New WOSU Podcast Explores Lobbyist Neil Clark’s Role in the Ohio House Bill 6 Scandal
'The Power Grab' uses a series of secretly recorded conversations between the late lobbyist and undercover agents to probe the $61 million conspiracy.
Dave Ghose
If the House Bill 6 scandal was a Shakespearean play, the tragic hero role would belong to Neil Clark. That revelation is at the heart of The Power Grab, a seven-episode podcast from WOSU. While Clark wasn’t the driver of the $61 million conspiracy, the late lobbyist did execute the scheme. And it was Clark whose hubris brought it crashing down, revealing all to undercover FBI agents in a series of secretly recorded conversations. “He was the one who really drew me into this project,” says Renee Fox, the writer and host of the podcast.
Fox and her collaborators make extensive use of those recordings, which were cleaned up with the same AI software used on the 2023 Beatles song, “Now and Then.” Speaking to FBI agents posing as hotel developers, Clark talks about the inner workings of the House Bill 6 plot, as well as his ex-con father and his hobby making glass mosaics. “Sicilians are great lovers, great murderers and great artists,” he says. “I got a little bit of each.”
Clark could be profane, generous, boastful, friendly and combative—sometimes all at once. That presented a challenge to Kevin Petrilla, WOSU’s director of radio operations and IT, who was enlisted to read excerpts of Clark’s self-published memoir on the podcast. “Even the way he’s talking to the FBI guys, he’s kind of jovial,” Petrilla says. “But there’s definitely something there where you know if you screw with him, he means business.”
This story is from the March 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly.