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A battle among Republicans for House Speaker highlights the first day of the new two year legislative session in Ohio.

But the fight is different than the one in D.C. and the governor takes action on the pile of bills from the lame duck session, including some vetoes.

All this week in the state of Ohio, welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

It was back to work for Ohio's 132 state lawmakers this week and the first day in the legislature for nearly 30 of them as the new two year 135th Ohio General Assembly got underway.

Both the Senate and the House started off by swearing in new and returning members and electing their leaders.

Senate leaders, including Republican President Matt Hoffman and Democratic Minority Leader Mickey D'Antonio, won their positions with unanimous votes.

Of the 30 senators present.

Antonio becomes the first openly LGBTQ plus legislative leader in Ohio history.

But after some hints of dissent during lame duck, the vote for House speaker went a different direction.

And the minority party played a key role in electing the majority parties leader.

Statehouse correspondent Joe Ingles reports.

Representative Derek Marron was presumed by many to be the speaker elect.

He beat two other candidates in a closed door but official vote by Republicans after the November election and had the backing of many conservatives, including influential GOP groups.

But it was Representative Jason Stevens who ended up getting 54 votes with the help of all 32 Democrats and 22 of 65 Republicans.

Two of the 67 member supermajority were not there for the vote.

Minority Leader Alison Russo said At this point in time, the Democrats are the most consolidated block of votes in the House.

And while Russo said Stevens didn't make any grand promises, support for public education was a reason the Democrats decided to back him as a group.

There certainly was a lot of discussion about education funding and the importance of making sure that the Fair School funding plan that we put in place last General Assembly is allowed to take effect and be funded and let it work.

And so I think that there was some alignment, certainly in that area of education and the importance of support for our public schools.

Democrats are a super minority to the Republican supermajority.

But Russo said the Democrats have power in this heavily gerrymandered legislature and intend to use that where it's appropriate.

Marin was supported by the influential Center for Christian Virtue, which has lobbied hard for expansion of school vouchers and other conservative policies.

After the vote, CC Vice President Aaron Baer said he was surprised.

Baer noted Marin won that secret ballot among Republicans in November to replace outgoing Speaker Bob Cupp because the Toledo area lawmaker has conservative credentials when it comes to religious freedom, family issues and abortion.

A lot of the people that are that voted for Jason Stevens say they care about those issues.

And so we're going to find out if they really do or if this is just about having positions of power.

Representative Jay Edwards was one of the Republicans who backed Stevens.

He said some members, including himself, were upset because Marin was not reaching out to them once he got that vote in November.

It didn't have to be this way.

But again, there is a gentleman's agreement of everyone would support the person who won in that caucus as long as unity was brought and there wasn't, there was more division that was sowed among the caucus.

Other sources indicated some of what did and didn't happen in the lame duck session that ended at 6 a.m. December 15th after a marathon 16 hour day had been a concern, which prompted Stevens to reach out to Democrats for their support.

In his acceptance speech, Stevens said he would work with leaders of all parts of the state to make sure the voters concerns are heard.

After business was done for the day, Stevens told reporters that there's a lot of work ahead in uniting the divided Republican caucus.

Then there is the work of working along beside each other after a tough vote and on emotion and the way you do that is through communication.

And I intend to try to do my best to communicate and to listen and to be there for for all members of the House, regardless of.

Party.

Marin made no public comments.

Other House leaders were elected overwhelmingly, including veteran Republican lawmaker Scott all Slager as speaker pro-tem and Russo as minority leader.

Joe Ingles, Statehouse News Bureau.

Governor Mike DeWine signed most of the over 40 bills that state lawmakers passed in the lame duck session last month.

He vetoed one in December, but this week, his first major veto on a bill banning community from instituting their own local bans on flavored tobacco.

While advocates for flavored tobacco and vaping products say adults use them to quit smoking, the number of kids smoking and vaping has dropped in recent years.

DeWine said he vetoed the bill to protect young people who often point to products and flavors they like, including menthol, as a reason they use tobacco.

And he suggested he wants a statewide ban.

The CDC says tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death and disease among U.S. adults.

And nearly one in nine middle and high school teens report using tobacco.

The legislature wrapped up the lame duck session with a 16 hour day that ended at 6ama few hours after it ended, I sat down with Governor Mike DeWine for our annual year end interview.

I want to start with what your priorities are not for just 2023, but for the last term of your last job in elected office.

What are your priorities?

Our goal is for every Ohioan to be able to live up to their full God given potential.

And to do that, we really focus on three things.

And this is in no particular order.

Jobs.

Jim Rhoades said, you know, more jobs is one way to get rid of some of the social problems that we have.

It may not solve every problem, but it'll solve some of them.

