DeWine walks tightrope in Thursday presser

By Marty Schladen

President Donald Trump meeting with governors, including Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine on Thursday provided a glimpse of how difficult it is to be a traditional Republican officeholder in the era of Trump.

The governor has been holding regular press briefings since the spring, when the coronavirus began tightening its deadly grip around the Buckeye State. But on Thursday, he started off by deploring Tuesday’s presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which has been almost universally panned as an uncivil shout fest. 

According to one count, the interruptions came at the rate of one a minute, and Trump was the interrupter 75% of the time. Trump also stirred controversy by refusing to condemn a right-wing hate group, unleashed a torrent of false claims about the integrity of the vote, and again refused to say that he would accept the independently certified results of an election that polls say he is currently losing.

On Thursday, DeWine reiterated his support for Trump while criticizing the debate generically.

“The debate itself was not our country’s finest hour,” the governor said, adding that “The name calling by both sides simply is not helpful,” and criticizing “hate groups of both the right and the left.”

That DeWine criticized the debate at all is a little jarring in light of his post-debate tweet.

“A great job tonight by @realdonaldtrump!” it said. “Congratulations to tonight’s sponsors @cwru and @ Cleveland Clinic on hosting on a great debate.”

The governor’s critics accused him of both-sides-ism, especially as he and Lt. Gov Jon Husted again sought to reassure Ohioans that their election system is safe and fair. After all, only one of the candidates — Trump — has railed relentlessly and without evidence that mail-in ballots are vulnerable to rampant fraud.

“We have run fair elections in Ohio for a long, long time and I think it’s important on both sides — let’s not presuppose that we’re going to have a problem when both parties have an interest in having a fair election,” DeWine said, adding, “Voters should have confidence in Ohio that their vote is going to get counted.”

During the debate, Trump also fanned worries about voter intimidation when he made unsupported claims of election stealing and urged supporters to  “go into the polls and watch very carefully.”

Apparently responding to those worries, DeWine again couched his warning in terms of both sides.

“We have an obligation to make sure that people of the right and left who want to create a disturbance, who don’t believe in the rule of law, who believe that violence should take over, that that is dealt with,” he said.

Perhaps the most striking is DeWine’s unwillingness again to criticize Trump for refusing to say he’ll respect the independently certified results of the election. That refusal has aroused profound dismay among some observers of the international scene.

Asked last week if he condemned an earlier refusal by Trump to promise to abide by the results of the election, DeWine said, “I don’t condemn anything. I don’t know what’s in his heart or in his mind.”

Asked again whether he condemned Trump’s statements from last week as well as those from the debate, DeWine again declined.

“Whoever loses, once it’s determined that they’ve lost, they lose,” the governor said.

He talked about contested presidential elections in 1960 and 2000. In neither case did the losers, Richard Nixon and Al Gore, refuse in advance to say that they would respect the result, but DeWine cited those as precedents for this year’s contest.

“Whoever loses will concede,” He said. “This is what we do as Americans. This is what we do. This is what we expect and that’s the name of the game.”

Pressed further on whether he would criticize things Trump has said and done in recent weeks, DeWine betrayed how difficult his situation must be.

“Press conference after press conference, I get asked about different comments made by the president or somebody else,” the president’s Ohio co-chair said. “I’m not here to answer every single thing the president says.

“I think I’ve been very clear throughout my career and throughout my time as governor what I believe in and what we will do. It’s not just what I believe in. It’s not just what I say. And so we’ll continue to speak out against violence. We’ll continue to speak out against anything that disrupts the fairness of the election. We’ll continue to speak out against hatred, violence. That’s what my job is. My job is not every single day to critique the president of the United States, or is it to critique Joe Biden. If there’s another president in there in January I’ll have the same attitude.”

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.

