+ − Contact Information
Phone: (614) 466-2004
Fax: (614) 719-3968
Office Address:
77 S. High St
10th Floor
Columbus, OH 43215
+ − Biography
State Representative Kathleen Clyde is in her second term in the Ohio House of Representatives. She represents the 75th Ohio House District, which covers Central and Southern Portage County. She serves as Ranking Member on the State & Local Government Committee and the Select Committee on the Election Contest in the 98th House District and is also a member of the Finance & Appropriations Committee and its Subcommittee on Higher Education, the Agriculture & Natural Resources Committee, the Policy & Legislative Oversight Committee, the Redistricting Reform Task Force, and the Ohio Constitutional Modernization Commission.
Kathleen was born and raised in Garrettsville, Ohio, a village of about 2,000 residents in northeast Portage County. She now lives and works in Kent, Ohio.
Kathleen graduated first in her class from James A. Garfield High School in Garrettsville, where she was an All-Portage County track & field athlete. In 2001, she earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Wesleyan University in Connecticut.
Following her graduation from college, Kathleen worked for two years at the Community Shelter Board in Columbus, an organization nationally recognized for its approach to ending homelessness in Ohio. She then worked in the law offices of Donald McTigue, concentrating on election law issues.
Kathleen entered The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law in 2005, graduating in 2008 as a Public Service Fellow with the Dean’s Highest Honors. While at OSU, Kathleen was an editor of the law review, president of the Public Interest Law Foundation, and a student researcher and analyst at OSU's Election Law Center. She also served as a law clerk for the Ohio Secretary of State and the Ohio Senate and earned a summer fellowship at the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University for the study of election law.
After passing the bar exam in July 2008, Kathleen joined the Franklin County Board of Elections serving as an election official, overseeing the set-up and operation of the Franklin County early voting center during the 2008 presidential election. She then became Deputy Legal Counsel to the Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Armond Budish, where she worked on legal issues ranging from access to the courts to voting rights.
Kathleen is currently an associate in the Kent law firm of Williams, Welser, Kratcoski & Can. The firm focuses on family, real estate, and small business law. She is a noted expert in election law and has spoken on election law issues at the Ohio State, Capital University, Stanford and Harvard Law Schools.