I’ve been reading The Rooster on Substack:
The Rooster is perched.
In the narrow Statehouse stairwell outside the Ohio Senate chamber, the gangly blogger waits for lawmakers who routinely use this side entrance to enter the chamber. As a bipartisan group of state senators shuffles by, the Rooster—government name Donald J. Byrnes—begins to crow as his cameraman records.
“I knew it was over as soon as you jumped in on his side,” Byrnes tells Republican Sen. Tom Patton, referring to a late boost Patton gave Sen. Bill Reineke in the behind-the-scenes race to become the next Senate president. “Minority leader, can we get a comment on the Rosenberger fundraiser?” he calls out to Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio, a Lakewood Democrat, who keeps walking. She declines to discuss the fundraiser she held a few weeks earlier that was co-hosted by former GOP House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger, who resigned in 2018 while under FBI investigation.
Such ambush interviews are the calling card of D.J. Byrnes and the newest wrinkle in the Statehouse dynamic, as the blogger has carved out a lane for himself as a bipartisan wrecking ball and indispensable outlet for Statehouse gossip, innuendo and scoops of varying newsworthiness. No subject is off-limits, and continuing to film his interviewees, even after they have declined to talk, is just part of the game for the in-your-face Byrnes.
“My ultimate goal is the ultimate truth of journalism—it's to make powerful people feel uncomfortable and to leverage your voice for the voiceless,” he says.
Love him or hate him—and there are plenty of folks firmly planted in both camps—Byrnes is a new breed of muckraker who works without a net. No publisher, no editor and no brakes temper his largely left-wing takes that spit out four times a week to 2,800 paid subscribers on Substack.
"There's no boss that they can go crying to, and worse, I'm good at my job," he says. "I actually have an audience and leverage. I can disseminate and push an agenda, and that's what they ultimately hate."
Says one longtime lobbyist: “He’s not anti-Democrat or anti-Republican. He’s anti-power. If you are The Man, he’s going after you.”
Byrnes is primarily Left leaning, a natural place for a muckraker in Ohio because Ohio is far, far Right at this point. However, he does not shy away from calling out Democrats who do things like co-host fundraisers with the incredibly corrupt Cliff Rosenberger Wexner, or support Trump’s and Netanyahu’s war in Iran.
To me, an admitted political junkie, this does not make Byrnes a turncoat or an enemy - it makes him honest. I know Democrats in Ohio aren’t as pure as the driven snow so if Byrnes had a Substack where he carefully ignored things like sleazy fundraisers with felons or Democrats taking money from pedophiles, I would know he was full of shit. I don’t bother to read Blue MAGA because when I do I can see the holes- the information either carefully left out or simply unexplored because it’s inconvenient to my political project, which is electing progressives. I have a long political memory too, so if you say to me “Trump is pushing school vouchers!” I am incapable of not adding the context of Arne Duncan’s enthusiasm for public school privatization, because I was and am aware of it. This is not my first rodeo! I’m not Joe Rogan or his listeners - I have been at this for 40 years. We didn’t get to 20 states funding private school vouchers overnight, it took lots of pro public school privatization Democrats to get us there.
I remain a Democrat not because I am unaware of how much Democrats can suck or because I only read sources that carefully ignore Democratic misdeeds, I’m still a Democrat because even with this context, Democrats are still the best political party proxy for my views that is available in the US.
So here’s the question - is a site like The Rooster a net plus for liberals, or are the only net plus sites Blue MAGA booster sites? I’m obviously in the ‘net plus” camp, since THIS blog does not shy away from criticizing Democrats. Do you, like me “see the holes” in Blue MAGA sites and believe that reduces the credibility of the author? Which approach builds a more resilient, informed and activist “base”?
