Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Jon Husted made decisions to shutdown Ohio businesses and schools back in 2020 that turned out to be egregiously wrong. They also issued mandates on masking, social distancing, and how businesses and public places had to operate to open. Many of their decisions were based on listening to progressive bureaucrats like Amy Acton and Tony Fauci while ignoring more reasonable voices who urged a more reasoned approach. DeWine and Husted stubbornly held firm to those decisions longer than other governors who moved to open their businesses and schools more rapidly. The DeWine-Husted lockdown decisions had an enormously negative impact on Ohioans, their businesses, and their kids’ education and health.
The DeWine-Husted pandemic decisions also undermined our civil liberties and constitutional rights. Specifically, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch recently issued a dissent in which he castigates the decisions made by state leaders like DeWine and Husted. Justice Gorsuch writes:
Since March 2020, we may have experienced the greatest intrusions on civil liberties in the peacetime history of this country. Executive officials across the country issued emergency decrees on a breathtaking scale. Governors and local leaders imposed lockdown orders forcing people to remain in their homes. They shuttered businesses and schools, public and private. They closed churches even as they allowed casinos and other favored businesses to carry on. They threatened violators not just with civil penalties but criminal sanctions too. They surveilled church parking lots, recorded license plates, and issued notices warning that attendance at even outdoor services satisfying all state social-distancing and hygiene requirements could amount to criminal conduct. They divided cities and neighborhoods into color-coded zones, forced individuals to fight for their freedoms in court on emergency timetables, and then changed their color-coded schemes when defeat in court seemed imminent.
Justice Gorsuch went on to add:
The evidence at the time against shutdowns and mask mandates has been affirmed many times over the last few years. It took Ohio thirty-nine months to fully recover the jobs lost from the DeWine-Husted shutdowns. Ohio was the 39th state to finally fully recover its lost jobs. It took Idaho only ten months to fully recover its lost jobs. Half the states fully recovered their lost jobs in 2.5 years, as it took Ohio 3.3 years to claw back the jobs it lost.
Educationally, the school shutdowns and forced on-line learning did substantial academic, social, emotional, and mental harm to our kids. Our kids are behind in what they should have learned by now. Mental health issues, including suicides among our K-12 population, have skyrocketed. Even our youngest suffered harm as studies are showing delays in speech given the use of masks that hid verbal cues.
Also, who can forget the idiocy of the DeWine-Husted “Vax-a-Million” scheme (or more accurately “vax-a-dud”) that made Ohio the laughing stock of the country? This reckless waste of taxpayer funds illustrated three core problems with DeWine and Husted. First, as career politicians who have lived their entire lives on the public dole, they simply have no concept of what most families face day-in, day-out at their kitchen tables when money is short and demands are long. Unlike Husted, they can’t use a loophole no one ever expected to be used to add a $20,000 per year corporate job to their $184,000 government job—we will close this “Husted Loophole” in 2027. DeWine and Husted see taxpayer funds as a means to an end—namely, enhancing their prospects for re-election or personal gain. They’ve become so comfortable throwing taxpayer funds around that thousands have blurred to millions which has opaquely become billions. The zeroes simply have no meaning to them. In many ways, they act no differently than President Joe Biden and D.C. Democrats who see ever-higher spending as a way to buy the loyalty of certain constituents.
Next, the vax-a-dud silliness showed that neither DeWine nor Husted govern by being rooted in conservative principles. As their first term showed, they spent what came in, used loopholes for self-enrichment, followed the pro-shutdown crowd instead of standing for our civil liberties, failed to fight the tough fights, and did nothing to build the infrastructure Ohio will need to become a national leader. These facts shouldn’t surprise Republican primary voters unless those voters let big titles blind them to bigger failures.
