Policy

The Governor’s Responsibility

The fish rots from the head, as they say. More pleasantly: good, honest leadership starts at the top. Ohio deserves a governor who takes full accountability, leads by example, and works tirelessly for the improvement of the state and the wellbeing of its people. My administration will set clear expectations for transparency, efficiency, and reliability. We will establish a culture of honesty and true public service. We’ll root out bad apples, attract top talent, and reform the Ohio bureaucracy.

Improvement Agenda

To quote Warren Buffett in the theme song to his children’s cartoon, The Secret Millionaires Club, “The best investment you can make is an investment in yourself,”. We want Ohio to invest in itself and we want Ohioans to invest in themselves and we want those two endeavors to overlap. We’re going to invest in those things that help people succeed. We’re going to invest in education, invest in our health and wellbeing, invest in our communities. Build ladders to success. 

The Improvement Agenda is an ethos. We’re here to challenge our state, our communities, and ourselves to do and be better. Even small improvements add up. Fixing potholes, repainting a building, setting aside a little a time a day to exercise. We’re going to be a state where small problems aren’t ignored and we take responsibility. 

Beyond Left vs Right

Every part of government, of the economy, of life itself is steadily being reduced by our politics to a Left vs Right dichotomy. It’s a virus, it consumes all things that are good. We reject it. We reject its Zero-Sum outlook, its Us vs Them attitude. We reject its cynicism, its pursuit of power at the expense of basic human decency, of moral values, and of American principles. And we absolutely reject the notion that the world is so simple, so two-dimensional, so uninteresting. Partisan politics seeks to flatten us, to place us into neat categories. We reject it. We will not be flattened. 

The world is a place of incredible depth, incredible complexity. There aren’t just two ways of seeing the world. There are thousands. By broadening our perspective, by embracing the American axiom, “E Pluribus Unum”, Out of Many, One, we can bring new ideas to government and society. We can create where others destroy. We can go forward while others are stuck in the past. 

A Real Plan

Traditional candidates use campaigns and policy proposals as advertising to win votes, with their words amounting to little more than broken promises and empty rhetoric. Not only is this deceitful, it’s a wasted opportunity. We believe the campaign is about way more than collecting votes, it’s about building consensus. The campaign is where true governance begins. 

The power of the state government is limited, the power of the governor even more so. Real reform, real growth, a real renaissance, requires a real plan. It requires concerted action at multiple levels of government and buy-in from decision makers, institutions, business, and most importantly the public. If the state government isn’t on the same page as city and county governments, our efforts will fail. If cities are still competing against each other in a race to the bottom to attract businesses, our efforts will fail. If we pass a budget with investment in education and capital for new businesses and the public doesn’t believe in it, doesn’t think it’s a real opportunity to skill up or start a business, our efforts will fail. 

Even before the election, our job from the start in this campaign is to learn, to explore, and to build connections between stakeholders. Because once in government we need to hit the ground running.

Rustbelt Renaissance

“We are burying the term Rust Belt” – Sherrod Brown. To Sherrod Brown I say simply: screw that! Maybe being born in the 1950s gives a very different perspective on this but I was born into the Rust Belt era. The Rust Belt isn’t an unsightly blight you try and cover up and memoryhole. The Rust Belt is our history. It has defined generations, for better or worse, it has and will continue to define our culture, our economy, and our future. To erase our own history is like amputating a limb. We embrace our history. We don’t see decline, we see potential; we don’t destroy, we build; we’re not nostalgic for a past golden age we never knew, we’re inspired by a vision for the future. 

By knowing and embracing who we are we will lead a Rust Belt Renaissance. Renaissance means rebirth. It means bouncing back. Every renaissance, every golden age, every great epoch was preceded by crisis. Athens, Rome, Florence, Edinburgh, Vienna, Chicago; each was made great in the wake of crisis. Fostering that renaissance means using our history to our advantage, recognizing our economic diversity and potential held within our small and medium sized cities that are so often overlooked. Reindustrializing means innovation and regional economic integration. It means turning our research and technology powerhouses like Cleveland Clinic, the public university system, and Wright-Patterson into engines of innovation tied to our industrial centers and supply chains. Left-Behind Ohio, really anywhere outside the major cities, are actually overlooked Ohio. They will be the key to unlocking the future of Ohio. 

Ending Corruption, Restoring Trust

The greatest threat to Ohio is corruption. Corruption which robs Ohioans of their tax dollars, which denies Ohio the proper investments, and which degrades trust in government and each other. We will implement immediately the most severe crackdown on corruption this state and this country have ever seen. At the state and local level we will expose conflicts of interest, bribery, and any other dirty dealing. We will instill a sense of pride and civic duty in our government, in the police, in the bureaucracy. We will recruit to our ticket an Auditor, a Secretary of State, and Attorney General that will hold politicians and government accountable, expose wrongdoing, and prosecute accordingly. Transparency will be the default. The culture of pay-to-play politics and government will be put to an end. And we will work tirelessly to earn the trust of the public once again.

Democracy

Democracy is a founding principle of the United States. Democracy was one of the most important values shared among Americans even before the republic was formed. Democracy is what the Revolution was fought for. Democracy can never be stolen, it cannot be killed, it does not die at the ballot box. Democracy is lived. Only when Americans abandon it in their hearts and minds will we lose Democracy in America. 

Supporting and defending Democracy in Ohio means many things. It means protecting voting rights, election integrity, and accessibility. But it also means having an informed and engaged electorate. It means journalism as an institution that will inquire and uncover. It means civic engagement. It means political competition. We need more people to run for office, we need more options on the ballot. We need people to be able to engage in democracy and politics with respect, not anger or fear, we need to be able to disagree constructively, we need to be able to live and govern without uniformity. Democracy isn’t warfare, it’s learning and discovery and creation.