needed to write Stewart a check for this to work. When a governor has staked $762 million in public incentives on your factory, the chairman does not need a bribe. He needs a reason to say yes, and the lobbyist emailed him one, pre-drafted.

Larue and his neighbor Paul Loar ran for township trustee last fall. Each lost by fewer than five votes. Their referendum petition in 2025 died when the Board of Elections disqualified dozens of signatures after a developer's attorney requested expedited review. Larue was removed from the zoning board. In March 2026 he sued the township and the developer over the rezoning process. That case is pending; nothing in it is proven.

I spent twenty years inside Democratic campaigns, and I sat in enough rooms to know the sentence "the chairman is supportive" is where a law is actually made. Everything after it is choreography.

Why did Stewart do it? Not greed. Fear of being the man who cost Ohio 4,008 jobs. Once the governor and JobsOhio put $310 million on the table, any legislator who let two farmers force a vote would own the delay. The lobbyist understood that the chairman's incentive was already aligned, and all he had to supply was the words. That is the psychology of most captured legislation: not a purchase, a rescue.

You will hear this defended as economic development. Fine. Then put the lawmaker's name on it, hold a hearing, and let the township vote. Instead, a defense contractor's lobbyist rewrote a hundred-year-old township zoning statute for every megaproject in the state, and the record shows the chairman's office did the typing.

If you live in Ohio, look up whether your township has a "megaproject" pending and ask your state representative whether they read page 811 before voting.

Burn Notice: The people of Madison Township did not lose their vote to a weapons company; they lost it to a chairman who let the weapons company's lobbyist hold the pen.

— Michael

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