COLUMBUS, Ohio — Step aside, Bigfoot.

A new bill introduced to the Ohio House on April 13 wants to make the Loveland Frogman Ohio’s official state cryptid.

This very real bill is being sponsored by Ohio Representative Tristan Rader, who represents district 13 in Cleveland, and Representative Jean Schmidt, who represents district 62 in Loveland.

“This bill is about showcasing our communities,” said Rader in a press release. “The Loveland Frog is uniquely Ohio. It reflects the stories we tell, the places we’re proud of and the creativity that makes our state worth celebrating.”

The bill makes note that Loveland’s beloved legend has inspired books, documentaries, local festivals, artwork, merchandise and local tourism — all contributing to the local economy.

The Loveland Frogman is, as described by House Bill 821, “a frog-like, bipedal creature standing approximately four feet fall.”

The legend also inspired a found footage horror movie released in 2023.

But what is the Loveland Frogman?

The legend of the Loveland Frogman started with the story that, on two different nights in March of 1972, two different police officers spotted the Frogman.

The creature went unseen for decades, until in 2016, when a couple playing Pokemon Go said they spotted something weird between Loveland Madeira Road and Lake Isabella.

“We saw a huge frog near the water,” Sam Jacobs wrote in an email. “Not in the game, this was an actual giant frog.”

Jacobs said he stopped playing Pokemon Go so he could document what he was seeing, snapping some photos and shooting a short video.

“Then the thing stood up and walked on its hind legs. I realize this sounds crazy, but I swear on my grandmother’s grave this is the truth,” he wrote. “The frog stood about 4 feet tall.”

When they returned to Jacobs’ girlfriend’s home, her parents told them about the legend of the Frogman.

So was it the legendary Frogman? Or just a big frog? Jacobs wasn’t sure.

Around a day after WCPO’s story about Jacobs was published, we got a phone call from a man who claimed to be one of the original police officers who first saw the cryptid.

Mark Mathews told us the creature was not a frog at all.

Mathews explained that the first officer to encounter the purported Frogman, Ray Shockey, called him one night in the March of 1972 after spotting something strange on Riverside Drive/Kemper Road near the Totes boot factory and the Little Miami River.

“Naturally, I didn’t believe him … but I could somehow tell from his demeanor that he did see something,” Mathews said.

Later that month, Mathews was driving on Kemper Road near the boot factory when he saw something run across the road. However, it wasn’t walking upright and didn’t climb over the guardrail as the urban legend of the Frogman goes. The creature crawled under the guardrail. Matthews said he “had no clue what it was.”

“I know no one would believe me, so I shot it,” he said.

Mathews recovered the creature’s body and put it in his trunk to show Shockey. He said Shockey said it was the creature he had seen, too.

It was a large iguana about 3 or 3.5 feet long, Mathews said. The animal was missing its tail, which is why he didn’t immediately recognize it.

Mathews said he figured the iguana had been someone’s pet and then either got loose or was released when it grew too large. He also theorized that the cold-blooded animal had been living near the pipes that released water that was used for cooling the ovens in the boot factory as a way to stay warm in the cold March weather.

“It’s a big hoax,” he said. “There’s a logical explanation for everything.”

Ohio Democrats had a tough time recruiting candidates for the 2026 midterms after years of election losses. 

But they’ve still ended up with a primary contest for Ohio Secretary of State that bears the hallmarks of a competitive race, pitting a first-time candidate against one of the state’s more accomplished Democrats. 

After launching his campaign early, Cincinnati cancer doctor Hambley has gained traction with state party insiders. He’s done so through a mix of active campaigning and strong fundraising – visiting 78 counties and, according to him, raising nearly $1 million, a figure that includes a nearly $200,000 personal loan. Former Gov. Ted Celeste endorsed Hambley last week, becoming the latest current or former elected Democrat to do so, and the state party opted last month to remain neutral in the race.

“Everyone here knows that we need a change,” Hambley said at a voter forum packed with liberal activists in Columbus earlier this month.

State Rep. Allison Russo, an Upper Arlington Democrat who previously led the Ohio House Democrats, meanwhile, says she’s made up for lost time after entering the race eight months after Hambley.

She’s racked up organized labor endorsements and is touting her experience fighting with Republicans in Columbus. 

“We are not at a moment in time for an office of this significance in the statewide ticket where we can afford to have someone who’s on a learning curve,” Russo said in an interview. 

The contest has become a test of competing arguments within the party: whether Democrats are better served by a political outsider or an experienced officeholder. Voters will decide in the May 5 primary.

A similar insider-outsider dynamic also exists in the Republican primary between state Treasurer Robert Sprague and Marcell Strbich, a retired U.S. Army intelligence officer, although the Ohio Republican Party has backed Sprague in that race, greatly increasing his chances of winning. 

The Ohio Secretary of State is a key battleground for both parties, since it serves as the state’s chief elections officer. The role has become more politicized in recent years as President Donald Trump has sought to impose new restrictions on mail voting, which he claims is susceptible to fraud, even though documented cases of voter fraud are exceedingly rare.

The office’s duties include overseeing election administration, issuing guidance to county boards and writing ballot language for statewide issues, an increasingly important political battleground in Ohio, and serving on the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

The office also manages the state’s campaign finance system and business filings.

