Gov. Mike DeWine’s phone is blowing up with calls over Ohio’s soon-to-be vacant U.S. Senate seat, but he’s not giving away who’s in line for the job.

Sen. JD Vance won the vice presidency Tuesday, just two years after he was first elected to the Senate. Per state law, DeWine will appoint someone to serve with Sen.-elect Bernie Moreno until 2026. Voters will then elect someone to fill out the remaining two years of Vance’s term.

Moreno defeated longtime Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown Tuesday, meaning Ohio will soon be represented by two brand new senators.

“It takes someone who really will focus on the state of Ohio, will focus on national issues, someone who will really work hard, someone who wants to get things done,” DeWine told reporters Thursday. “These are qualifications, I think, that are very important. It also has to be someone who could win a primary. It has to be someone who could win a general election, and then two years later, do all that again. So, this is not for the faint-hearted.”

DeWine’s appointee will assume the role when Vance resigns from his seat. A Vance spokesman did not respond to questions about his timeline, but new senators take the oath of office in early January.

Who might replace JD Vance in the Senate?

DeWine is expected to appoint a fellow Republican, but he declined to say with whom he’s spoken or who he’s considering. Among the names floating around are former Ohio Republican Party chair Jane Timken, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan, R-Chagrin Falls.

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Moreno said he wants to see someone who supports the GOP agenda and understands what it’s like to campaign across the state.

“This is the difference between inherited wealth and wealth that you had to build yourself,” Moreno said. “And I’m not a fan of inherited wealth people. They tend to be lazy. The person that had to work for it is person I want to see.”

Dolan and LaRose lost to Moreno in the March Republican Senate primary. An adviser for Dolan did not respond to a request for comment. In a statement, LaRose said he’s “always ready to answer the call of duty” but currently focused on certifying Tuesday’s election results.

One person appeared to rule out a Senate appointment: Attorney General Dave Yost, who is running for governor against Lt. Gov. Jon Husted.

“Look, I’m an executive,” Yost told reporters earlier this week. “I’ve never been a legislator, and I’m not ready to end my public service, but I can’t imagine going to Washington, D.C. and I would not accept that.”

DeWine said he’d be open to someone who, like Moreno, doesn’t have prior experience in office. One person in that vein is Vivek Ramaswamy, a Columbus-area entrepreneur and Cincinnati-area native who unsuccessfully ran for the GOP presidential nomination earlier this year.

Ramaswamy has also been rumored as a potential candidate for governor or appointee to President-elect Donald Trump’s cabinet. An asset management firm started by Ramaswamy is moving from Columbus to Dallas, but he said he’s no longer involved with the company and plans to stay in Ohio.

“Not everybody has the same skills,” Ramaswamy told reporters Thursday. “I’m an executive by background. That’s served me well as an entrepreneur, and those are skills that I’d like to put to use, and I want to reflect on the biggest and best possible way that we can use that skillset as an outsider to hopefully transform this country.”

Statehouse bureau reporters Jessie Balmert and Erin Glynn contributed.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol is reminding motorists of the increase in deer-involved crashes during this time of year.

Since 2019, there have been 109,507 deer-involved crashes on Ohio roadways. While 95% of deer-involved crashes only resulted in property damage, 44 crashes were fatal and resulted in 45 deaths. Additionally, from 2019-2023, 47% of these crashes occurred in October, November and December, with 22% occurring in November alone.

The most crashes involving deer have happened in Stark (3,138), Richland (2,880), Hancock (2,725) and Defiance (2,560) counties. Combined, these four counties accounted for 10% of all deer-involved crashes. Additionally, more than 100 deer-involved crashes have happened in all but one Ohio county since 2019.

Simple tips to avoid an animal collision are: scan the road ahead, use high-beam headlights when able, be extra cautious at dawn and dusk and if a collision is unavoidable, brake – don’t swerve to stay in your lane.

A statistical map containing deer-involved crash information can be found here.

Generally speaking, it’s easy to get a kick out of the specialists who play for Ohio State football.

Punters and kickers can be wacky individualists, given that they play a unique role on their teams. But because they also lack the celebrity status of their teammates, they can also be the most like the average student of any Buckeye.

