Ohio House District 7 · Upper Arlington · Grandview Heights · Northwest Columbus
There's no party next to my name. On purpose.
I'm Cameron Koffel. No party leader decides how I vote on your property taxes, and no party machine knocks doors for me either. I have to earn every single vote by hand. That's the trade I made, and I'd make it again.
Watch
Three minutes, in my own words.
Filmed around District 7 — why I'm running non-party, and what I'd do with the seat.
Vote non-party
What running non-party actually means.
Both parties raise money off the fight between them, so neither has much reason to end it. Running without one changes who I answer to — and it changes how I have to see you.
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You're a person, not a data point
Campaigns buy voter files that score you — party lean, turnout likelihood, which issue is supposed to move you. I don't have a party file to work from, so the only way I find out what you think is to knock on your door and ask. That's slower. It's also the entire point.
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Nobody hands you a label
Pick a party and you get sorted, and from then on everything you believe gets read through that sort — by campaigns, by your neighbors, sometimes by your own family. There's no label next to my name, so there's nothing to sort you into for voting for me.
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Most people don't fit in one box
You can want your property taxes capped and your schools fully funded. You can think the state gives too much away to data centers and that a police camera needs a warrant. Those aren't contradictions. They're just what people actually think. A party asks you to trade some of it away to stay on the team.
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Nobody tells me how to vote
There's no leadership deciding which bills I'm allowed to support or how I vote on your property taxes. On every bill, the only people I answer to are the ones who live in District 7.
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I can work with anyone
I'm not on either team, so I don't need permission to sign onto a good bill from either side. The license plate privacy bill is moving right now because a Republican and a Democrat are pushing it together. That's the job.
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You have to look for the name
Most voters scan a ballot for a party label. Next to my name there isn't one. On November 3, you're looking for Cameron Koffel — that's the whole trick to it.
Get on the list.
No party sends us a field team. Everything we do, someone from this district does.
Cameron Koffel
Cameron is running non-party for Ohio House District 7 — Upper Arlington, Grandview Heights, and northwest Columbus. No leadership PAC, no party apparatus deciding which bills he's allowed to support, and no one to answer to but the people who live here.
That's a harder way to run. It's also the only way to represent a district rather than a party. He works in criminal defense, and every position on this site names the specific mechanism that would make it real.
Where I stand
Seven things I'll work on. No party told me to pick them.
These three are the ones that hit your household first. The other four are on the full page.
Check your address
Am I in District 7?
District lines don't follow city limits. Type your full address — street number, street, city, and ZIP.
Checked against the U.S. Census Bureau's public address lookup. This campaign never sees or stores your address.
Get involved
An independent wins on volunteers or not at all.
No party sends us a field team. Every door we knock, someone from this district knocks.
Donate
No party money. Just this.
There's no state party cutting us a check and no party fund backstopping the ad buy. Door hangers, literature, and digital ads in a district of 60,000 voters get paid for by the people who live in it.
Contributions to Koffel for Ohio are not tax deductible. Ohio law requires us to record your name, address, employer, and occupation for contributions above the reporting threshold. Contributions from corporations and from foreign nationals are prohibited.