Some of the state鈥檚 top Republican officeholders who are likely to run for higher positions in 2018 are weighing in on challenges they think the state faces right now.
Attorney General Mike DeWine says when people ask him about the problem facing the state that haunts him the most, he鈥檒l say the opioid crisis. But DeWine says, in reality, that鈥檚 a subset of a larger problem.
鈥淚 think the biggest problem the state faces is we have a large number of children growing up in dysfunctional homes and a large number of children growing up in very stressed homes. If they aren鈥檛 dysfunctional, they might be very very stressed. That is our challenge is how to ensure that each one of those children, no matter where they live in the state of Ohio, can live up to their God given potential.鈥�
DeWine has said he will run for governor in 2018, though he hasn鈥檛 officially launched his campaign. Secretary of State Jon Husted is also thought to be considering a run. Both men have already started raising funds for their campaign war chests, and both have raised about $2.5 million. Husted says the decisions made now are going to have a profound effect on Ohio鈥檚 future. So he says it鈥檚 important to invest in educating kids in general and in particular, he says the state needs to focus on taking care of children who lack basic needs鈥�.things like food, health care and guidance.
鈥淲e are going to be economically competitive to get the businesses here and we want people to earn more because in that decade period that I talked about, more and more of them, we are going to rely on more and more and more of them for our economic health and they need to learn more if they are going to have economic security and a better life. And I promise you, you look ten years from now, the states that get this right are the ones that are going to be prosperous and the states that don鈥檛 are going to fall further and further behind.鈥�
Auditor Dave Yost has announced he鈥檚 running for Attorney General next year. As a former Delaware County prosecutor, he says he鈥檚 qualified to deal with the opioid epidemic facing the state. And he says the state needs to face the truth. Yost rejects the notion voiced by President Trump and some others in his party that the media is 鈥渢he opposition party.鈥� Yost, who worked as a Columbus Dispatch reporter in his early adulthood, extols the role of a free press.
鈥淲e need an independent free, robust press that鈥檚 willing to ask difficult questions, to demand answers to dive in and do the hard work of going through banker鈥檚 boxes worth of public records, to draw out the truth of what is going on. And we need to support that freedom of the press. Without that and without a robust working press, democracy doesn鈥檛 work and we are right in the middle of George Orwell鈥檚 dystopic vision of the future.鈥�
Yost, Husted and DeWine made their comments at an Associated Press forum with journalists throughout the state. Treasurer Josh Mandel, who has announced he wants a rematch of the race he lost against Democratic US Senator Sherrod Brown six years ago, was also invited but did not appear.
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