{"id":842294,"date":"2026-03-30T04:23:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T04:23:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/842294\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T04:23:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T04:23:17","slug":"haslam-sports-group-taps-lee-weingart-to-lobby-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/842294\/","title":{"rendered":"Haslam Sports Group taps Lee Weingart to lobby Congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cleveland Browns\u2019 ownership has hired a lobbyist with a name familiar to those who follow Cuyahoga County politics: Lee Weingart.<\/p>\n<p>A Republican former county commissioner, Weingart is the founder and chair of government relations shop LNE Group. He ran for county executive against Democrat Chris Ronayne in 2022. Ronayne won and went on to oppose the Browns\u2019 new stadium in Brook Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Weingart is on the other side of that equation. According to lobbying registrations filed with the U.S. House and Senate on Wednesday, LNE Group is representing Primacy Development, a limited liability company affiliated with Haslam Sports Group. Team ownership used Primacy <a href=\"https:\/\/www.news5cleveland.com\/sports\/browns\/haslam-sports-group-pays-76-million-for-future-browns-stadium-site-in-brook-park\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">to buy the former Ford property<\/a> that\u2019s set to become the new Huntington Bank Field.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Weingart declined to talk about his clients. The disclosures say only that LNE Group will be lobbying on \u201cissues related to taxation.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of Ronayne and stadiums<\/p>\n<p>Last week the county executive showed off photos of a new football field on the waterfront of a legacy industrial city. It wasn\u2019t on Lake Erie, but on the River Mersey.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Ronayne <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DWR4trpjYVX\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">visited the United Kingdom<\/a> as part of a trip focused on local environmental and green energy initiatives. (The George Gund Foundation is picking up the $3,775 tab for his travel, <a href=\"https:\/\/cuyahogacounty.gov\/docs\/default-source\/boards-and-commissions\/internal\/boc\/2026\/030226-bocagenda.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">according to a Cuyahoga County Board of Control agenda<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>While there, he posted shots of Liverpool\u2019s Hill Dickinson Stadium, home of the Premier League soccer (football) club Everton.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA complete sustainable strategy has emerged in an alt energy district of this music &amp; manufacturing town,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/chrisronayne\/status\/2036833224039555156\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener nofollow\">Ronayne wrote on X<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>As if the contrast he was drawing weren\u2019t clear enough, he also tagged the Browns.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/signalcleveland.org\/author\/nick\/\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Nick Castele, Government Reporter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/DRK04895-scaled-80x80.jpg\"  class=\"avatar avatar-80 photo\" height=\"80\" width=\"80\"\/>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Government Reporter<br \/>I follow how decisions made at Cleveland City Hall and Cuyahoga County headquarters ripple into the neighborhoods. I keep an eye on the power brokers and political organizers who shape our government. I am a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University and have covered politics and government in Northeast Ohio since 2012.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"author-link\" href=\"https:\/\/signalcleveland.org\/author\/nick\/\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tMore by Nick Castele\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cleveland Browns\u2019 ownership has hired a lobbyist with a name familiar to those who follow Cuyahoga County politics:&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842295,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2054],"tags":[86,12592,85,54,2337,7,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-842294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cleveland-browns","8":"tag-browns","9":"tag-chris-ronayne","10":"tag-cleveland","11":"tag-cleveland-browns","12":"tag-clevelandbrowns","13":"tag-football","14":"tag-nfl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116316223299790250","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=842294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842294\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}