They called him Mr. Butler County. Then, he went to prison.
Equal parts beloved and infamous, Mike Fox died on Thursday, according to a report in the Journal-News. The political maverick was 73.
Fox, once a Butler County titan, leaves behind one of the most complicated and contradictory legacies in Ohio politics.
It started as a success story, with the Hamilton native dreaming of becoming governor. Elected to the Ohio House at 25, it didn’t seem like a stretch.
The former teacher and sheriff’s deputy quickly developed a reputation for thinking outside of the box. He championed school vouchers for low-income students and welfare reform legislation more than a decade before then-President Bill Clinton made workfare programs a federal mandate.
"Sometimes when you climb out of the box, you get eaten," Fox said in 2004.
Eight years later, his success story began to collapse as his son pushed him out of a federal courtroom in a wheelchair.
Fox had just been sentenced to four years in prison, convinced he became collateral damage in Butler County’s most shocking political scandal.
“It is what it is,” Fox said then. “Some days you get the bear, and some days the bear gets you.”
Fox, a Republican who spent a decade running a hamburger shop with his dad, was never been a stranger to controversy.
Once, during a budget fight as a state legislator, the political prodigy called another lawmaker a “cement head”. Fox loved telling that story, even as it got him in trouble years later.
"He wears everybody out, by sheer force of will," a local judge once said of Fox.
It was hard to tell if the judge meant that as a compliment.
Even if he didn't, Fox probably took it as one. He was a politician who didn’t mind stepping on toes to get things done.
He took pride in that, and often wondered what he could have accomplished in the Trump era of politics.
“I probably have a knack for making more people mad than other people,” he once said. “And the ones I make mad, I make real mad.”
This trademark stubbornness was Fox’s biggest strength, and he believes it ultimately contributed to his political downfall.
But nothing illustrates that love-hate relationship – and his complicated legacy – better than Ohio 129, the highway connecting Hamilton to Interstate 75.
At one time, Hamilton was the second-largest city in America without direct access to the interstate. A project to fix that had been talked about since the 1960s, but struggled for funding and languished in development hell.
That was until Fox sponsored legislation creating a special transportation district promoting public-private partnerships and alternative financing for road projects.
At the time, Fox faced fierce opposition from both residents and elected officials. The model is now used throughout Ohio.
“While most politicians see only as far as the next election," former Enquirer columnist Peter Bronson wrote, "Fox had a telephoto view like a snapshot from Google Earth."
When the highway was finally built in 1999, it was named the Michael A. Fox Highway because of the lawmaker’s bulldogged determination. Many believed it would never have happened without him.
But several years later, as Fox sparred with the local GOP, a Republican state senator from Middletown led the charge to rename the highway. The lawmaker said the highway amounted to free advertising because Fox was still actively campaigning for reelection.
It’s since been renamed the Butler County Veterans Highway, although a sign bearing Fox's name stood for many years after.
At more than two decades, Fox was Butler County’s longest-serving state legislator. Over that time, he was called an idea factory – and a master manipulator.
In 1991, bounced checks cost him a job as director of the Ohio Department of Human Services.
In 1997, he was stripped of his Education Committee chairmanship and censured by Ohio House peers after he accepted plane tickets from a lobbyist.
At that time, the Ethics Commission chairman was the same lawmaker Fox had called a cement head.
A few months later, Fox resigned to become a Butler County commissioner.
After his own Republican Party chose not to endorse him for reelection in 2004, he told The Enquirer his family had pleaded with him to give up politics.
And this was well before the FBI started investigating.
In 2009, Fox was indicted on federal charges which included accepting bribes and kickbacks. The allegations came after an investigation into whether a fiber optics company took out millions of dollars in loans in the county’s name without its approval.
That investigation led to convictions for then-Butler County Auditor Kay Rogers and former Dynus executives.
Fox pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return, but none of the public corruption charges – he always maintained he did not knowingly do anything illegal.
Nonetheless, the felony conviction barred him from the political world that had been his life for decades.
Engulfed in scandal, Fox said he became a hermit and ate to relieve stress. He gained more than 100 pounds.
Fox also lost his home and his health deteriorated. He was released from prison early because of it.
In 2017, he almost died when he fell at his Oxford house and couldn’t get up. He said at one point his heart stopped and he lived off a ventilator for 11 days.
Recovering in the hospital, Fox found himself looking at news stories that read like obituaries. And he was often disappointed.
"My life and my career are more than a trip to jail,” he told The Enquirer in 2018.
Maybe that's why the highway sign bearing his name stood for so many years, even after it was renamed.
And maybe that's why some residents still call it the "Michael Fox Highway".
Because, to them, he'll always be Mr. Butler County.
No information was available Friday morning about funeral arrangements for Fox.
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