DeWine Debate Watch: Day 12
September 9, 2022
Columbus, OH — As debate season starts to ramp up in the closing weeks and days of the election cycle, Mike DeWine has continued to duck committing to debates across Ohio with Mayor Nan Whaley, even as the Mayor has already publicly agreed and challenged DeWine to a number of debates. DeWine also dodged a debate with his primary opponents earlier this year, signaling that he is scared to defend his record to Ohioans, especially since he’s debated political opponents in the past. It’s ‘DeWine Debate Watch’ Day 12, reminding Ohioans that DeWine won’t even try to make his case to them as he seeks re-election to the highest statewide executive office.
“Mike DeWine clearly knows his record over the last four years of selling out working families in favor of the wealthy and well-connected is not going to be popular with Ohio voters. If DeWine can’t even muster the political courage to tell Ohioans why they should re-elect him, he doesn’t deserve the job and should be held publicly accountable for his cowardice,” said Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Matt Keyes.
Ohioans deserve answers from DeWine on a number of key issues, including his promise to ‘go as far as we can’ to rip away reproductive rights, his broken promise to ‘do something’ to combat gun violence in Ohio, his connections to the largest public corruption scandal in state history and his role in the failed redistricting process that produced GOP-gerrymandered maps and cost Ohioans millions of dollars.
Read more from the Cincinnati Enquirer here and below:
Cincinnati Enquirer Opinion: Dan Sewell: Ohio Governor Might Sit Out Debates While Sitting On Poll Lead
Dan Sewell
September 7, 2022
- Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is sounding like a debate-dodger. The Republican incumbent hasn’t agreed so far to debating his Democratic challenger, former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley. He hasn’t ruled out formal debates, but he keeps talking about alternatives such as newspaper endorsement meetings.
- Apparently, people should have taken the opportunity to ask the governor about Ohio infrastructure needs while he was eating a sauerkraut ball or admiring the 4-H Club members’ market lambs.
- “I don’t think there’s been any governor that’s ever had more press conferences than me,” DeWine also said. That might be true, and DeWine has usually been accessible to the news media over the years.
- But that’s not the point.
- Debates are an opportunity for voters to compare and contrast candidates in real time; seeing how they answer each other’s challenges to their records, how quick they are thinking on their feet when hit with unexpected questions that go beyond their talking points, and how clear they are on their visions for the state.
- And they can produce defining moments, such as the angry nose-to-nose confrontation this year between former state Treasurer Josh Mandel and businessman Mike Gibbons that made them look decidedly un-senatorial during a Republican primary debate for the Senate nomination.
- So why is DeWine, who at 75 has been running in campaigns in Ohio since Whaley, now 46, was a baby, balking at debating? “If Mike DeWine is afraid to debate me and defend his record as governor, why is he even running for-election?” [Nan] Whaley asked in a Sept. 2 tweet.
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