This year's race for Ohio governor will feature political novices at the top of the major party ticket.

And very experienced running mates.

Flu cases are rising in Ohio and in northeast Ohio.

Flu related hospitalizations have doubled.

And Akron's mayor says police should use only department issued weapons instead of their personal long guns.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to ideas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Ohio, once a bellwether, has become a solidly red state.

But Democrats hope to splash in some blue with their likely nominee for governor, Doctor Amy Acton, who rose to prominence as Ohio health director during the Covid pandemic.

This week, she chose former Ohio Democratic Party chairman David Pepper as her running mate, the likely Republican candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, the Trump aligned entrepreneur, chose Ohio Senate President Rob McCauley.

The tickets are set.

The flu is bad enough.

Now we have the super flu.

Hospitalizations locally are double what they were last week and up all across Ohio.

Protesters took to the streets in Cleveland after an Ice agent fatally shot a woman during a protest in Minneapolis.

Details around the shooting are driving divisive Partizan debate.

And Akron police have a policy that officers can use their own personal long guns at work.

The mayor wants to put an end to that.

Joining me to discuss those stories and other news from the first week of the year from Idea Stream, public media reporters Connor Morris and Anna Huntsman from the Statehouse News Bureau in Columbus.

Bureau chief Karen Kasler, let's get ready to round table.

The presumptive nominees for the two major parties for governor finalized their tickets this week, adding political experience that each lacks.

Republican Vivek Ramaswamy selected Senate President Rob McCauley of Northwest Ohio as his running mate.

Democrat Doctor Amy Acton chose the former leader of the Ohio Democratic Party, David Pepper.

This won't be the last time you hear it referred to as the doctor Pepper ticket.

In general, do running mates matter?

And is it a little different in this case because neither of these two candidates has ever held political office?

I think that's the significant thing here, is that they think Ramaswamy and Amy act and, like you just said, have never been elected to public office before.

David Pepper is run twice statewide and lost both times.

But he had the Ohio Democratic Party for almost six years.

So he has extensive political experience in that regard.

And of course, Senate President Rob McCauley is in the Senate.

He was in the House.

So he has legislative experience as well.

So I think in that respect it does matter.

But I was trying to think of the last time that really a lieutenant governor was somebody that people knew that they recognize the name I mean, John used.

It's probably the last one because he and DeWine were actually competitors in 2017.

They were both running for governor, and then they teamed up to run as a unified ticket.

And then you'd probably have to go back to George Voinovich and Mike DeWine teaming up to run before you would really get two candidates on the lieutenant governor running mates side.

That really kind of moved the needle or made people think twice, potentially because they actually knew these names.

I mean, David Pepper does have a social media presence, and a lot of people have heard of him.

But yeah, I found out over the years that I've been covering the state House.

A lot of people don't know anything about state government, so the Senate president may not be that significant a person to folks who are looking at the the people who are running with the main candidates.

Well, Ramaswamy runs as a maverick.

I'm not a politician.

I'm going to come in and clean up government.

And yet he then picked somebody who is really very well ensconced in government.

But one of the things he said is if we're going to get anything done, the legislature has to be on the same page as the governor.

And so that's why I picked him.

Yeah.

one of the things I'd wanted to ask Ramaswamy, if we got a chance to talk to him after the event and at Wendy's on the river on Wednesday night, but he did not meet with reporters after that.

He just got up on stage.

And he did say that all those things that you just said, he's not he's not planning on being a governor like other governors.

In a sense.

He's got all these ideas, but he needs a legislative partner to get those through.

And that's why he says he looked at Rob McCauley as somebody who has the legislative experience, who can get his agenda accomplished and who, frankly, has another year here who could potentially smooth the way, in a sense, for Rama Swami.

I ask McCauley about that on our TV show, The State of Ohio.

Our year end interview last year about, are you going to be as a legislator, you're going to be doing anything that kind of helps Rama swamis and so many Republicans have endorsed Rama Swami.

And he said, we look at ideas coming from everywhere.

And if Rama Swami has good ideas, we'll be looking at them now on the Democratic side, Amy Acton picks, David Pepper for a couple of reasons.

One, he's an experienced fundraiser with national contacts.

But secondly, he's going to be a pit bull.

Yeah.

And you're already seeing that.

And I think Acton kind of needs that balance there because she really is more soft spoken.

She talks a lot about, listening and and helping people and public service and things like that, where David Pepper, we've seen on social media and even when he was in charge of the Democratic Party, is not afraid to be critical of Republicans in office.

And we've seen him really do that.

