| Lobbyist Kevin Coughlin “repeatedly expressed his desire to confront the ‘swamp,’” but new reporting highlights his long record as a registered lobbyist.
Coughlin is a self-described small business owner, but what he “doesn’t say is that the ‘small business’ he touts was, in fact, a lobbying firm.” Coughlin registered his lobbying firm “a couple of months before his term officially ended” – entering the revolving door before he even left office and going on to lobby on “issues he worked closely on in the state Senate.”
DCCC Spokesperson Katie Smith:
“Lobbyist Kevin Coughlin entered the revolving door before he even left office and traded his insider influence for special interest cash. Coughlin belongs to the swampy insider political machine – he won’t put Ohioans first because he’s too busy looking out for the special interests who signed his lobbying paychecks.”
Read more:
Mother Jones: Meet the Ohio Lobbyist Running Against Lobbyists
- Former Ohio state Sen. Kevin Coughlin—a self-described “husband, father, [and] small business owner”—is running to be the Republican nominee for Ohio’s 13th Congressional District seat in the 2026 midterms. He promises to “put Ohio workers and their families first,” according to his campaign website. “Never politicians, lobbyists, or special interests.”
- What Coughlin doesn’t say is that the “small business” he touts was, in fact, a lobbying firm. Indeed, for all his disparagement of lobbyists, Coughlin himself was registered as one in the state of Ohio from at least January 2012 to December 2016. His clients ranged from companies in the health care industry—Dentaquest, Internal Medicine Specialists Inc., and Rocky Mountain Dental Association—to the National Real Estate Investors Association and Solar Planet.
- In [last year’s OH-13] race and the current one, Coughlin has repeatedly expressed his desire to confront the “swamp,” a metaphor for the massive wealthy corporations, industries, and their lobbyists who have outsized control of politics in Washington, DC. “I have a PROVEN record of standing up for what’s right for YOU, and it terrifies them,” he said in March 2024. “I’ve got news for the swamp: I’m not going anywhere!”
- But if Coughlin is pitching himself in this potentially competitive matchup as the candidate best prepared to fight lobbyists and their corporate interests, it may be because he knows the profession from the inside.
- In August 2010, a couple of months before his term officially ended, Coughlin registered his new business, Lexington Strategic, with the state of Ohio. There, he would go on to lobby on behalf of multiple companies that had vested interests in Ohio health care and Medicaid policy—issues he worked closely on in the state Senate.
- In 2013, for example, Coughlin lobbied on a bill that included a major provision to eliminate the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion in Ohio. The year before, he also lobbied over “Medicaid policy, small business regulation, [and] health care” issues to the governor, state attorney general, and others on behalf of a dental association.
- His remit was not limited to health care. In 2014, Coughlin lobbied on behalf of the National Real Estate Investors Association in support of a bill that sought to make some landlords exempt from federal fair housing laws. Opponents of the legislation, which did not pass, were concerned that it would block tenants from pursuing legal action over unfair housing practices. The Marietta Times reported that the bill could have also taken Ohio out of compliance with federal fair housing guidelines, which may have cost the state more than $1 million in grants from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.
- “It really comes back to the quality of the people that we elect and their mindset going in. If you’re a member of Congress and you allow the bureaucracy, you allow the staff, and you allow the lobbyists to run all over you, that’s on you,” he said on the conservative Steve Gruber Show in March. “You’re accountable, and the voters at the end of the day will have a say on you.”
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