Incumbent Rodney Creech, a business owner and farmer from West Alexandria, and pastor J. Todd Smith of Jackson Township are both vying to represent the Farmersville and Germantown communities in Columbus.
Ohio House District 40 (see map above) includes Preble County, the western edge of Montgomery County, and parts of Butler County, with a carve-out for Miamisburg. While the election isn’t until November, the strongest contenders, Creech and Smith, will be facing off in the May Republican primary.
Representative Rodney Creech
Republican Rodney Creech is in his third term in the Ohio House. All 99 Ohio House members are up for election every two years, with a four-term limit. If Creech wins the election, this will be his final two years in the Ohio House.
📸 Rep Creech
“I'm going to continue doing what I've been doing,” he said in an interview. “I'm not changing anything. My goal is to work hard for the district, represent the district, and deal with issues at the state level that I have control over.”
“You know, property taxes is probably going to be the biggest thing we continue to work on, and it has been for the last couple of years.”
In 2026, Creech introduced legislation to improve coordination between county auditors, dog wardens, and public health officials and allow counties to recover costs associated with emergency animal neglect responses through nuisance abatements.
Last year he proposed legislation to provide excused absences from school for students participating in 4-H and FFA activities and supported legislation creating a health plan for Farm Bureau members.
For his next term Creech plans to focus on an issue close to him. “My main focus is going to be an equal parenting bill,” he said. “I will get back into that here soon, and hopefully by the time I term out, we can get children with two good parents, equal access to the children. That is my number one goal for the state of Ohio, is that mom and dad are both in children's lives.”
Creech has had controversy. He was investigated by the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) before winning the 2024 election, but was not charged with any criminal activity. The fallout continued into May 2025 when he was removed from his committee assignments by Ohio House Speaker Matt Huffman. Creech says he was reinstated two weeks ago, and State websites now list him as a member of four committees, including Agriculture and Local Government.
“I've got full support of the caucus. Out of 65 Republicans, I probably have 60 people standing behind me,” he said to questions about the past issues. “I've had so much support, it's not funny, and nobody bought it. There was no police report; there was nothing. It was just made up out of fresh air. And that's what people do in divorce, in nasty, nasty divorce custody cases.”
Creech originally planned to run for the District 5 Ohio Senate seat being vacated by term-limited Steve Huffman. Creech announced his decision, citing the financial costs of the race, “I was gonna have to put $400,000 in the race, and I would rather buy a 40 acre farm,” he said in an interview.
“I'm just running for my last two years, and I'm looking forward to being sworn in and getting going. I've got full, full support from the speaker. I've got full support from the caucus and my community is standing strong behind me. I'm very, very excited,” he said.
J. Todd Smith
Republican J. Todd Smith served one term in the Ohio House 2018-2020, in what was then the 43rd District, when he narrowly beat Democrat County Commissioner Dan Foley. According to reporting by the Dayton Daily News, an attack ad against Foley was paid for by a group linked to the $60 million corruption scheme orchestrated by then-Ohio Speaker of the House Larry Householder, who is currently in federal prison. Smith denied involvement in the ad.
Smith, who serves as Senior Pastor at The Church at Farmersville, most recently leveraged his connections at the Statehouse to help honor Farmersville veteran and centenarian Jim Erisman. See the story here: Hometown Hero Turns 100
📸 J. Todd Smith Campaign
Smith initially planned to run for reelection in 2020, but dropped out of the race after he was already on the ballot. Like now, he was facing a primary against Rodney Creech. A review of Montgomery County election results shows Smith won 42% of the vote, even without campaigning.
Smith said in an interview last week that he is committed to this race.
“I obviously already liked my life and what I'm doing,” he said. “But had a lot of people reach out to me about this being an open seat at that time, and about the need for somebody who really speaks to the people. That was the one thing that I did is try to take the interest of the people instead of the party.”
“And so I'm committed to this because I think, first off, we can win it, and secondarily, this district needs representation. It just hasn't had it for quite a while.”
Noting the issues that Creech has battled politically, Smith said, “Twice now, actually, in Creech’s career as a State Rep, he has been removed from positions of authority by the speaker. He's not had any authority. He was removed from all that because of situations in his personal life. And so because of that, the District really had nobody that can actually fight for them.”
“You know, that's kind of the theme that I've heard from people,” he added “that it just seems like there's just been too much chaos, too many other things going on.”
When asked about the top issues he would take to Columbus, Smith said, “Right now, the big issues in Ohio are property taxes, and what are we going to do about people wanting to abolish all of them immediately.” Smith says he favors a more nuanced approach, noting that taxes are difficult for older people who have been in their homes for many years.
Another issue for Smith is mental health. “In Montgomery County, we had cases where people died in jail because we're arresting people with mental health issues, put them in a jail that's not equipped, not trained to deal with people with those kinds of issues, and it's just a fiasco,” he said.
Smith is also focused on issues related to family life. “We want a government program to fix everything, and what we're doing is we're paying for a program to try to fix things that we used to get for free from the family. So we need to start investing time, energy, and possibly even resources, not to try to fix the impact of a problem, but to fix the problem itself. I've chatted with a few agencies and organizations to say, is there a way through the state that we can address some of the failings that we're seeing in the concept of family, and if we can fix some of these problems at their root.”
When asked about the importance of the primary, Smith noted that his previous District was more diverse and how that benefited communities. “I really think that for us to come back to a sense of unity as a nation, it starts at the community level. The State Representative level would be a great thing if we could get more conversation going between the two extremes. So for this district, the primary is the election. When I had a really balanced District, you had to speak to everybody's issues, which I think is better in the long run.”
Local Ohio Political Races
Future articles in the TWIN CREEK TIMES will cover the District 5 Senate race with Phil Plummer and also the overall District 40 race in November, which will include Libertarian Josh Umbaugh.
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