Niraj Antani

Antani was born and raised in Miami Township. He currently lives in Miamisburg, Ohio.

Antani attended Miamisburg City Schools and graduated from Miamisburg High School in 2009. He went on to The Ohio State University and earned his bachelor's degree in Political Science.[2] After that, he briefly attended the University of Dayton Law School before quitting to run for State Representative.[3]

When Representative Terry Blair died after winning the 2014 primary election for a fourth term, Antani was chosen by the Montgomery County Republican party to replace Blair on the ballot. It was a difficult win for Antani, not having any true experience besides attending undergraduate college, "It took four rounds for Niraj Antani of Miami Twp. to gain a majority of votes from the district’s GOP precinct captains." [3] However, Antani won the general election 64.5% to 35.5% over Democrat Patrick Merris at the age of 23.[4] Antani was sworn in to the Ohio House of Representatives to complete the remainder of Blair's term on December 2, 2014.[5]

In his 2020 race for the State Senate, Niraj falsely claimed to have been endorsed by the police, when in fact, his opponent, Mar Fogel had received the endorsement of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police. Gary Wolske, the President of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police issued a statement calling upon Mr Antani to "publicly apologize to the voters of the 6th State Senate District and every member of Ohio Law enforcement for his blatant lie."

In 2016, Antani was barred from entering a rally for then presidential candidate Donald Trump because of tweets that Antani had made favoring then Ohio Governor John Kasich in the 2016 Ohio Republican presidential primary.[6]

On March 14, 2018, Antani made headlines by suggesting that students who were over the age of 18 should be allowed to carry rifles to school. The following day, after the substantial negative press, Niraj backtracked and said that he did a poor job of stating his position.[7] Despite publicly stating he was backtracking his position he went on to state to the Dayton Daily News, that, they had "accurately quoted his position in the original article" Antani's original statement was, “If you look at what happened many decades ago, people brought their firearms to school. They kept them in their cars, maybe, but there was not a problem.”[7]

On December 2, 2018, it was reported that Niraj Antani's role in the creation of a letter with Jeff Jacobson, a lending industry lobbyist, intending to weaken a sweeping payday lending bill HB123, was under investigation by the US Department of Justice. A subpoena was issued on August 27, 2018, and sent to a federal grand jury on September 12, 2018.[8]

Antani has been endorsed by the Ohio Advocates for Medical Freedom (OAMF).[9] A group that is anti mandating vaccines for public schools.[10]

On July 21, 2020 Larry Householder was arrested in connection with a $60 million bribery scheme.[11] The federal complaint against Householder is allegedly the largest bribery and money laundering scheme in Ohio history.[12] Allegedly, Householder ran a sham organization, Generation Now, that funneled bribery money to more than a dozen campaigns that eventually won their races and then elected him Speaker.[12] During 2018 alone, Antani accepted over $7000 from Friends of Larry Householder.[13]

In 2015, Niraj was added to Forbes Magazine's list of the top “30 under 30” people in the U.S. for Law & Policy in 2015.[14] In 2018, Newsmax named him the 9th-most influential Republican in the nation under 30.[15]

Beginning in 2018, Antani started serving on the national board of the Republican State Leadership Committee's Future Majority Project.[16]

• Official site