Former male stripper makes another run for Ohio governor

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Dayton Democrat Larry Ealy, who once worked as an exotic dancer, is making a second run for Ohio governor.

“Why make another run at it? I’ve got some unfinished business,” said Ealy, a 55-year-old father of 10.

He said he believes that minorities, particularly African-Americans, have been denied due process and equal rights.

"I believe the Jewish Democratic Party is behind the deprivation and the conspiracy to keep black people deprived of all civil rights," Ealy said in interview before the 2014 Democratic primary for governor.

In that race, Ealy won 17 percent of the vote against former FBI agent and Cuyahoga County Executive Ed FitzGerald. He decided to make his 2014 run while sitting in a jail cell, he said at the time.

Ealy said he hasn’t worked as a male dancer for years. “After your story, now everybody thinks I’m still stripping. Everybody called me about it,” he said. He said he was a stripper in 1988 at Spunky’s Night Club on Germantown Pike in Dayton.

Ealy and three others were investigated for alleged irregularities in voter signatures on Ealy’s nominating petitions in 2014. A grand jury examined all four cases but did not return indictments on Ealy or a second man, Keith Belluardo, of Dayton.

Two others were indicted. Bruce Black, of Dayton, pleaded guilty to two counts of prohibitions related to petitions, a fifth degree felony, and was sentenced to probation on Oct. 26, 2017, said Greg Flannagan, spokesman for Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias Heck Jr. Jody Lane, of Dayton, was indicted on the same charges and a warrant for his arrest was issued on June 29, 2017, according to documents on file at the Montgomery County Common Pleas Clerk of Court.

Ealy’s son Lance Ealy was sentenced to 124 months in prison in 2015 after being convicted of federal fraud charges. He is serving his sentence in Kentucky.

Cox Media Group