Hambley builds grassroots campaign

Hambley launched his campaign in January 2025, just months after Democrats were left decimated and demoralized by the November presidential election. A cancer doctor who works for the University of Cincinnati health system, he attracted little attention outside of Cincinnati. In his campaign launch statement, he cited in part the redistricting reform amendment that voters rejected in the November 2024 election as inspiring him to run.

Hambley was involved with that political fight, running a network of Southwest Ohio health workers who promoted the amendment. He got his first introduction to politics a decade before that, organizing opposition in Cleveland to Trump’s “Muslim ban” ahead of the city’s hosting of the 2016 Republican National Convention.

As other Democrats deliberated over whether to run, Hambley developed his campaign by working off the list of hundreds of thousands of voters who signed the petitions for the 2024 amendment. He’s also amassed support by holding hundreds of small events around the state – 360, by his count. Hambley’s message includes emphasizing his background growing up on a small farm and the trusted role doctors play in society. He’s campaigned around the state in a Jeep, like another Democratic physician seeking statewide office, Dr. Amy Acton, the party’s presumptive nominee for governor. 

“I absolutely believe, with a caregiver background running on care and empathy, especially this year, especially against these opponents, is the right way,” Hambley said during an April 11 voter forum in Columbus.

Russo makes a case for experience

Russo, who also works as a health care researcher, launched her campaign in August after being privately linked to a possible run for lieutenant governor. 

She won her current seat in November 2018 in her first run for elected office, and was one of several women candidates to flip previously Republican-held suburban seats. Since then, she’s built relationships with Democrats around the state, in part through an unsuccessful special election campaign in 2021. At a November 2024 election night event that otherwise was extraordinarily bleak for state Democrats, she touted how Democrats flipped two additional Republican-held seats in Franklin County, ending Republicans’ ability to pass referendum-proof legislation. 

From the beginning, Russo has emphasized her experience dealing with Republicans in Columbus. 

“Having been in the arena, having been in some of the toughest fights in terms of attacks on direct democracy, attacks on voting, attacks on our redistricting process and navigating through a very broken redistricting process, that experience I think is critical,” Russo said in an interview.

Russo’s experience should give her an advantage in fundraising, given the opportunity she’s had to network as a Democratic legislative leader and a former candidate in a 2021 congressional race.

But in a state disclosure filed in January, Hambley said he had $546,000 in cash on hand, more than double what Russo reported at the time. He’s started putting his campaign cash to work – launching TV ads that subtly criticize Russo for accepting corporate political action committee money as a Democratic legislative leader. 

“We’re going to be ramping up in the next couple weeks,” he said in an interview.

Russo declined to share her fundraising numbers, saying she’ll do so when she files her disclosure later this month. Even though Hambley got an eight-month head start on the race, Russo said she’s visited 76 counties, just under Hambley’s 78.

She said her advertising plan involves leaning on social media, and likened buying TV ads during a primary election to “lighting money on fire.” She dismissed the idea that the race is competitive, saying her internal polling shows her with a significant lead. She said it also shows there are many undecided voters, but she thinks they’ll gravitate toward the more experienced candidate.

“I think all of this leads me right into the general election. And that is where my eye is focused. It is winning this general election in November,” Russo said.

Few policy differences 

The two candidates don’t have much difference on policy. Both say they want to expand voting rights while opposing Donald Trump’s attempts to restrict mail voting. Their main points of difference largely come down to their professional backgrounds.

But Hambley has leaned into two lines of attack, which both reflect Russo’s practical experience in politics. 

First, Hambley has attacked Russo over her 2023 vote with Republicans to approve the current state legislative maps. The vote, which followed a lengthy court battle that Republicans ultimately won, locked in maps for the rest of the decade that will favor the GOP to win between three-fifths and two-thirds of Ohio’s House seats, to the disappointment of activists who view the maps as gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. 

“Voting for gerrymandered maps is disqualified if you want to be Secretary of State,” Hambley said at the Columbus voter forum.

Second, Hambley has attacked Russo for accepting money from corporate PACs during her tenure as state House minority leader. He also attacked her for getting endorsed by the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, which Hambley called a “MAGA group” in a social media video. 

In response, Russo said she supports campaign-finance reform. But, she said her job as a Democratic legislative leader was to help elect Democrats.

“I want real solutions. Not a bumper-sticker slogan that makes us all feel good,” Russo said.

In an interview, Russo also said some of Hambley’s stances could hurt him in a general election. 

Hambley has pledged to campaign in 2027 for a new redistricting reform amendment – which would continue the politicization of the office by current Secretary of State Frank LaRose. In 2024, he endorsed and campaigned for President Donald Trump, after previously arguing that secretaries of state should avoid political campaigning to prevent a perception of bias.

“My primary opponent misunderstands what the job actually is and misunderstands what the role of [secretary of state] should be,” Russo said.

For his part, Hambley has argued Democrats need to confront difficult truths. 

“People don’t like us. People don’t like the average Democrat in Ohio,” Hambley said during a March 5 candidate forum in Erie County. “It is a huge problem for us.

By banning ranked choice voting and penalizing communities that consider it, Ohio leaders have limited local control and signaled a lack of trust in voters to shape their own elections.

When Gov. Mike DeWine signed Senate Bill 63 into law, he didn’t just ban ranked choice voting in Ohio. He sent a clear message: Ohio voters cannot be trusted to make decisions about our own elections.