Is Mike DeWine Drifting Towards Joe Biden’s Diminished Mental Acuity?
Ohio deserves better from its political leaders and the JINOs that cover them.
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I’m not trying to be harsh or flippant, but Mike DeWine’s State of the State was divorced from reality, so I have to wonder if he is being misled by staff to believe that “[t]he state of our State is STRONG!” or, worse, his advanced age is starting to show. For regular readers of this column, you know I have tediously detailed with facts and data that Ohio is in the back of the pack on issue after issue. You can review these columns to refresh your memories:
October 12, 2023: Want to Talk About Equity? Then Look at How the State Funds the Futures of Ohio’s K-12 Graduates
August 26, 2023: Why Is It So Hard for Politicians to Shoot Straight With Ohioans About Our Systemically Underperforming Jobs Economy?
May 16, 2024: Another Ranking of the States, Another Dismal Result for Ohio
January 28, 2025: Ohio Education Results Show Pandemic Shutdown Devastation — Plus, Another Case for Replacing Term Limits With a 20-Year Time Limit;
January 31, 2025: The Latest Jobs Data Shows Just how Dismal Ohio Is Doing Compared to Other States; and
February 24, 2025: Three Other Metrics Show How Badly Ohio Is Doing Compared to Other States (And Then There Are Cocaine Overdose Deaths)
Moreover, you can review the data in numerous categories that we put into visual form every month at www.opportunityohio.org. These reports include:
Please, take a second to look at each report and the charts provided in each one. Again, these visuals are based on the actual data from the federal government and Ohio. As I wrote in the last column above summarizing all of the issues covered in the above columns and monthly reports:
So, to review when it comes to Ohio:
It has one of America’s weakest private sectors;
It has one of the most ineffective economic development entities;
It has declining educational outcomes;
It has a stagnant or declining population;
It has exploding government spending;
It has a poor business tax climate and noncompetitive state income tax;
It has one of the highest number of local taxing jurisdictions;
It has among America’s most regulated economies;
It has one of the highest unemployment rates; and
It has a bottom ten economy in terms of growth.
And, folks, I must say this clearly: those outcomes are based on hard data, not my opinion.
Even on softer metrics, Ohio does poorly. WalletHub ranked the hardest working cities in America based on a variety of factors. Ohio did not have one city ranked in the top 50, with Columbus coming in at 74th, Cincinnati at 92nd, Cleveland at 110th, and Toledo at 111th. Texas had eight cities in the top 20 and five more cities in the top 50. As I’ve written, Texas is booming. WalletHub did a similar ranking of the happiest places to live in America. Ohio didn’t have one city in the top 100, with Columbus in at 123rd, Cincinnati at 154th, Akron at 169th, Toledo at 177th, and Cleveland in dead last at 182nd.
I realize career politicians like DeWine cannot bring themselves to simply be honest with citizens about how they’ve really done, so they embellish their accomplishments, cherry pick pieces of data that make their tenures look good, and, yes, just lie. DeWine’s claim after six years in control that “[the state of our State is STRONG!” is just baseless bunk. Below I annotate parts of his State of the State to show where he embellishes, cherry picks, and lies. The sheer fact that DeWine thinks that Ohio adding 81,000 jobs over six years is something to brag about should raise serious doubts about his mental acuity or, more troubling, his honesty and integrity. Here are irrefutable facts about Ohio’s private sector under DeWine based on the latest data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS):
2019: +32,100 jobs
2020: -249,700 jobs
2021: +145,200 jobs
2022: +92,900 jobs
2023: +19,400 jobs
2024: -2,800 jobs
TOTAL: +81,100 jobs in six years, with declining numbers since the recovery of jobs from the severe pandemic shutdown*
NET TOTAL since 2020: +49,000 jobs in five years, or less than 10,000 jobs per year.
Is this truly a record to be proud of in a state of 11.8 million people? Less than 10,000 job per year for five years running? That pace of job growth equates to a “strong” state? Hardly.
The chutzpah shown by DeWine for including Intel in his list of "big wins” just two weeks after it announced it has once again delayed the project to 2030 or 2031 is mind-blowing. Ohio is mired in mediocrity and DeWine clearly has no idea how to pull Ohio out of the ditch it is in. All he promises is state spending so high that it matches what left-wing progressive J.B. Pritzker is doing in Illinois. Please, don’t take my word for it. Read his budget proposal and his State of the State yourself and tell me where you find one Reaganesque bold color idea that will move Ohio from the back of the pack to the front of the pack on one issue.
In its latest ranking of best states, U.S. News and World Report ranked Ohio #36 overall. Among eight subcategories, Ohio’s highest ranking was #17 for fiscal stability (thank you balanced budget amendment for forcing fiscal compliance) and #20 for opportunity. On the six other subcategories, Ohio ranked in the bottom half of the states: #27 (education), #30 (infrastructure), #33 (crime and corrections), #35 (health care), #39 (economy), and #41 (natural environment). Ohio’s ranking hasn’t moved much over the years, which is consistent with the failed incrementalist, nibbling-on-the-margins approach Ohio’s elected officials take. If Ohio is to move up in the rankings, a new approach is needed. Desperately.
On a related note, does Ohio possess any reputable media sources that will ever fact check DeWine’s statements? Ask yourself this question: if Donald Trump had made the statements DeWine made in his State of the State given the actual facts as I’ve laid out, would the media have reacted the same way? There is a reason I coined the term JINOs — Journalists In Name Only — in my second book, Taxpayers Don’t Stand a Chance. It is utterly shameful that they dedicate countless hours and coverage to vicious dogs and youth detention centers, which effect relatively few Ohioans in reality, yet cannot expend so much as a drop of ink to report just how badly Ohio is doing compared to other states, which effects all of us. We’ve thoroughly documented Ohio’s status on so many issue, but Ohio JINOs just can’t find the time to do to DeWine what every national JINO tries to do to Trump on a daily basis.
Ohio deserves better from its political leaders and the JINOs that cover them.
P.S. On Texas, see the article below from the Wall Street Journal.
*The annual numbers will change slightly when the BLS releases the monthly revisions later this morning, but the totals will remain the same.
BLS released updated numbers going back to the pandemic. Here are DeWine's new annual job totals:
2019: +32,100
2020: -250,600
2021: +145,500
2022: +89,800
2023: +47,100
2024: +20,000
2025: -2.800
TOTAL since 2019: +81,100
TOTAL since 2020: +49,000
Again, if you remove the pandemic losses in 2020 and recovered jobs in 2021, 2022, and into 2023, DeWine's job totals are:
2019: +32,100
2020: ______
2021: ______
2022: ______
2023 +31,800 (yes, it took Ohio nearly 2.5 years to finally recovery all the jobs lost in 2020)
2024: +20,000
2025: -2,800
That isn't "STRONG!" It is pathetic.