Unemployment comp benefits too little, too late for many Ohioans

Feds release unemployment guidance, could be a long time before supplements reach Ohioans

By Marty Schladen

The U.S. Department of Labor last week released guidance to the states on how it will disburse money to supplement unemployment checks. But it’s far from clear when — or whether — hundreds of thousands of out-of-work Ohioans will see those funds.

A $600-a-week federal supplement had been credited with keeping millions of unemployed Americans — and the economy — afloat, but it expired at the end of July. 

The Democratically-controlled House passed an extension of the benefit. The Republican-controlled Senate introduced a bill cutting the supplement to $200 a week, but failed to pass it.

Then President Donald Trump on Aug. 8 signed a memorandum that would repurpose federal disaster relief funds to provide $300 a week in additional support. But it would exclude people getting less than $100 a week in state benefits — a group comprising many minimum-wage workers and service workers who get a low hourly wage and tips on top of that.

The administration of Gov. Mike DeWine signed on to the plan last week, but said additional guidance was needed from the Labor Department before any predictions could be made about when funds would be disbursed.

The money can’t come quickly enough for many Ohioans. 

According to the U.S. Census’ Household Pulse Survey for the week of July 9-14, nearly 1 million Ohio adults sometimes or often did not have enough to eat in the past week. In addition, more than 400,000 hadn’t paid the previous month’s rent and 360,000 homeowners hadn’t made the previous month’s mortgage payment.

“This is before the $600 (federal unemployment supplement) expired,” Zach Schiller, research director for the think tank Policy Matters Ohio, said.

Earlier in the week, DeWine also underscored the urgency of getting money out to unemployed Ohioans. He praised Trump for taking the actions he did and he called on Congress to get busy — something that’s unlikely to happen until early September at the soonest.

However, state officials have to clear several hurdles before they can start distributing the federal dollars Trump has attempted to repurpose.

For example, “States will need to develop a self-certification process in accordance with FEMA instructions for claimants to certify weekly that they are unemployed or partially unemployed due to disruptions caused by COVID-19,” the Labor Department guidance says.

And state officials will have to reprogram antiquated, overwhelmed unemployment systems to process the benefit.

“We are examining the DOL guidance on lost wages assistance to see what kind of system programming is needed in order to pay these unemployment benefits,” Dan Tierney, DeWine’s press secretary, said in an email. “As noted in the guidance, all states are required to develop a self-certification process for claimants based on instructions from FEMA.”

He said that once state officials figure all that out, they’ll make beneficiaries whole, but it’s hard to know when that will be.

“While (the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services) intends to pay these retroactive benefits as quickly and efficiently as possible, there are several procedural and programming steps that must take place before that can happen,” Tierney said.

There is also a serious question about whether the Trump plan is legal. Georgetown University law professor David Super last week wrote that it is a clear violation of the Stafford Act, the federal law governing disaster assistance.

Schiller criticized the scheme as ill-conceived at a time when so many Ohioans are in desperate need of assistance.

“Altogether, the whole thing is kind of a half-baked measure,” he said.

This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.

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Ohio Minority Health Strike Force issues final report, recommendations

DeWine announces plan of action to "advance equity"

By Susan Tebben

Ohio’s Minority Health Strike Force released its final report last week, laying out both how disproportionate the health care and economic lives of people of color are across the state, and ways to deal with it. 

The strike force was empaneled to collect information on COVID-19’s effect on African Americans and other minority populations, along with the racism and trauma that leads to worse health outcomes for those communities.

According to state numbers, African Americans represent 14% of Ohio’s population, but represent 24% of positive COVID-19 cases, 32% of hospitalizations and 19% percent of deaths from the disease.

The group’s report notes the most important framework needed to advance equity are the categories that make up social determinants of health, those things that make up the overall health of a person and community.

In order to advance equity, “racism must be dismantled,” the Strike Force members said, and that must include action in three categories: health care and public health, the social and economic environment and the physical environment.

The first recommendation from the group is a statewide, government-wide and community-wide acknowledgment of racism as a public health crisis.

