Democrat Brian Poindexter’s campaign is launching an ad Wednesday featuring Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) criticizing his former son-in-law, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), over an incident involving Moreno's granddaughter's stuffed blue bunny.
Page A205From§Eachthe noon edition — 7 October 2026
Miller's lawyers warned stations off the first ad; the next one features his former father-in-law, Senator Moreno
As it ran on the front
I want to say up front that it is a good letter — somebody stayed late on it, you can tell — and the phrase holding the whole thing upright is "false and defamatory."
The rest of it I wrote down. Just a second. It's in here with the receipt from the tire place — ah, here it is. The Hill, the twenty-third of September: "Local TV stations in Ohio are broadcasting an ad from Democrat Brian Poindexter attacking GOP Rep. Max Miller despite Miller's attorney threatening legal action." The attorney is Mr. Brito. He sent the cease-and-desist the week before, up to the executives at WKYC-TV in Cleveland. The executives. Not the night desk.…
…(cont) And here is where I get stuck, and I apologize, because it is probably nothing. The letter went to the executives. Then the ad went on the air. How many of the stations took it down?
That one has an answer, so I'll keep going. The first ad, the first of September, was the candidate's own three daughters — Ashley, Makayla, Taylor — a full minute of them saying nice things about their father, while the incumbent sits under abuse allegations from his ex-wife. That is the ad the letter was about. That is the one the Cleveland executives were asked to pull, and the one that stayed up.
Then this week there is a second ad, and I had to read the item twice, because my glasses were out in the car. The man in the new ad is Senator Bernie Moreno. Republican. Ohio. Same party as the congressman. And what is the senator doing in it? Criticizing the congressman over an incident involving a stuffed blue bunny belonging to the senator's granddaughter. Which makes the congressman the senator's former son-in-law, and makes the ex-wife in those allegations the senator's daughter, Emily. Did the Democrat go dig that footage up, or did the senator say it into a camera?
Can I show you something, it'll take a minute. Last spring the township sent me a notice about my dog. Barking. Six in the morning, off the back porch. I wrote them a letter. I used the word "inaccurate," which I was proud of; it took me two evenings at the dining room table, and I had the evenings because the car was up on blocks again, fan belt. And a notice like that, you can fight it, you really can, because who is going to stand up and say it? The neighbor doesn't want the trouble. Then the township sends a second notice, and this time there is a statement stapled to the back, and the statement is from my brother-in-law, who had been sleeping on that porch all week. Same dog. Same six in the morning. Who do I write the letter to then?
So what is it a letter actually does? On a stranger who doesn't want the trouble, I can see it. On the executives in Cleveland, who had the thing in hand on the twenty-third of September — what went out over their air that night, and the night after? And when the second ad comes, the one with the senator in it, who is left to send a letter to? The station? The senator? The granddaughter's toy?
I keep circling the same object here and I know it, and my apologies. It is not the allegations, which belong to his ex-wife and to a court, and I am not the man for those. It is the paper. One piece of paper, written by a professional, addressed to the people who decide what Ohio sees between the weather and the ballgame. That is a lot of freight for four or five pages.
Oh — before you go, one more thing and then I'm out of your way. The senator's part. The stuffed animal, on camera, from a man in the congressman's own party and his own family. If a letter is coming for that one too, I would only want to know the part I can check: what did the Cleveland station do in September, the last time a letter told it an ad was false and defamatory?
“A lawyer's letter to a station manager isn't a lawsuit, it's a bill a local newsroom can't afford to find out about — that's the whole play, make Cleveland do the pulling so nobody has to prove anything to a judge. The stations ran it anyway, and now the follow-up ad has a sitting Republican senator in it, talking about his own granddaughter's stuffed bunny. When the opposition research is the congressman's former father-in-law, what exactly was the letter asking the station to protect him from?”
“A cease-and-desist is a routine letter, every campaign in America gets them, it's not a threat — did I say threat? That doesn't sound like me. Look, the stations made their own editorial judgments, which is exactly the process we respect, and a family falling out is a family falling out; the senator was describing a toy. A toy. And now it's a commercial, and I'm supposed to be the nervous one here.”
The receipts
· Max Miller’s Democratic opponent spotlights daughters in campaign ad from the morgue, 1 Sep 2026
· Ohio TV stations ignore legal threat from Max Miller, air opponent's ad: Report from the morgue, 23 Sep 2026
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front. The byline is a pen name for a column drafted by a machine and checked by the editor: how this is made.