On Thursday, August 20, Ohio's disability community set aside four hours to hear from the people who want to run their state.

The Ohio Disability Candidates Forum ran from noon to 4 p.m. at the Fawcett Center in Columbus. It was organized by the Ohio Olmstead Task Force, billed as nonpartisan, and built to be easy to attend: ASL interpreters, live captioning, a universal changing station, and a request that everyone come fragrance-free. Fourteen statewide candidates were invited — the Republican and the Democrat for every office on the November ballot. The questions were written and shared in advance, so nobody could be ambushed.

Jon Husted was on the list. He did not come.

At 3:10 p.m., an attendee typed into the event's question channel asking whether Husted was joining. Staff answered that he was not — that he was "unable to participate."

At 8:19 p.m., Husted's verified account posted photographs of him at the Black Wing Shooting Center in Columbus, shooting clay targets. "It's National Shooting Sports Month!" the post read. "It was great to be at the Black Wing Shooting Center in Columbus today with fellow Ohio sportsmen and hear about the issues that matter most to them."

He had time that day to hear about the issues that mattered most to somebody. Just not to them.

The vote behind the empty chair

This forum mattered because of a vote Husted already cast.

Husted voted for Trump's budget bill — the one Republicans called the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — which carries the largest cut to Medicaid in the program's history. KFF puts Ohio's share of that at roughly $33 billion in lost federal Medicaid money over the next decade, about a 13% cut against what the state spends now.

The piece of it disability groups have spent a year warning about takes effect January 1, 2027. Roughly 769,000 Ohioans will have to prove, every month, that they worked or studied or volunteered 80 hours. The Urban Institute projects that paperwork alone could cost as many as 356,000 Ohioans their coverage by 2028.

That is on top of the people Ohio has already lost. When the Obamacare tax credits expired, about 113,000 Ohioans dropped their plans — more coverage lost than in any other state in the country.

And more than 45,000 Ohioans with disabilities are on Medicaid waivers. Waivers are the thing that pays for a caregiver to come to your house so you don't have to live in an institution. Under federal law, waiver services are optional. That is exactly why advocates are frightened: when a state budget gets squeezed, the optional things go first. Ohio has already seen where that road ends — we've written about how Husted helped nursing homes make themselves harder to sue for abuse and wrongful death.

"There's nothing in this bill that would impact them"

Husted has told Ohioans, over and over, that none of this reaches disabled people.

In July 2025, as the bill moved through Congress, he told News 5 Cleveland that people with disabilities would not be affected: "There's nothing in this bill that would impact them." His office told NBC4 the same week that "Disabled Americans, children, and their caretakers are at no risk for losing benefits because of this bill."

Later that month he posted a statement on his Senate website saying there were "whoppers of a lie" going around about Medicaid, and that the law would leave Ohioans with more health care than ever.

Here is the problem with that. The 80-hour work rule is the specific provision disability groups flag as the danger, and the Center for American Progress found it reaches at least 2.6 million adults nationally who have trouble working because of a disability or illness but who don't get SSI or disability insurance — so they get no automatic exemption. Those people keep their coverage only if they fill out the forms correctly, every month, forever.

On a Columbus radio show last November, Husted described the Medicaid changes as deliberate. "So I love fighting for those things," he said. "I love doing that kind of stuff."

The forum on August 20 was four hours in a room where people living on those waivers could have asked him about that. He was not there.

This is not new for him

Husted's record on disability benefits did not start in the Senate. It started when he ran the Ohio House.

In April 2005, three months into his speakership, Husted led a House budget proposal that eliminated the Disability Medical Assistance program — which paid for prescriptions and doctor visits for about 15,000 very low-income adults described at the time as destitute and chronically ill. The same proposal cut off Medicaid for 25,000 working-poor parents earning between 90% and 100% of the poverty line.

The next March, he voted for Senate Bill 7, an overhaul of Ohio's workers' compensation system that made it harder for injured workers to qualify and shorter for them to collect. It:

• required objective medical proof that a workplace injury had made a pre-existing condition substantially worse, instead of a worker's own report of more pain;
• narrowed who counts as permanently and totally disabled, overturning an Ohio Supreme Court ruling that had treated the loss of a single limb as the loss of two body parts;
• capped non-working wage-loss payments at 52 weeks, down from a 200-week allowance.

It passed the House 58 to 37 and became law.

The hug

In June 2025, a Columbus attorney named Sarah Bloom Anderson brought her 14-year-old daughter Audrey to Husted's Washington office. Audrey has PURA Syndrome, a chromosomal disorder. She relies on a waiver that pays for a full-time caregiver at home.

Husted hugged her. His office posted the photo.

Then he voted for the bill.

Bloom Anderson told the story months later at a campaign event in Columbus. "You can't hug my daughter, look her in the eyes and tell her Medicaid won't be cut," she said, "and then sign that bill."

One more thing

Three years ago, as lieutenant governor, Husted stood in front of a camera and handed CareSource the 2023 Governor's Inclusive Employer Award for hiring people with disabilities. "Governor DeWine and I have made working with Ohioans with disabilities an important priority in our administration," he said.

CareSource was a listed sponsor of Thursday's forum. Its logo sits on the event page, a few inches above the roster of candidates — a roster with Husted's name on it.

A photo op with a disabled teenager is easy. An award ceremony is easy. Four hours of pre-written questions from the people your vote actually lands on is not, and he skipped it. It's the same pattern we've seen from him on electric bills, where his own party's internal memo calls his record an "anchor" — the appearances are managed, and the accounting never happens in public.

Ohio votes November 3.

Source

Husted skips disability forum, posts clay-shooting photos hours later — R.L. Porter, TiffinOhio.net, August 21, 2026. Photo: screenshot via Senator Jon Husted / YouTube.