He does these whiteboard videos on social media where he analyzes things like gerrymandering and things like that.

Now, the Democratic ticket has talked about a couple of different messages that they're going to try to put out there while Republicans are talking about cutting income taxes, cutting property taxes, Democrats are talking about things like affordability, but also things like corruption in the state House, which, frankly, has not been a winning strategy for Democrats over the last 10 or 15 years.

So, I think peppers talked a lot about that.

But whether voters will really respond to that is a question.

And when you think about David Pepper, he's run for statewide office himself and lost and, resigned in 2020 as the party chair after a pretty disastrous showing by the Democrats then.

So you wonder if that's baggage.

Well, I mean, the Democrats have not had a good, 30 years in Ohio.

I mean, I don't know, 10 or 30 years.

I mean, one of the first questions I ask Amy Acton is the idea of, you know, you've you're coming into a state where Republicans have not have dominated politics for so many years.

They're going to dominate the legislature, most likely, even if Acton wins.

Why do you want this job?

And so that's a question that I think, you know, obviously David Pepper and Amy Acton do have an answer to because they feel that Republican policies have been a problem.

And that's one of the things that I think is interesting when you hear Ramaswamy talk about some of the things he wants to do and that he's been dissatisfied with job creation and educational standards and things like that.

In Ohio, Republicans have been in charge for 30 years or so, and so he's almost kind of running against what Republicans, including governor Mike DeWine, have been doing.

And now DeWine did endorse the Ramaswamy McCauley ticket right after McCauley was announced as the running mate.

And I think he did that because he likes Macaulay's legislative presence.

He thinks that, what McCauley has done in the legislature has been a solid move.

And rather than going kind of out of the box and picking somebody not grounded in government more, I was when we did well.

DeWine also says he thinks that Ramaswamy will be better for business.

Even though, others have pointed out that Ramaswamy has a business that the CEO moved from Ohio to Texas.

So maybe his point is it would be better in Ohio if he was the governor and policies were better.

And that's been an interesting story there.

Ramaswamy addressed that in his speech on Wednesday before he introduced McCauley, saying that basically the head of his business told him he was going to have to move the business to taxes because of tax policy here in Ohio, which, you know, you could make the argument of, well, if Romney's all I really believed in Ohio, wouldn't he keep his business here?

But he has said that that's been a problem and he wants to change that.

Now, the question is, how do you cut property taxes and cut income taxes and still increase educational standards and pay teachers more and have more police presence and things like that, that Republicans say they want to do both those things, and that's pretty hard to do.

Robert, send us an email.

He says, I'd like to say that it must be painful for Amy Acton that her former boss did not endorse her for governor.

I think she did an amazing job getting Ohio through the pandemic.

And yet her former boss, the man she shared the stage with for days during the pandemic, actually weeks snubbed her.

What are the thoughts about that?

Well, I think it is an interesting position that DeWine was in because we asked him last month when he met with reporters at a Christmastime breakfast, you know, my colleagues, O'Donnell's, and actually ask him, why haven't you endorsed Rama Swami?

He had talked about he expected to endorse the Republican candidate, but had never said he was going to endorse Vivek Ramaswamy.

And he finally did that this week.

And I think that Acton's presence there may have been part of that because, yeah, he did pick her as his Department of Health director.

They did implement Covid policies that Acton is now getting a lot of heat for.

But DeWine has said were ultimately his responsibility.

The buck stopped with him.

And so I think that it was an interesting position that DeWine was in.

It's part of the reason I think DeWine took some time in deciding whether he was going to when he was going to come out and endorse Rama Swami.

I think he always was going to.

But when was he going to do it?

There is a primary challenger for Rama, Swami Casey Putsch, is that, I guess, running to the right of Rama Swami, I would likely not have any impact.

Right?

Yeah, I mean, I who knows?

And, DeWine had two challengers when he ran in 2022, so I'm.

I'm not surprised to see somebody come out there.

Punch has really been pushing the whole families property taxes.

Idea is Ramaswamy.

At first he talked about, abolishing property taxes, but then pulled back on that, and I, I mean, I would imagine that having Rob McCauley on the ticket would make it very difficult for Rama Swami to be in favor of abolishing property taxes, because if that movement does go forward, you're going to see people like Rob McCauley and Speaker Mat Hoffman and Governor Mike DeWine really coming out saying, we cannot abolish property taxes.

We have to do property tax reform.

So, I think punches out there saying we need to get rid of property taxes entirely.

He'll get some traction on that.

But Rama Swamy has a lot of money and has done a lot of work already to really establish himself.

And so I think the primary will be interesting to watch.