Jobs coming into Ohio and you know it's not just intel we had Abbott today big announcement and we're going to continue to see that.

Jobs is one.

Number two is education.

And by education I mean early childhood education.

Friends, Dolly Parton, imagination Library reaching out to pregnant mothers who are having difficulties all the way through to a 60 year old or a 65 year old who's still working and who needs to have their skills upgraded.

So education.

The third thing is mental health.

John Kennedy made a commitment and our country made a commitment.

Last bill John Kennedy signed was a community mental health act.

And the commitment was that we were the institution allies.

People.

We wouldn't lock them up anymore.

They had a mental health problem and we did that.

But what we have not done is build that system from the ground up in community after community.

We are on our way in Ohio to doing that.

The legislature last night passed two major bills, $175 million that are really going to focus on things that I've asked for to help build, build that system.

So those are the three big things that we're going to focus on every single day.

You brought up the legislature, so I want to ask you about a couple of things that have come up during the lame duck session.

Some of them passed.

Some of them are likely to return.

What about the changes to the Step Up to quality daycare program in Ohio?

You have been concerned about those in the past.

What about that?

You know, I'm proud of what we've done in Ohio.

Our daycare is now 100% rated and we're moving moving forward.

What we know from the data is that daycare that is of high quality changes, outcomes.

If it's not of high quality, many times it just doesn't matter.

And there's not really impact that child's future.

So we have to follow the science, follow what the what the data shows us.

And look, we can always improve that.

We can improve the ways that we measure it.

We're open to do that, but we have to measure quality.

Staying on education.

The bill that would ban trans athletes from participating in girls sports, it did not get through lame duck but will likely come back in the new session.

You had said earlier this year will in 2022.

You don't think government should be regulating something when there are institutions and organizations like the Ohio High School Athletic Association that are already looking into this.

So there are only, I think, oh, age, as I said, there are four trans athletes are some sources that say there's only one in Ohio.

How do you feel about this bill and whether there's a need for it?

You know, I think we have to look and see what the final language is.

I always say, let's see what the language is.

There's been you know, there's so many bills that get introduced and sometimes on the same subject, two, three, four or five bills with different language.

So we're going to wait.

I'm going to wait until I see that, you know, that the bill we thought was going to pass last night had been changed a number of times, but it never passed.

So we're going to wait on that one.

That bill, when it came forward, about 200 extra pages were added to that bill.

And I want to ask you, you're former legislator.

Is that fair?

Is that something that you feel does a disservice to democracy when these things happened at the last minute?

Well, I've been in the legislative body, as I was, of course, in the state Senate, and I was in the U.S. House, in the U.S. Senate.

It's sort of human nature.

I think every legislative body I've ever been in, a lot of things happened in the last 48 hours.

And I guess you have to have a time.

You have to have a deadline.

And when you have a deadline, certain things happen.

Now, if you're talking about an issue that's really not been debated before, that gets introduced at the last moment, that's I think that's a problem.

That's certainly not the way it should be done.

But many times these issues have been debated and debated and they finally get worked out at the end.

And that's just sort of the way the way it works.

Do you think that there's enough bipartisanship happening in the legislature?

I mean, Republicans have a supermajority and they can do what they want.

Do you think that there's enough bipartisanship where Democrats are being brought in as well?

You know, one of the things I'm proud of is that if you look at our two budgets and we're preparing our third one, we look at our two budgets.

They both passed on a bipartisan basis.

We had Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly vote for both budgets.

So I think that always should be the objective.

And look, when you're talking about mental health, when you're talking about education, talking about jobs, I mean, these are areas that we ought to be able to come together on.

We ought to everybody wants more jobs in the community.

People want education.

They understand and how mental, untreated mental health terrorists, families apart and how frustrating it is for families when they can't get the help for their son or daughter or their mom.

So these are things that should bring people together.

And I think part of my job is to try to do that any time I can.

You've been an advocate for Ohio State Parks.

There's a legislature that would allow for fracking in state parks, which former Republican former Governor John Kasich had opposed.

How do you feel about that?

And are you concerned about what that's going to do to the parks?

People love the parks.

They started coming really going back to the parks a lot more during COVID because they could get out, love them.

We have invested a lot in our parks because frankly, they were neglected for a long time.

We've invested significant amount of money with great bipartisan support in the state legislature.

We have 75 state parks in Ohio.

They are free.

60% of the people go to state park, pay nothing because they're there in and out during during the day.

So we're very proud of our state parks.

There was a bill that was passed under Governor Casey, and the bill mandated that the State Department Natural Resources set up a commission and that that commission come up with a procedure by which this fracking could take place.

The commission has has met, but they've not come out with their final rule.

Yesterday, the legislature, you know, had had a bill that they were considering that simply said you have to move forward very, very quickly on that.