Ohio’s legislature already has a resolution in both the House and Senate declaring racism a public health crisis, but neither have successfully passed through committee. The House version didn’t see a hearing before the body went on summer break.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine made several statements during his Aug. 13 press conference about the report, including stating outright that he believes racism is a matter of public health.

“There are racial disparities in Ohio … certainly in health, education, housing, and we could go on and on,” DeWine said.

The sponsors of the Senate’s proposed resolution said the governor’s comments further underscore the need for the measure.

OH Sen. Hearcel Craig

“We have a duty to protect the lives and freedoms of all Ohioans, and that starts with addressing the glaring inequities in our health care, housing, education and justice systems,” said state Sen. Hearcel Craig, D-Columbus, in a statement. “Governor DeWine was right when he said that history will judge us for how we choose to respond to these disparities.”

House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, D-Akron, was a part of the Minority Health Strike Force, but criticized the lateness of the final report, and the lack of action by the governor.

OH House Minority Leader
Emilia Sykes, D-Akron

“For thousands of Black workers and Black families, it’s too little, too late — the damage is done,” Sykes said in a statement. “The governor and his team moved quickly to address some issues but not the ones that dealt with Black and Brown lives.”

Several of the strike force’s recommendations focused on creating cultural competency and health literacy, along with urging equitable representation in government and the private sector and a health equity lens for policy.

“The state of Ohio should support the recruitment and retention of an equitable representation of Ohioans of color in health care and public health professions in all established workforce development programs,” the report stated.

Through better representation, the strike force hopes to target those social determinants that cause increased mortality rates and comorbidities in people of color.

Comorbidities are health problems such as hypertension and heart disease that exacerbate or expand into bigger diseases. Racism and discrimination of all kinds can lead to trauma and stress, and social determinants like poverty can impact immune systems, and overall health, the strike force said.

“Comorbidities render communities of color more vulnerable to COVID-19 complications and death,” the report reads. “While protective factors, such as supportive family and caregiver relationships, social connections, and economic security can mitigate these risks, the impact of trauma and toxic stress often persists.”

Health disparities were a problem for people of color long before COVID-19 began ravaging the state and country. “Preexisting disparities” like diabetes, hypertension and heart disease were already prevalent in Black and other minority communities, and were only made worse by new traumas, the report said

With that in mind, the strike force also recommended new policies and services to address safe and affordable housing, broadband funding, access to public transportation, and criminal justice reform.

“State government leadership should formalize a partnership to identify policy reforms to reduce community violence, police brutality, and bias in policing, sentencing and other aspects of the criminal justice system,” the report stated.

In response to the strike force report, DeWine enlisted his cabinet in a “plan of action to advance equity,” which proposes an entirely new study group, the Governor’s Equity Advisory Board to “assist the state’s efforts to dismantle racism and promote health equity.”

In addition to Sykes, task force members from northeast Ohio included physicians Lolita McDavid, M.D. MPA [Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital] and Charles Modlin M.D., MBA, FACS [Cleveland Clinic]; business owner Andrew Jackson [Elson International, Inc.]; agency executive June Taylor [Western Reserve Area Agency on Aging]; Cleveland State Professor Ronnie Dunn, Ph.D.; and public officials Jamael Tito Brown [Youngstown mayor] and Alisha Nelson [director, RecoveryOhio], who served as co-chair. 

A full list of task force members can be found here.

This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.

Additional reporting contributed by R. T. Andrews.

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Getting harder in the Trump era to tell the players even with a scorecard

CPT | County GOP votes on endorsements today 

Things are seldom what they seem;

Skim milk masquerades as cream.

— Gilbert & Sullivan​

Cuyahoga County Republican executive and central committee members will gather this afternoon to make their endorsements for the May primary.

The marquee endorsement will come in the governor’s slot, where Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is expected to handily defeat current Ohio Lt. Governor Mary Taylor.

