CINCINNATI — His frustration over a wrongful death case turned Blake Maislin into a political activist. His willingness to test the limits of campaign advertising strategies is making him hard to ignore.
The personal injury lawyer — best known for the earworm jingle that made his law firm’s phone number unforgettable (444-4444) — has spent more than $400,000 in the last two years to get Democrats elected as Hamilton County judges.
His political action committee, “Change the Judges, Change the System,” is the target of an Ohio Elections Commission complaint alleging three violations of Ohio campaign finance reporting rules in 2020. And his most recent campaign against Hamilton County Appeals Court Judge Robert Winkler prompted Winkler to recuse himself from two cases in which Maislin represents clients.
“His activities here make an absolute mockery out of the judiciary,” said Steve Goodin, a former campaign manager for Judge Winkler and a Republican candidate for Hamilton County Clerk of Courts. Maislin is “a heavy user of the local state court system. And it seems very clear to me he’s trying to pick what will be a more favorable bench for him going forward.”
Maislin declined to be interviewed for this story. But he spelled out his concerns in a 2020 letter to the Cincinnati Enquirer, arguing a “prosecutor-to-judge pipeline” was undermining confidence in the local court system.
“Under our system, judges are supposed to keep the executive branch, including the police, the prosecutor’s office, and county government, in check,” Maislin wrote. “But how can that system be expected to function effectively and engender public confidence in a county like ours, where historically only Republican Party loyalists have been able to advance far in the county prosecutor’s office, many of whom aspire to make their way into that pipeline for judgeships?”
Before he canceled a scheduled interview with the I-Team, Maislin told us the flaws of the local court system became apparent to him when he sued Hamilton County social workers over the death of 2-year-old Glenara Bates in 2017. His lawsuit alleged the child’s 2015 death — caused by abusive parents who were later convicted — was enabled by the county’s “egregious mishandling of the infant’s placement and care.”
The lawsuit was dismissed by Hamilton County Judge Lisa Allen, a Republican and former prosecutor for the city of Cincinnati. The dismissal was upheld by a three-judge panel on which Democrat Candace Crouse dissented and Judge Winkler concurred with Russell Mock. Both are Republicans who previously worked for the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office. The dismissal was later reversed by the Ohio Supreme Court and is now pending before Judge Allen, who has a 2024 trial date scheduled.
While he didn’t get into details about his concerns over the Bates case, Maislin made it clear that he hasn’t lost his antipathy for the “pipeline for judgeships” he criticized in 2020.
“They’re all part of a little fiefdom,” he told the I-Team.
Follow the money
Given that, it may not be surprising that Maislin has focused his campaign spending on races involving judges with ties to the prosecutor’s office. According to records from the Federal Elections Commission and Federal Communications Commission, Maislin spent more than $87,000 since 2020 in support of six Democrats running for judge, including:
- Ginger Bock, who replaced Russell Mock on the First District appellate court after Maislin’s PAC spent $4,650 on her behalf. Mock wrote the majority opinion in the Glenara Bates case. He now works as assistant chief of the municipal division in the Hamilton County prosecutor’s office.
- Christian Jenkins, who replaced Republican Pat Dinkelacker as a Common Pleas judge in 2020. Dinkelacker spent 12 years in the county prosecutor’s office before becoming a judge in 1991. Maislin’s PAC spent $28,594 in support of Jenkins.
- Alison Hatheway, who replaced Charles Kubicki Jr. on the Common Pleas Court after Maislin’s PAC spent $24,289 advocating her candidacy. Kubicki didn’t work for the prosecutor’s office before becoming a judge but was hired as co-chief of its appellate division after losing the 2020 election.
Kubicki and Dinkelacker are both running to re-claim seats on the Common Pleas court Nov. 8. Maislin has endorsed their opponents – Tom Heekin and Thomas Beridon - in campaign ads that cost $30,000, according to FCC filings. Heekin, Beridon and Jennifer Kinsley are all named in the endorsement ads, scheduled to run 99 times on WXIX-TV “Fox 19” between Sept. 26 and Nov. 7.
Kinsley is running against Judge Winkler, who is the target of another Maislin ad scheduled to run 42 times during those same dates on Fox 19 at a cost of $14,690.
The Fox 19 ads are part of a $116,254 campaign on WKRC-TV “Local 12,” WSTR-TV “Star 64,” Spectrum cable and radio station WIZF- FM 101.1. The ads promoted the three Democrats and criticized Winkler for seeking an open appeals court seat even though he already has that job. Winning the new seat would extend his term in office to 2027. His current term expires in 2024.
“If Winkler wins a second seat his first seat will go to the Columbus elite as a political favor and then they choose whoever they want,” Maislin said in the ad. “We need to stop this Hamilton County. Don’t vote Winkler.”
Measuring the impact
The 2020 campaign led to a March 2022 complaint that alleges Maislin failed to properly disclose the PAC’s treasurer and “all sources of the $324,605.92 it expended during a 15-day window (in 2020) and the payees to whom such expenditures were made.”
In an affidavit denying the allegations, Maislin said he formed his political action committee in September 2020 “to make independent expenditures in connection with local judicial races in Hamilton County.” He added: “I alone made the decisions to make these in-kind donations from the law firm’s funds. The payments were solely from the profits of (his law firm). No individual candidate, PAC, other law firm, or other entity provided funds.”
Those disclosures are important because political action committees are allowed to influence elections with issue ads as long as they don’t coordinate with individual campaigns to effect that change. The Ohio Elections Commission complaint doesn’t allege coordination. Instead, it argues Maislin failed to disclose the funding source and other details about his campaign activities. But Goodin thinks the complaint could expand if evidence of coordination is obtained through a discovery process that’s now underway.
“Circumstantially, it looks as though none of these candidates made their own independent buys through their campaigns of media, so it looks as if they were relying totally on this in terms of their media exposures,” Goodin said. “So that, in and of itself, calls it into question.”
Goodin also raises ethical concerns about Maislin’s contributions, arguing the Winkler ad “comes awfully close” to violating Ohio’s Rules of Professional Conduct for lawyers by implying a “scandalous or partisan” motive to Winkler’s attempt to claim an open seat.
“Running for an open seat is very, very common in judicial races,” Goodin said. “It’s happening right now in the Ohio Supreme Court. I mean, Justice Brunner and Justice Kennedy are both running to be Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court. And they are currently justices of the Ohio Supreme Court serving out their time, so you’ve got a Democrat and a Republican doing precisely the same thing.”
University of Cincinnati Professor Rachel Jay Smith said the rules “don’t explicitly ban Mr. Maislin’s ads, but Rule 3.5(a)(6) does prohibit undignified and discourteous conduct that degrades a court or a judge.” She declined to offer an opinion on whether the ads violate that standard.
Goodin argues the ads create an ethical conflict for judges.
“I would ask those candidates who are benefiting from these ads, ‘Will you hear Blake Maislin’s cases? Will you recuse from those cases if you win?’ Because it creates an absolute immediate appearance of impropriety if you don’t,” Goodin said. Judge Winkler “is already being forced to recuse from the Blake Maislin cases that were before him. So, even if this ridiculous form of gamesmanship doesn’t succeed in electing these folks, Mr. Maislin has already succeeded in knocking a very qualified, common-sense judge off his cases, so he wins either way.”
A judicial dilemma?
The I-Team tried to reach the six Democrats Maislin has endorsed since 2020 and the four Republicans they ran against. None have returned calls seeking comment. But a search of Hamilton County court records turned up two cases in which Judge Alison Hatheway made rulings on matters argued by Maislin’s law firm.
She ruled in Maislin’s favor this year in a personal injury lawsuit against the city of Cincinnati. She also ruled against him in an Indian Hill land dispute that is now on appeal. It’s one of the cases Judge Winkler has declined to hear.
While the I-Team gathered information on the cases, Maislin sent an unsolicited text.
“Are you really calling lawyers asking if I’m getting special favors?” he wrote. “I’ll save you the time. I have either lost all (or almost all) decisions, or the judges themselves have recused themselves.”
The I-Team again invited Maislin to talk about his campaign expenditures. “Bah,” he replied.
Ohio’s Code of Judicial Conduct says a judge “shall disqualify himself or herself in any proceeding in which the judge's impartiality might reasonably be questioned.” But it also says campaign contributions and public statements of support for a judge “does not, in and of itself, disqualify the judge.”
Cincinnati FOP President Dan Hils said Judge Hatheway should have recused herself in a case involving a Cincinnati Police Sergeant who struck a pedestrian while driving on Montgomery Road in 2016. Arthur Scott Jr. was cited in the accident after a police investigation showed he walked in from of Sgt. Abraham Lawson’s car. The city of Cincinnati asked Judge Hatheway to dismiss Scott’s 2019 lawsuit, arguing that the city and Lawson were immune from liability. Judge Hatheway dismissed two of the lawsuit’s three claims but left intact a claim that Lawson was negligent in the operation of the city-owned vehicle.
“Defendant Lawson stated that immediately prior to the collision, he had looked away from the road,” Judge Hatheway wrote in her May 19 ruling. “When his eyes returned to the road, Plaintiff Scott was directly in front of his vehicle. Therefore, the court finds that there is a genuine question of fact regarding whether Defendant Lawson negligently operated his vehicle.”
Four months after the ruling, the city reached a settlement in the case, according to Judge Hatheway's law clerk, Kevin Cox. The case is still pending because the city has yet to file a motion for dismissal, Cox added. Hils declined to comment on the outcome but questioned Hatheway’s involvement in the case.
“Obviously, the judge involved knows that a good part of the reason that she’s there, is because of funding received from this particular attorney,” Hils said. “There’s no way that she could not go into this case without some sort of bias.”
Hatheway did not return the I-Team’s calls seeking comment.
Did Maislin’s ads make a difference?
Hamilton County voters elected nine of the 13 Democrats who ran for judicial slots in the November 2020 election, ending Republican majorities on the 16-seat Common Pleas Court and the five-seat First District Appellate Court. The biggest factor in the shift was a polarizing presidential race, which Joe Biden won in Hamilton County with a 57% to 41% margin over incumbent Donald Trump.
Campaign finance reports show Hatheway raised $27,594 in 2020, so Maislin’s political action committee nearly doubled the amount spent on her behalf. She won her race with 58.7% of the vote, better than Biden’s victory margin.
Goodin said the appearance of impropriety is enough to warrant action against Maislin’s donations.
“You have money, politics and the legal profession, three things about which people are rightfully cynical, and this brings them all together and it really demeans the profession, demeans the bench. It just isn’t good,” Goodin said.