But yeah, yeah, 10 million in the last reporting period, 20 million so far that he's right.

That's what he's raised.

Right I don't know.

We don't know what he's spent yet so far.

And that's the thing though I think watch here is what he's actually spent.

And that of course doesn't even include his own contributions.

Doesn't include, super PAC, doesn't include outside money like that and Act.

And we're still waiting to see hers, which come at the end of the month.

They both are filing on January 31st.

At least that's when the reports do.

And there'll be something to look at all right.

Are there other candidates, other parties that are likely on the ballot?

I mean, you know, there's always am not on the primary.

I don't think Acton has a primary opponent.

I think the Democrats really, especially once Tim Ryan got out of the possibility of running Democrats really came up and solidified behind the act.

And now Pepper, check it.

State and local health experts urge people to get a flu shot, even though the shot doesn't seem to be matched up well with the current strain of the virus.

The shot can lessen symptoms and offer some protection.

Flu is on the rise statewide and in northeast Ohio.

Flu related hospitalizations doubled in a week.

Nearly 2000 are hospitalized statewide.

And I've heard this year's flu referred to as a super flu.

What does that mean?

Yeah, it doesn't that sound like fun and exciting?

Super flu.

But it's not.

I don't know about you, but I feel like there's so many people that I know that are sick.

It just seems like everybody came out of the holidays sick, either with the super flu or a cold or something like that.

So it's kind of brutal out there right now across the state, we have almost 2000 hospitalizations from this flu, currently this week.

And what it is, it's a different strain of the flu than we are used to in Ohio.

That's what Ohio health officials said this week.

It's influenza A, so we don't have a lot of immunity with it.

So that's why it seems to be kind of affecting so many more people than we saw last year, at least in the flu season, although it was a high flu year last year as well.

But it's this the super flu, meaning it's just infecting much more people because we don't have a ton of immunity for it.

And doctor bow tie.

I'm sorry, doctor Bruce Vanderhoff.

Yeah, we call him doctor bow tie.

Yeah.

Said this week is, health director for the state of Ohio.

That the shot itself is not going to necessarily protect you, but it could mitigate the depth of the the virus.

It wouldn't you wouldn't be as sick right there encouraging people to still get the flu shot.

If you haven't yet.

Because as you mentioned, it makes it seems to make less severe cases.

So you're less likely to end up in the hospital, less likely to have a really bad case if you are vaccinated.

The other problem is, though, and we had heard this for some time now that the shot this year is not a great match for the strains of flu that we're seeing.

So that's that's another problem there.

But people are still saying, you know, officials are still encouraging you to get the shot if you haven't yet.

Okay.

And then, measles, as we mentioned, that's starting to ramp up as well.

We had a bad year last year, a bad year to two years ago or three years ago.

And now there's some concern because of this, this family in Cuyahoga County that's showing early signs.

It appears that it's just contained to this Cuyahoga County family.

The three, three kids, although there is a fourth kid in the family who apparently is starting to exhibit symptoms as well.

And they recently they're unvaccinated.

And they recently traveled to a place that's having a measles outbreak.

So that's what we know so far about that.

So, yeah, that's another, concern this this season.

Okay.

Hundreds of protesters gathered in downtown Cleveland Thursday night outside of the Anthony J. Federal building to protest the fatal shooting of a woman Wednesday in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer.

There were protests, too, in Akron and Stowe, and more are planned for Friday night.

Connor, let's talk about those in Cleveland.

I mean, many miles away, that very day, protesters mobilized.

What was the message that they were delivering last night in northeast Ohio?

You know, we saw protests across the region, across the country, just a lot of outrage been expressed by folks, you know, looking at the various coverage, folks are calling Ice agents storm troopers, there's references to Nazi Germany, calling them agents of a fascist state.

You know, generally folks are saying the killing of good was unjustified.

There was also, you know, sadness.

There have been moments of silence for for good as well.

There have been some statements made about that.

She was a legal observer.

Somebody at the protest last night in Cleveland said she took it upon herself to advocate, to be a witness to be sure that laws were properly enforced.

They were saying that's why she was there initially in the first place.

So a lot of anger and sadness and outrage and people saying that this is an extension of something that they see is as, you know, unethical use of law enforcement, on the part of the Trump administration.

She's a mother of three.

She was there obviously protesting, ice and what they were doing in the neighborhood and in Minneapolis.

But we have this debate now about, you know, what was she doing when she trying to run the police officer over the ice?

Officer?

Could he have taken other measures?

One of the appears, one of the shots was fired as he's beside the car.

Anna, when we look at that, give us a sense of essentially just what happened there.