It often produces a delightful mix of quirky and down-to-earth.

So it is with Drew Basil.

“When I was still in high school, my brothers would come out and kick with me,” he told The Dispatch explaining how he got good enough to join the Buckeyes. “They would try to distract me in ways I wouldn’t mention.”

Press him a little bit on that point, though…

“Josh would moon me, and Kyle would be flashing me,” Basil explained. “They’d be right next to the ball and trying to make me laugh while I was kicking.”

The Chillicothe native played at OSU from 2010 to 2013. During that time he made 169 of his 173 extra-point attempts, including a streak of 58 straight in his final season. He made 33 of his 42 field goal attempts.

Still, when Urban Meyer took over from Luke Fickell, the head coach for one season following the departure of Jim Tressel, Basil had to work extra hard to be accepted.

“It took a while for coach Meyer to call me by name,” Basil recalled. “That’s fine. I knew who he was talking to.”

In a 26-21 win over Michigan in 2012, Basil connected for four field goals, enabling the Buckeyes to cap their perfect 12-0 season in Meyer’s first year. What made Basil’s feat even more remarkable was that he had come into that game having made four field goals all season, and he struck his career-long, a 52 yarder, that afternoon.

He was an Academic All-Big Ten honoree his senior season. As for his football career beyond that?

“After Ohio State,” he said, “I went to the rookie minicamp with the Atlanta Falcons and did great, and they just said, ‘See you later.’ And then I also went to Canada with the Montreal Alouettes for a training camp and also for a private workout, and both times just got sent home. And then I played a season for the Cleveland Gladiators in Arena football.”

He especially enjoyed playing in the AFL.

“I think that was probably the most exciting football I’ve ever been around,” he said. “You’re on a field about the size of a hockey rink, and to see players getting hit into the wall and everything, it was a lot of fun to watch.”

Basil has stayed connected to football through his role as a special teams coach at Upper Arlington. But naturally, being a kicker, there’s a quirky part to the story, too.

“So, one of my former Ohio State teammates is (Spencer Smith), the athletic director at Upper Arlington,” Basil said, “and me and my wife were living in his basement while our first house was getting remodeled, and he came home one day and said, ‘Hey, Drew, I need a jayvee golf coach.’ I was like, ‘OK. Well, here’s a few people’s names I know that they like golf, and they’re good people.’ And he called all of them, and none of them could make it work with their work schedule.

“He came back and said, ‘Drew, I need a jayvee golf coach.’ “

Basil protested that he knew little about the sport, but Smith had nowhere else to turn.

“So I’ve done that for seven seasons now,” Basil said.

And that’s helped him on the links. Somewhat.

“I maybe lose fewer golf balls,” he said. “But I think most of the kids could beat me on any given day.”

Basil married his college sweetheart, and the two live in central Ohio.

“So the story that I tell everyone is that she chased after me,” he said laughing.

He then explained: “We dated a couple of times, and I would always end it, because personally, I would get scared. But I realized I wasn’t going to find any better than Melissa, and she gave me that third chance, and the third time’s a charm. We’re still on that third chance over 13 ½ years later, and we’ve been married for over eight years now.”

They have two kids, daughter Rennie, which was Melissa’s maiden name, and son Axe, which was the maiden name of Melissa’s grandmother.

“Those were definitely the better options than what I presented,” Basil said. “I had recommended Lisa Banana Basil because it spells the same thing forward and backward, but Melissa was like, ‘Absolutely not.’ “

Melissa runs her own insurance company. Drew has been working in real estate for Sorrell & Company for almost nine years.

“I don’t know that I have had many people that have said, ‘I’m using you because you used to play football,’ he reflected. “A lot of people who use are people who have gotten to know me or come from a referral from someone they trust.”

That might be a little surprising, given Columbus’ reputation for taking care of former football players, but Basil said Melissa, who played softball, was a bigger star than he was on campus. She was well known for the long, black hair that stuck out from beneath her helmet and the bows she wore.

“Little girls would come up to her after the game, right?” Basil said. “And they would be coming up to her asking for autographs, and it was the coolest thing ever to be able to see that.”

Exactly what a quirky, down-to-earth person would say.

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