Last week the Ohio GOP endorsed DeWine by a thumping 59-2 vote. Still, Taylor has refused to concede either quietly or graciously. What’s interesting about this contest is the subtext behind it.

While party insiders all seem to back DeWine, Taylor is working to court Trump voters, and could be in a position to upset DeWine if she succeeds in connecting with the Trump base. She has the nominal backing of term-limited Gov. John Kasich but has done her best to disavow it, because Kasich is anathema not only to that base, but also to many others throughout the party for a host of reasons: Kasich has been a Trump antagonist dating back to 2015, very publicly declining to appear at the 2016 Republican Convention held here in his home state where Trump officially received the GOP Presidential nomination. Kasich’s decision to support Medicaid expansion over the express opposition of many of his own state legislators further alienated him from parts of the GOP.

All of this was backdrop to the ouster of Kasich ally Matt Borges from the chair of the Ohio GOP by Jane Timken early last year, with the support of the President. Kasich forces, we hear, now think they have a chance to retake control of the state party, which could be significant if Kasich does indeed mount a 2020 primary challenge against Trump.

But any chance for Kasich people — dare we call them GOP moderates? — to regain state party control would go out the window if Taylor becomes the state standard bearer this year. So one might conclude that even though Kasich has endorsed Taylor almost against her will, he would prefer to see her defeated by DeWine.

The battle for the GOP nomination for the right to challenge US Senator Sherrod Brown this fall also has national implications for the GOP. Both Congressman Jim Renacci, R-16 of Wadsworth and Cleveland businessman Mike Gibbons are, like Taylor, touting their Trump bona fides. Renacci is claiming that the President encouraged him to switch from the governor’s race to the senate battle following the sudden and unexpected withdrawal of frontrunner and state treasurer Josh Mandel. But he may actually be US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s preference instead of Trump’s because he is likely to be far less of a maverick than Gibbon.

The takeaway from all this may be that the Ohio GOP is much less united at the top than the state’s Democrats in this election cycle. But we are a long way from seeing how that might translate in November. 

Meanwhile, at least one Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Cleveland mayor and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, believes he has a real shot to capture some 2016 Trump voters. He’s probably right, but in the today’s topsy-turvy political climate, the populist Kucinich was just endorsed this past week by the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus. That may have been largely a hometown boy vote, but it nonetheless points out the increasing inadequacy of labels as a guide to who stands where for whom and what.

Cuyahoga Prosecutor appoints OH Attorney General as special prosecutor in Tanisha Anderson case

Press release issued by office of County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty:

Cleveland – Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine’s office has been appointed as special prosecutor to investigate the death in police custody of Tanisha Anderson. 

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy J. McGinty said he asked the Attorney General to take over the case after investigators from the Sheriff’s Department yesterday informed prosecutors of facts that created a conflict of interest for the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office. 

Attorney General DeWine agreed to take the case, and a motion for a special prosecutor was filed Tuesday. Today, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Administrative and Presiding Judge John J. Russo signed an order appointing the Attorney General’s Office as special prosecutor. 

Ms. Anderson, 37, died on November 12, 2014, after struggling with Cleveland Police officers who had been trying to get her into a squad car so they could take her for a psychiatric evaluation. 

Serendipity: Guns, Culture and Race

I chanced upon two unexpected places in the last 24 hours: one in the flesh and the other virtual. Together they offer a glimpse into America in the Age of Obama.

Just a Hobby, or Preparing for the Unthinkable?

I returned last night from a business trip to southwest Ohio. It was the first time I had been in that part of the state for a while and it left me with some fresh impressions. One was how metropolitan Columbus has expanded. It’s one thing to read about population growth in central Ohio. It’s quite another thing to see the evidence of it.

A deeper impression was made by a stop at Cabela’s, the large outdoor retailer that has just opened a shop in Delaware County’s Polaris Center, just north of Columbus. We had been surprised to notice the store as we stopped for gas on our way downstate. Turns out the Michigan retailer had just opened its first store within the week.