Sure.

And I will say to, as someone who covers, police reform a lot in Akron.

So I've heard a lot about this.

A lot of what I hear is the job of a law enforcement officer is to minimize harm and save life.

And, there's a lot of conversation about, you know, when you when you're trained for this, you're trained to not put yourself in harm's way.

So there's part of the conversation is, again, that frame by frame that you mentioned, some people are saying that the agent was put himself in front of the car.

So what we what you can see in the video is, you know, she's in her car, it appears that she might be waving.

She's, they're they're on a street and there's a protest going on, and Ice agents are coming through in their cars, and she, appears to wave on one of the cars.

The ice agent cars, and that passes her, which passes.

Then the other one drives up, appearing to also pass.

Instead, it stops and the agents come out of the car and go directly to her window and start.

Kind of.

It looks like they're yelling at her.

Like even it almost looks like they're reaching into the car.

And so then you see the car kind of like back up, and then start to maybe drive away.

And that's when, you know, it all kind of happens.

So again, there is this frame by frame conversation of was his leg in front when she was driving away.

It's it's I always say more to come.

And that's what we know now.

Very disturbing.

Video and what's interesting here too, is that you usually don't have right away anyone from the federal government or anyone in any position of authority to give an opinion immediately.

Usually it's we don't know the facts of this.

We don't know whether she was being told to stop or to pull away.

And maybe there was.

They don't they they let that play out.

In this case, we had the vice president calling her a radical.

We had the, Kristi Noem, the homeland secretary talking about that.

She weaponized the car.

It was, called our domestic terror.

Exactly.

So that's that end of it.

And then we hear, too, that an investigation of this shooting, which the state would like to conduct in Minnesota.

Right, cannot because the federal government has taken it over and are not going to share evidence there.

So the very agency that's investigating it is part of the groups and people that are saying nothing was done correctly.

I mean, the question is, you know, in my case, I'm not saying something was right or wrong or maybe no one else, but there's an investigation that has to happen.

Right?

And as you mentioned, the, the federal government is taking that over.

And as you mentioned, it immediately became divisive, with the federal government, you know, officials saying one thing, but then you have the local officials, the Minneapolis, the mayor of Minneapolis, telling Ice to get out of the state with an F word in there.

Yeah, I'm trying to be clean here.

And then you just see all the, you know, Minnesotan officials, totally on, you know, good side and saying that this, you know, that she was trying to drive away and all that.

So it's, Yeah, it's been an interesting few days hearing about this unfolding.

Right.

The East Cleveland City School District is riding high after being released last month from state oversight, which had been in place for more than seven years.

But let's talk about what prompted the state to release the district from academic academic oversight.

Yeah.

So this has been somewhat of a long time coming about seven years since the state appointed, CEO and superintendent, Doctor Henry Pettigrew.

He's appointed by the Academic Distress Commission seven years ago.

And, you know, the district has improved on a lot of measures since test scores, college and career readiness.

You know, more kids are earning industry credentials in areas like manufacturing, health care, cybersecurity.

You know, they've even stuffed, interestingly enough, a little nugget of news.

And they've introduced a film academy recently for students.

So they're doing some good things over there.

It seems from at least according to the state and from the officials there.

And then they're these benchmarks that are set when you are placed on academic distress.

And if you meet a certain number of them, they met 16 of 20, then eventually you're released.

And so now, I believe it's just Youngstown, schools are the only ones that are under academic distress now.

It Lorain Schools was released a couple of years ago, so they're really kind of the big three.

East Cleveland, Lorain and Youngstown.

So they're celebrating not I mean, the idea of being under under state control is not what is not ideal.

So you want to you want to be able to do your own.

And so you said 16 of these measures have been met.

But they still have challenges, of course.

Any urban school districts, it faces challenges in this country.

You're going to see low test scores.

You're going to see higher chronic absenteeism.

It's not because of like, it's just because of a certain population of students.

But it kind of is also because it's generally these school districts are serving high poverty students who have a lot going on at home.

Teachers are really trying to get these students caught up as best as possible.

And so, yeah, I mean, even as they've had these improvements, they still have one out of five stars on early literacy, which is one of the most important measures for getting kids kind of caught up and ready for school.

Test scores is still only two out of five stars, so to speak.

So again, you know.

Yeah, absolutely.

And the same thing with CMS and Akron and any other urban school district across the CMS to be in Cleveland, of course.

Yeah.

Of course.

And, it's not in this case, it was unusual that Pettigrew was in place the entire time.

Often you have distress commissions that are lasting a long time in superintendents.

