I had Secretary Frank LaRose of Ohio speak to my 2020 conference on election integrity along with Secretary Jocelyn Benson of Michigan. One Democrat, one Republican, each from a midwestern state, each fighting against the crazy and for fair election administration.

There have been much more troubling signs from LaRose in recent years.

And now this:

Secretary of State Frank LaRose, as he weighs a run for U.S. Senate, is planning a fundraiser in Washington, D.C. ahead of a scheduled Saturday appearance at a national conservative political conference to appear as the lone election official on a panel called “They Stole it From Us Legally.”

All 10 of Ohio’s Republican members of Congress are listed on the event host committee for the Wednesday afternoon fundraiser near Capitol Hill. Tickets run up to $5,000, with proceeds going to LaRose’s state candidate fund, which can’t directly be used for any federal campaign….

LaRose also has another stop on his Washington, D.C., itinerary this week. He’s a featured speaker at the Conservative Political Action Conference, a major annual event for Republican candidates and right-wing activists.

He’s scheduled to speak on Saturday in a panel discussion alongside Hogan Gidley, a former campaign aide to ex-President Donald Trump who has advanced Trump’s false claims about the 2020 presidential election and now works for an elections-policy center; Abe Hamadeh, who unsuccessfully has sought to overturn the 2022 election results for his race for Arizona attorney general, which he lost; and Lee Zeldin, who lost last year’s race for governor of New York.

The event is titled “They Stole it From Us Legally.” Asked about the event’s title, a spokesman for LaRose said that’s not how the event organizers initially described it to LaRose.

The event’s initial title, according to a document obtained by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, was “Easy to Vote, Hard to Cheat,” a catchphrase long used by LaRose and other Ohio Republicans.

The LaRose spokesman, Rob Nichols, said LaRose does not hold the position that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Rather, he will talk about the accuracy of Ohio’s elections.