Why hasn’t the Ohio GOP rid itself of Max Miller, exactly?

So, this is pretty disturbing:

In mid-March, two detectives, an Ohio county Division of Children and Family Services (DCFS) caseworker, and a Cleveland Clinic physician met on Zoom to discuss how the 2-year-old daughter of a congressman and granddaughter of a US senator wound up with a broken collarbone.

“The bruising surrounding the clavicle fracture made the injury suspicious,” wrote one of the detectives who summarized the Zoom meeting. Further, someone on the call “advised the injury would have required a high degree of impact to occur.”

Neither the child’s father, Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio), nor mother, conservative policy adviser Emily Moreno, admitted to knowing what caused their daughter’s injury or that it occurred while their daughter was under their care. Miller’s primary theory was that the bruising resembled marks from a seat belt. Moreno, who discovered the bruises and took the child to an emergency room, suggested the cause may have been something more sinister. Records of the investigation into potential child abuse show that Moreno told detectives that Miller had previously thrown hot water at her, shoved her, and held a gun to her head; therefore, she couldn’t rule out that Miller caused their daughter’s fracture. Moreover, a child protection specialist reviewing the incident had characterized the bruising near the fracture as resembling a “handprint.”

[…]

The trove of documents contains allegations of drug use by Miller, misogyny and verbal abuse, and violent behavior against multiple women. The filings also include evidence that Miller implicitly threatened his ex-father-in-law, Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Read the whole piece, this is hardly the first time bad behavior including violence has been alleged on Moreno’s part, though we must emphasize that the key word here is “alleged.”

Irrespective of what is fact and what is fiction, it looks downright insane for this guy to have been allowed to proceed to a general election ballot. And it’s tough to believe that *someone* didn’t know enough of what has been alleged against him far enough in advance to procure an alternative candidate to run and ensure made the general election ballot.

So, basically, what in the fresh hell is going on here, is our major question?

But here are a few others:

1. What does this say about Bernie Moreno’s clout within the Ohio GOP. Yeah, Miller has threatened his daughter with a defamation suit, and I’m sure the Senator didn’t want his own piece of that. But it’s not defamation to simply support and promote a different candidate for public office.
2. Miller is in a “Likely R” district, not a “Toss-Up” or a “Lean R” district. Is 2026 shaping up so badly that the GOP is worrying it can’t hold the seat without an incumbent sitting in it? Even an incumbent with this baggage?
3. If so, is that calculation even close to right? As Mother Jones notes in its reporting, “a recent poll shows he leads Democratic challenger Brian Poindexter by just 1 percent.” The Cook rating doesn’t reflect that, and it’s probably overly bullish for the Democrat, but equally, it doesn’t sound good.
4. The whole point of Ohio’s redistricting was to give Republicans an inherent advantage. Is that looking like a productive exercise at this point, or…?