But there was a study by Cleveland State University Center for Urban Education that said that may have had a the stability there may have had an impact.

Yeah.

This was interesting.

There haven't been a ton of studies done on these academic distress commissions, you know, countrywide.

But in East Cleveland's case, they found that it was a boon for them to have one leader who was in place the entire time and also to exit with some pretty significant improvements to, generally speaking, these, state appointed commissions are, very unpopular.

They're seen as taking away local control and generally speaking, folks say, well, how are you going to improve things if you don't have local control, if you don't have your own school board?

Things changed in the state recently where, you know, there is local control now, even if they are under academic distress.

And also, interestingly enough, the state changed the way that they approach academic distress commissions.

Again, recently, they keep changing the way they do this.

Right.

And, now if you have, certain like two out of five stars on the state report card for three years in a row, which some districts are moving to that point, you could be placed under academic distress again.

So you could be looking for that in the future here.

Right?

Police in Akron bring their own approved long guns to work, but Akron's mayor says they should use only department issued weapons.

He inserted that new rule and the capital budget that he submitted to city council this week.

Malik says it's just not great for optics particularly.

Yeah, that's what he said.

It kind of is going to streamline the process.

There's currently a policy you can't just show up to work with whatever gun you want.

That's not the current policy.

And the policy is you would have to go through some sort of, tracking process.

You I don't know the full policy, but it's been in place for some time and there are different reasons behind it.

Officers have said in the past, you know, it's what they're comfortable with this particular long gun versus another one.

So there are, you know, current parameters in place.

But as you mentioned, Malik is saying it doesn't.

He understands the perception of what it kind of looks like it when especially when you see, officers, you know, fatally shooting with their their personal long gun.

It doesn't always look great to the community.

And the community has brought up that concern in the past.

So this is in the capital budget.

It's in a line item for, replacing gear for the police department.

And Malik also said this wouldn't be an overnight fix.

This is part of developing the policy.

Is this this funding line item?

So there wouldn't be no long guns police would still have.

There is just that they would be in the, you know, issued by the right part.

That's what Malik was kind of pointing out.

Every other piece of equipment, he says, whether it's, you know, a handgun or something like that, it's always department issued.

Yeah.

So why is it why?

I mean, I was surprised to just hear that the police officers have their own guns and bring them to work.

And I know it's not just showing up with a different gun every day, but.

But, okay, this is my personal, AR 15, and I'm going to bring that to work and get it approved and use it.

And I thought to myself, shouldn't they be issued that they're issued sidearms, they're issued uniforms.

Right.

That's what Malik is saying.

Every other piece of equipment is department issued.

And we are going to look into what is the preferred long gun of the department.

And we're going to issue those.

Again, that's going to take some time.

But that's kind of the intent.

And there is also currently a system for tracking who has what gun, what guns are qualified, which ones are disqualified.

And he said that's kind of an administrative hassle as well.

So that's kind of the reasoning behind this.

All right.

And you covered the budget.

And we're going to be digging into that.

I'm sure more as time goes on.

Yeah.

But a couple of highlights.

One of them is the inner belt beautification with or without federal money.

Yeah, that's been a topic of conversation because there was so much momentum behind this, project.

So the inner belt is a highway that was part of urban renewal in the 1970s, and it cut through a predominantly black neighborhood, lots of black businesses, and it was never finished and then eventually decommissioned.

So the city has been trying to rectify that situation by going through all these consultations about what could this area look like?

And so all this to say, they were ready to go.

They have this, this big project, the inner belt, you know, master plan.

And then they got this $10 million grant from the Department of Transportation last year.

And then a few months after that was announced, it was paused as part of the Trump administration's kind of pausing of anything that really has to do with equity.

So basically, what we saw on this budget is the city is proposing to commit $500,000 to at least do the beautification of the area of that highway and some of the parts of that master plan.

We don't know too many details yet, because it would have to go through council.

But I asked Malik about that.

I, you know, when he was presenting the budget, I said, you know, $10 million is $10 million.

So he was like, absolutely.

We're going to continue advocating for that.

He's taken senators are, you know, Ohio senators around, and they're not he says they're not hiding the equity piece, but really mentioning that this could be a a big thing for economic development.

So that Grant we still don't know.

But they're going to move forward with kind of what the city has contro Monday, on The Sound of Ideas on 89 seven, Wksu will dig into a reporting project by Idea Stream and the Ohio Newsroom on volunteer firefighters.

Their lack of training, the toll the job takes on them, and the looming shortage impacting many areas around the state, especially rural areas.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thank you so much for watching and stay safe.