Finally, the “vax-a-dud” boondoggle showed DeWine and Husted (and their team) are bereft of bold color ideas and they often simply repackage the same failed pale pastel ideas that didn’t work in the past, or scrape the bottom of the barrel hoping whatever they find there will work. Vax-a-dud was THE rock bottom of the DeWine-Husted barrel. Do any Republicans truly believe a Husted Administration wouldn’t be staffed by the same straphangers with the same pale pastel ideas that populate the DeWine-Husted team now? The same staffers and the same political consultants that were with him in the Ohio House then the Ohio Senate then the Secretary of State’s Office and now the DeWine-Husted Administration will make up his team as governor where they will keep doing exactly what they’ve been doing for the last two decades: push pale pastel ideas that won’t change the arc of Ohio from being a perpetual laggard to a national leader all the while getting paid in full despite their failures and racking up more time in their gold-plated government pensions. Ohio needs new blood, bold color ideas, and principled leaders rooted in conservatism.
You think I’m being too harsh? Name one policy produced by the DeWine-Husted Administration that can be categorized as a bold color, conservative idea which other states emulated. Name one conservative issue in which DeWine or Husted used their voices to advance our shared cause. The only time DeWine and Husted made national news is when they served as the token Republicans who did what the Left and media wanted every state to do re severe lockdowns (or when Husted would trash Donald Trump during the 2016 election). Newsflash: if PBS, CNN, and MSNBC are applauding you, you should realize you’ve strayed far from what Main Street Ohioans want and need. Needless to say, I will never support lockdowns, mask mandates, and other violations of our civil liberties. I would treat Ohioans like the responsible people they are and expect them to do the right thing for themselves, their families, and their businesses while taking the lightest touch possible to protect vulnerable populations.
As I’ve proposed, we need to replace term limits, which career politicians figured out how to evade, with a 20-year time limit that sends them on their way once the clock strikes midnight. I’ve also championed the idea that our top leaders and legislature desperately need to put on a pay for performance plan in which their pay is cut in half with a chance to get a 100% bonus if and only if Ohio hits the top ten each year in net percentage job growth. As that one lawyer's commercial says, "they don’t get paid, if we don't get paid." If we conservatives believe pay for performance is good for teachers, it damn well better be as good for politicians whose job it is to ensure Ohio is a pro-jobs, pro-growth, pro-prosperity, and pro-family place in which Ohioans don’t leave and non-Ohioans flock to. They’ve been failing us for more than two decades, so it is time to light a fire under their feet by making them truly earn their pay.
Given the above, one would expect DeWine and Husted to publicly apologize for the countless mistakes they made and the harm they did to Ohio, its businesses, and its kids. Instead, DeWine has the gall to claim that the DeWine-Husted administration is the most kid-friendly one in America. Given all of the work done in many other Republican-led states to protect kids from surgeries and puberty blockers, to protect girls in the bathroom and on the sports pitch, to stop woke ideology from infecting the classroom, and to make school choice universal, the fact that none of these things have gotten done in Ohio is, in addition to their failed response to the pandemic, a serious indictment of DeWine and Husted. A true leader grounded in ethics and accountability would publicly apologize to Ohioans for this pathetic record, but no such apology is forthcoming from either DeWine or Husted. That omission in itself should render any Husted campaign for governor DOA. After all, aren’t we tired of elected leaders who make bad decisions then lack the moral compass to apologize when they err? I, for one, believe we should be.
If you want to sit in the seat, you should be the type of leader who apologizes when a decision you make in that seat hurts someone. I can promise you this: if I make a mistake as governor, you will get an apology from me and, as importantly, a change in policy to ensure that the mistake gets fixed rapidly so it does as little damage as possible to as few as possible.
To borrow from Julius Caesar, my non-career politician/non-musical chair man motto is: “Venit. Statuit. Reliquit.” (For those who don’t want to use Google Translate: “I came. I fixed. I left.“) Ohio urgently needs to do what President Ronald Reagan implored us to do: paint with bold colors, no pale pastels. I’m a bold color guy heading into a Republican primary in 2026 with nothing but pale pastel men. What kind of person do you want guiding Ohio in the coming years? The choice should be an easy one.
At any rate, if you missed my weekly interview on The Bruce Hooley Show, check it out as we discuss bold color leadership and the 2024 Republican presidential primary.
It Takes a Real Leader to Apologize When Wrong