Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost Set to Resign Before Term Ends

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost will step down from his position as the state’s top cop, months before his second term is set to end, sources said Thursday.

Yost, a Republican, is expected to soon make his announcement about his future plans. His second term is set to expire at the end of the year.

Gov. Mike DeWine (R) will be tasked with appointing a replacement to serve the remainder of the term. Columbus-area attorney John Kulewicz, a Democrat, and State Auditor Keith Faber (R) are the nominees for the November election.

“This is the Governor’s decision and I look forward to having a conversation with him about the best path forward after the AG makes his announcement,” Faber said in a statement Thursday.

A DeWine spokesman said that there’s “no announcement yet for us to comment on.”

Yost didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Conservative Legacy

He won a close race in 2018 against Steve Dettelbach, who later served as a director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives under President Joe Biden, and romped by 20 points in 2022. A previous state auditor and county prosecutor, Yost had sought to be Ohio’s next governor but dropped out of the race last year after the state Republican Party endorsed Vivek Ramaswamy.

A staunch conservative, his tenure was marked with partisan fights on hot-button issues such as abortion and transgender care for minors. He often signed onto lawsuits challenging Biden administration policies, and he led a legal battle against the US Environmental Protection Agency over stringent emissions requirements on power plants and pipelines to stem ozone pollution wandering into downwind states. The US Supreme Court in 2024 put the “good neighbor” rule on hold while underlying lawsuits proceeded.

Yost also occasionally took positions that put him at odds with the GOP. He opposed giving $600 million from the state’s unclaimed property fund to the Cleveland Browns to build a new suburban stadium and has championed Ohio regulators’ work to shut down prediction market Kalshi for operating as an unlicensed sports gambling platform in the state.

More recently, he vowed to retry two former FirstEnergy Corp. executives on multiple corruption charges after a jury failed to reach a verdict; another trial is set for September.

His office is also prosecuting former state House Speaker Larry Householder (R) on charges that in part relate to his allegedly illegal use of more than $750,000 from his campaign to pay for his criminal defense lawyers in a federal corruption case. Householder is already serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for taking $60 million in bribes from FirstEnergy.