Nearly empty Ohio Statehouse to greet expected weekend protesters

COLUMBUS — Unlike Jan. 6 when protesters stormed a busy U.S. Capitol to disrupt certification of Joe Biden's presidential win, those expected to rally at the Ohio Statehouse this weekend will be greeted by a largely empty building save for law enforcement. The General Assembly hasn't started its new two-year session in earnest yet, and Gov. Mike DeWine doesn't operate out of the Statehouse. For now, the building is still set to be open as usual for public visits from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on both Saturday and Sunday. "We have no changes," said Mike Ruppert, spokesman for the Capitol Square Review and Advisory Board which oversees the building and grounds. The building will be closed Monday for the Martin Luther King, Jr. federal holiday. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has warned each state capitol across the nation to prepare for an "armed march" beginning this weekend in advance of the inauguration. But Tom Zawistowski — president of the Tea Party-affiliated We the People convention, executive director of the Portage County Tea Party, and a former candidate for chair of the Ohio Republican Party — called the leaked FBI warning, reported by the "fake news" media, to be a "Deep State" smear of President Donald Trump's supporters. He was in Washington last week for the Trump rally that preceded the violence at the U.S. Capitol. "I know of no protests scheduled for this weekend in Columbus, and if there was one, I would know...," he said in a news release. "However, everyone who panics at the word 'armed' should note that we had perhaps 30 protests at the state capital last year, and every one of them had 'armed' citizens in attendance because Columbus has open carry laws, and guess what? Not one person was shot." Guns are off limits inside the Ohio Statehouse, but they can be legally carried on exterior Statehouse grounds. "I can tell you for a fact that there is no organization that I am aware of on the conservative right that has the money, the organization, the training, or the ability to plan and executive anything close to what this (FBI) bulletin suggests," Zawistowski said. Many Statehouse employees, including staff for the House of Representatives, are already working from home in this age of coronavirus. Senate employees usually do so on Mondays and Fridays, but next week they will add Jan. 20 to the list. That's the day Biden is to be inaugurated in Washington and a day mentioned for more unrest. There was already a heavier-than-usual presence of the Ohio State Highway Patrol at the Statehouse on Wednesday. That occurred last summer as well during protests related to racial unrest and DeWine's pandemic orders. The Statehouse and its grounds sustained nearly $159,000 in damage from broken windows and lamps and desecrated monuments between May 28 and June 18. On Wednesday, boards started going up on Statehouse windows. The governor this week called up 580 members of the Ohio National Guard, 200 of whom will head to Washington. The rest will be available to join highway patrol and city police in Columbus to keep the peace on and off Statehouse grounds. On the day of the U.S. Capitol's invasion, some 200 protesters at the Statehouse — some carrying Trump flags, openly carrying weapons, and wearing camouflage or Proud Boys shirts — clashed with counter-protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement. There were skirmishes within the crowd but no attempt to rush the building. The Republican governor on Tuesday turned defensive when asked by a reporter why he hadn't spoken out more often to rebuke Trump's characterizations of a stolen election ahead of the protests. "I'm the governor of the state of Ohio...," DeWine said. "I got a lot to do here....I don't think that it's my obligation to stand up every single time that the President says something and refute that. "...I've had no experience in my life of that peaceful transfer of power, of seeing that as a little kid, where it didn't work," he said. "Forgive me if I assumed that what we've done for 200 years we were going to be able to do in this election." ___ (c)2021 The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) Visit The Blade (Toledo, Ohio) at www.toledoblade.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.