Hunting, fishing, and camping aficionados are Cabela’s prime market. To these eyes camouflage attire was more prevalent among Cabela patrons than Ohio State insignia.

It was sobering to see the steady stream of customers heading towards the weapons area. As I waited while my law enforcement friend shopped, my eyes wandered over some of the merchandise displays. Especially fascinating was the looping video that showed a wounded fowl decoy luring affiliated prey into easy range.

I felt to some degree as if I had slipped into an alien world. I left with an overwhelming sense of how difficult it will be to enact substantial gun reform in this country any time soon.

I happen to agree with gun rights advocates who argue that creating a safer America depends on changing the culture.

I believe that the Second Amendment reference to the right of the people to bear arms has been hijacked by conservatives and the Supreme Court in just the same way the Fourteenth Amendment was once undermined to justify segregation and Jim Crow laws. Despite the unmistakable correlation between high fire-death rates and high levels of gun ownership, “…income, development, and culture appear to drive gun-crime rates more than simple gun availability.”

The Second Amendment reads, from beginning to end: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” Strict constructionists have a duty to ask themselves why — if the right to bear arms is absolute — the first part of the Amendment is even there.

The violent strains of American society may run even deeper than its racist ones, and we know how tenacious the latter are. [See the next post.] Since these strains go hand in hand even now, securing a fuller understanding the Second Amendment may be even more of a long-term battle than the painful and still ongoing struggle to create a more equitable society.

Many of my learned black friends see this arming of America as an inchoate step in the formation of a rogue Militia that will emerge as a last line of defense against the browning of America.

• • •

In the meantime, in checking my online New York Times account, I happened across a letter to the editor from a Cleveland State law professor, Lolita Buckner Inniss[1]. She was commenting on a guest op-ed column by Ta-Nehisi Coates, “Shopping While Black: Racism in Everyday Life”. 

Forest Whitaker

Coates’ column was prompted by an event occurring at his Manhattan neighborhood deli, where the Oscar winning actor Forest Whitaker was stopped and frisked last month by an employee on suspicion of shop-lifting. As Coates noted, “Whitaker had stolen nothing. On the contrary, he’d been robbed.”

Ta-Nehesi Coates

Coates himself was recently called “the single best writer on the subject of race in the United States” whose work is defined by a distinct blend of eloquence, authenticity, and nuance.” [See more on Coates here.]

Coates’ column contains this passage, which certainly applies in spades to Cleveland:

“New York is a city, like most in America, that bears the scars of redlining, blockbusting and urban renewal. The ghost of those policies haunts us in a wealth gap between blacks and whites that has actually gotten worse over the past 20 years. …

“But much worse, it haunts black people with a kind of invisible violence that is given tell only when the victim happens to be an Oscar winner. The promise of America is that those who play by the rules, who observe the norms of the “middle class,” will be treated as such. But this injunction is only half-enforced when it comes to black people, in large part because we were never meant to be part of the American story. … It is worth considering the messaging here. It says to black kids: ‘Don’t leave home. They don’t want you around.’ It is messaging propagated by moral people.”

Forty-five years ago, in the midst of great civil unrest, the Kerner Commission[2] found that “[O]ur nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white--separate and unequal.”

It was just over three months ago that Ohio’s Attorney General, referring to its Wild Westpursuit and killing of Timothy Russell and Malisssa Williams, described the Cleveland Police Department in terms that could be encapsulated by the phrase “unregulated Militia”.

The United States used to be described as a melting pot. In recent years, the prevailing construct has become something more akin to a tossed salad. When we consider the ingredients of our violent culture, our love of guns, and our unsolved racial issues, we may actually be more of a witches’ brew.

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[1] Professor Inniss is currently a visiting professor of women’s studies at Hamilton College in Clinton, NY.

[2] The National Advisory Commission On Civil Disorders. See summary of report here. For a quick overview, go here.