Tom Troy: DeWine, Cordray need to look forward in race for governor

Oct. 05--THERE'S STILL a month left in this election, so maybe the candidates for governor are still going to get around to talking about the future of Ohio.

So far most of the talk has been about the past.

During a live televised debate debate Monday night in Marietta, Republican nominee Mike DeWine invited viewers to take a walk with him down memory lane to 20 years ago to recall how the drug merchants misled us into thinking that opioids were not addictive.

Mr. DeWine is getting hammered on a range of issues -- for not acting sooner to shut down the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow charter school that was determined to be exaggerating enrollment, his refusal to advocate for any legislation that would restrict access to guns by deranged and dangerous people, and his record of opposing insurance coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Those are all issues that, in the view of Democratic nominee Richard Cordray, tell us a lot about what kind of governor Mr. DeWine would be.

But Mr. Cordray is also getting hammered on his record, in ads that accuse him of failing to have tested 12,000 rape kits, a charge that he has used wit and facts to respond to, but not enough to overcome the deluge of negative TV commercials.

He's also accused of having permitted a culture of discrimination in the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Agency during his six years as its first director.

And Mr. Cordray's support for Issue 1 has fallen like manna from heaven for Mr. DeWine because it provides Mr. DeWine the opportunity to claim that Mr. Cordray supports abolishing criminal statutes that put drug traffickers in prison.

Issue 1, on the ballot Nov. 6, would enact a state constitutional amendment reducing the criminal penalties for drug possession and eliminating jail terms for misdemeanor offenses. Supporters say it will allow addicts to be diverted to treatment. Critics say it will make it easier for drug dealers to ply their trade and harder for prosecutors to bring them to justice.

At the Marietta debate, Mr. DeWine must have been starting to worry that he wasn't going to get to talk about Issue 1 because 50 minutes into the debate he introduced the subject while answering a question about how he would stem the loss of big employers.

His answer justified the pivot to Issue 1 by noting, correctly, that drugs is a big problem in the economy -- "they are slowing our economy down" -- because employers can't find enough drug-free workers. He said he had a plan for the drug problem and then said Mr. Cordray's "plan" is Issue 1.

Mr. Cordray fired back that "The question wasn't about Issue 1, although that seems to be the only issue Mike DeWine knows how to talk about."

On the opioid epidemic, he called Mr. DeWine -- the state's chief law enforcement officer during the rise of the addiction crisis -- a "grotesque failure."

Mr. Cordray said the DeWine campaign "should carry a warning from the surgeon general: election of Mike DeWine will be hazardous to your health."

Mr. Cordray's current issue push is Mr. DeWine's poor record on Medicaid expansion and protecting insurance coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions.

"Throwing people off the rolls would be a bad thing for Ohio," Mr. Cordray observed.

A huge proportion, about a third, of Ohio's population relies on Medicaid (federal health care for the poor) and Medicaid expansion, so Mr. Cordray is onto something with his emphasis on health care.

Feeling the heat, Mr. DeWine's campaign is airing a television ad featuring his daughter Anna talking about his grief over the loss of another daughter, Becky.

Becky DeWine, the daughter of Mike and Fran DeWine, died in a car crash in 1993.

"Family's at the core of everything Mike DeWine does. that's why he's always protected Ohio's families. It's why he supports healthcare coverage for people with pre-existing conditions," Anna says about her father.

Mr. DeWine would have a better case for supporting protections for people with pre-existing conditions if he hadn't brought a lawsuit in the U.S. Supreme Court to literally have the Affordable Care Act declared unconstitutional. It was the Affordable Care Act -- aka, Obamacare -- that prohibits insurance companies from discriminating against consumers based on pre-existing conditions.

Mr. DeWine has said he supports the Medicaid expansion that was championed by current Gov. John Kasich -- increasing by about 700,000 the number of people in Ohio eligible to get health care covered (mostly) by U.S. taxpayers. He just had to wait until after the Republican primary to make sure he didn't lose the anti-Obamacare base in the Republican Party.

Most Ohioans have to be getting frustrated with the constant back and forth over who tested the rape kits and who wants to let drug traffickers go free.

Ohio has issues relating to a really inadequate school funding system, lack of state support for local governments, a huge mental disconnect between the conservative legislature, and the needs of urban communities, and an economy that is, yeah, plugging along, but not roaring like some of the other states.

We have a race in which the two candidates are neck and neck. Voters want to hear about prescriptions, all right -- prescriptions for an Ohio with high-performing schools, affordable college, and economic development that promotes good jobs.

Tom Troy is an associate editor of The Blade. Contact him at: [email protected] or 419-724-6058.

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