Scandals roil OH-9 GOP primary in final 8 days

With eight days remaining until Ohio’s May 5 primary, three of the five Republicans competing in the 9th Congressional District are entering the campaign’s final stretch under the cloud of damaging headlines — covering covert opposition tactics, personal misconduct allegations, and resurfaced social media history.

The convergence of scandals comes as the GOP field jockeys for the right to challenge Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, in a district redrawn last October by the Ohio Redistricting Commission to lean Republican by roughly nine points.

Merrin tied to covert smear site targeting Williams

The Toledo Blade reported on April 23 that a website titled “Liberal Fraud Josh Williams” carries digital fingerprints linking it to a consultant paid by former state Rep. Derek Merrin’s congressional campaign. Image metadata on the site lists Alec Faggion — connected to a firm receiving payments from Merrin’s campaign — as the author of multiple photos.

The site, which republishes Williams’ voting record and resurfaced sexually explicit Facebook posts, contains no “paid for by” disclosure identifying who funded it — only a copyright notice. A spokesman for Merrin told the Blade the firm was paid for campaign management services but did not respond to questions about the photo metadata.

Williams responded sharply, saying in a statement: “Promoting unfounded claims and recycled stories that have already been disproven is misleading and far below the standard voters in northwest Ohio deserve. My character and values are worth far more than any political campaign, and it is unfortunate Derek does not feel the same way.”

TiffinOhio.net’s full reporting on the smear site and its connections to the Merrin campaign is available here.

Williams’ own Facebook history remains unresolved

Williams, the Ohio House Majority Whip and the first Black Republican elected to the Ohio House in 50 years, is not entering the final week as an uncomplicated target of opposition tactics. The smear site republishes a series of sexually explicit and degrading Facebook posts about women that appeared on his personal account between roughly 2018 and 2022 — material first surfaced by Ohio political outlet The Rooster in May 2023.

Williams has maintained the comments did not originate from his account, telling the Blade that “no one has ever shown me where they appear on my Facebook ever.” But in a 2023 recorded exchange with The Rooster’s D.J. Byrnes, Williams confirmed authorship of one of the posts — a meme involving Hillary Clinton — and refused to apologize: “I made the post in 2018 being funny while I was in college burning time.”

TiffinOhio.net’s prior reporting on the posts is available here.

Sheahan faces relationship and workplace allegations

Former ICE Deputy Director Madison Sheahan, who resigned from the agency on January 15 to run for the seat, is fighting separate allegations. The Daily Mail reported on April 24 that an anonymous former Trump campaign worker — then 19 years old and serving as Sheahan’s junior staffer — alleges the two carried on a controlling two-year sexual relationship beginning in October 2020, when Sheahan was 23 and serving as state election operations director for Trump’s Ohio campaign.

The ex-partner described the relationship as “toxic,” “volatile,” and “controlling,” according to the report, which cited two additional sources who corroborated her account.

A senior Department of Homeland Security official separately told the Daily Mail that Sheahan, during her tenure as ICE’s second-in-command, repeatedly threatened to “rip their faces off” when confronting staff, and pushed to fire female employees she viewed as threats. “She’d always try to be the alpha in the room. There could never be a stronger woman,” the official said.

Sheahan’s Ohio campaign manager, Bob Paduchik, flatly denied the relationship allegations: “As the Ohio campaign manager, I can speak with authority that no such relationship existed. Madison was not and has never been in a relationship with a subordinate.” Sheahan declined to comment to the Daily Mail. DHS and ICE did not respond to the outlet’s requests for comment.

TiffinOhio.net’s full reporting on the Sheahan allegations is available here.

Five candidates, eight days

The five Republicans on the May 5 ballot are Williams, Merrin, Sheahan, Air National Guard Lt. Col. Alea Nadeem, and health care worker Anthony Campbell. Sheahan trailed at roughly 10 percent in a recent JL Partners poll, with Merrin and Williams considered the frontrunners.

The winner of the primary will face Kaptur, who has held the seat since 1983 and narrowly defeated Merrin by fewer than 2,400 votes in 2024. The redrawn 9th District now leans Republican at roughly 54.5 percent to 45.5 percent under maps approved by the Ohio Redistricting Commission in October 2025.