Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine
The current Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, who has never feared sticking it to women and the LGBT community in the courts, is planning to run for governor in 2018. If you thought John Kasich was a butt-head when it came to conservative and religiously based politics, then wait until DeWine runs. We might have another version of Ken Blackwell and we know how well that worked.
Mike DeWine, the state attorney general and a former U.S. senator, confirmed today what political prognosticators have reported for months: He’s running for governor.
The 69-year-old Republican shared his less-than-secret plans with a Dayton charter school official in a conversation overheard by a reporter. DeWine told the Dayton Daily News the discussion had been confidential — but the substance was true.
His spokesman, Lisa Hackley, said DeWine has not particularly been hiding the fact that he plans to run for governor in 2018.
Ohio attorney general inadvertently reveals run for governor
Mike DeWine made sure to appeal all the court rulings that went against the State of Ohio in the Supreme Court case Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) which ruled state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine launched another foray in defense of the state’s ban on same-sex marriage, asking a federal appeals court to overturn a previous ruling in favor of four gay couples who successfully challenged the ban.
DeWine filed a 41-page reply brief in the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, asking the judges to follow legal precedent and comply with Ohioans who in 2004 voted to deny gay married couples the same rights as heterosexual couples.
“Courts should not presume that voters are not capable of deciding an issue of this sensitivity on decent and rational grounds,” the state’s brief stated.
DeWine asks federal appeals court to overturn ruling in favor of gay-marriage couples in Ohio
Not only has DeWine been at the forefront on the 18 anti-abortion laws passed in Ohio under Governor Kasich but he also attempted to use the now discredited Planned Parenthood video to launch an investigation and lawsuit to make it even harder to find an abortion provider. The investigation found nothing of course.
A month after Mike DeWine’s explosive accusations that Planned Parenthood clinics were improperly disposing of fetal remains in landfills, Ohio’s attorney general has backed down, apparently content to let state lawmakers resolve the issue.
DeWine charged in an emotional Dec. 11 news conference that fetal remains from Planned Parenthood clinics in Columbus and Cincinnati were being illegally “steam-cooked and taken to a Kentucky landfill.” Planned Parenthood officials vehemently denied that their procedures were illegal and accused DeWine of launching a witch hunt after his five-month investigation uncovered no evidence that the agency was selling baby parts.
DeWine ends push over Planned Parenthood’s disposal of fetal remains
He’s recently decided that transgendered students can’t be allowed to use the restroom for the gender they identify with:
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine warned the Obama Administration on Friday that he will “vigorously defend the interests” of Ohio against its transgender bathroom “edict” to schools.
The Republican said that, absent congressional authorization, he would fight any attempt to withhold funds from schools that don’t allow students to use bathrooms of the gender they identify with.
“This attempt to nationalize and politicize the way schools address gender identity issues down to the level of school locker rooms, showers, and bathrooms might be dismissed as simple bureaucratic arrogance were it not so potentially harmful to our civic discourse and to the important rights and needs of all the school children involved,” he wrote in a letter to his federal counterpart, Loretta Lynch, and U.S. Secretary of Education John B. King, Jr.
“Your assistants apparently have concluded that people of good faith across this country, informed by the basic decency and common sense of their communities, cannot be trusted to work through any particular locker room problems of this sort,” he wrote.
Not only is DeWine polishing up his conservative credentials but also his religious conservative cred as well.
When opposing President Obama’s rule to give women free access to contraceptives in 2012, DeWine broke out his catholic hat:
The story quoted our Attorney General Mike DeWine as saying:
“I continue to have grave concerns that despite President Obama’s so-called accommodation, the United States government is intent on implementing rules that violate religious liberty,” Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said in a statement. “This lawsuit seeks to protect our fellow citizens, their churches and religious charities so that they are not penalized by this illegal regulation.”
What the story did not do was mention that Mike DeWine is a practicing Roman Catholic. You would think that real reporters would flesh out such obvious conflicts of interest in such a lawsuit. It only takes like 15 seconds to search Google and get to his Wikipedia page. Even out of state reporters could do that!
Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine uses Office to Further His Own Personal Faith
We had a previous candidate for Governor who tried to run on his religious conservative bonafides. J. Kenneth Blackwell was also known for helping President Bush gain Ohio in 2004 by manipulating the voting process as Secretary of State.
He lost the 2006 governor’s race by 24% and most of that was because he used his religious pandering too much and I really think if DeWine runs he will have the same problem. These types of guys don’t know the word moderate or subtle.
What would make DeWine a worse Governor than Kaisch is he is part of the establishment of the GOP. Kaisch was known to buck the party when it suit him, like expanding Medicare in Ohio. DeWine was a US Senator so he is happy to pull the party line while also pandering to the religious right. He will probably do to Ohio what Sam Brownback did to Kansas.
Of course none of the Republicans mentioned in the Toledo Blade article quoted at the start of this post will be doing Ohio any favors and we still have two more years of Kaisch to put up with.