So we're going to see what final language is.

But, you know, there's already a bill on the books even before this bill, which says we have to allow fracking in our state park.

Well, should Ohio enact a total ban on abortion or should the six week ban that you signed in 2019 still being litigated?

Should that be the final word?

And if that should be the final word?

Shouldn't there be some clarification, some exceptions?

What do you think those first?

First of all, I always preface any any remarks about abortion this way.

Good people are on both sides of this issue.

They feel very, very strongly.

I feel very strongly.

I am pro-life.

I think we're dealing with with a human being.

I think the obligation of the state to protect life.

And but I also know there are other people on the other side that are good people, people I know.

And we have to respect them.

So let's have that debate in a very civil way.

Second, I'm pro-life.

I hope we end up with a bill that protects human human life.

I think, though, it's important and I've expressed this to the state legislature, that whatever they pass that it be a bill that can be sustained.

In other words, we have in Ohio, people have the right to go to the ballot.

They have the right to override the legislature or even go directly to the ballot and come up with something new.

And so we have to understand that whatever the legislature passes, ultimately the people are going to have the ability to vote on the issue.

And it's important that we have something that can get enough consensus that does not get overridden on the ballot.

On that note, there was a measure that would try to change that and make that a 60% voter approval to get a constitutional amendment into Ohio's constitution.

You would not have to sign this to get that to the May ballot.

Do you have any what are your thoughts on it?

Should Ohioans should we have to get a 60 vote threshold?

I'm listening to the debate on it.

And it's not something I sign or veto.

It would it would happen if the legislature does it.

We thought that the legislature they gave all signal that they were going to vote on this yesterday.

They still could come back in January.

I think one would assume that this issue will come back up in January.

And I'm going I'm going to be thinking about it.

But you don't have an opinion.

Right now today.

During the redistricting process, you expressed concern and frustration about the whole process as it went on for more than a year.

Would you support a proposal for an independent redistricting commission to take politics out of the process?

As your fellow Republican and retiring Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor says that she wants to see?

I think clearly the current system, unfortunately, does not work.

I think we saw that played out week after week and we could not get an agreement.

We had the Ohio Supreme Court involved time after time after time.

And it even got to the point where one of the great objectives that we had that people had and that was that we have compact districts and that we also had very competitive districts.

More competitive districts was good.

We ended up with a Supreme Court decision which actually caused us to have fewer competitive districts.

No one intended that, I don't think.

But so that shows that we have a problem.

So we have to go back to the drawing boards.

We got to get Republicans and Democrats together and frankly come up with a new constitution amendment that's very difficult to do, takes some time to do.

But that's really what needs to be done.

So you'd like to see this go to the Constitution, go to the voters again.

Again, it's not easy, though.

I mean, we talk about always have this nonpartisan commission.

Well, okay.

Is it really nonpartisan?

You know, there's a favor of one side or the other.

I think the way you start is you go back and you say, what are the objectives?

Let's list what these objectives are and then let's try to put something together.

What I learned is that when you have legislators of each party involved, they're pretty close to this.

You know they're going to be running or their friends are going to be running.

This is tough.

It's just tough and reasonable.

People come up with different, different, different points of view.

So I think we have to do something different.

I have to ask you about the election.

You obviously won one big.

There are some exit polling that suggest people made the decision to vote for you at the beginning of the campaign.

You had a lot of money.

You had a lot of name recognition.

You seemed to be coming into the election with poll numbers showing you were going to win and win big potentially.

Why then did you make the choice to join former President Trump, who is a divisive figure for obviously Democrats and even some Republicans?

You didn't need his support, arguably.

Why did you why did you take in his endorsement and campaign with him?

Well, first of all, I you know, I was surprised that we had voted 62, almost 63% of the vote.

That's I think, the third highest vote in Ohio history.

So I was surprised by that.

No word during the campaign did I think we would get those those kind of numbers or that we're going to win.

But I didn't think that those those kind of numbers.

I very happy we got a about a third of the African-American vote, which for a Republican is is about three times higher than it usually is.

I'm very proud of that of that fact.

Union households.

Again, as a Republican, we got better than 50% of those union households did well among women.

Well, among men.

So I'm very pleased with where we came out as far as, you know, going to the Trump rally that really was a rally.

Certainly the president was there, but it was a rally for J.D.

Vance.

I have spent the previous week or a good part of the previous week campaigning with Judy around the state of Ohio, along with the other candidates, Republican candidates.

I went there to support J.D.

Vance.

And, you know, I thought that was appropriate.

I think it's important that he win.

I think he's going to be he won.

I think he's going to be a very, very good United States senator.

Are you at all concerned that former President Trump has been aligned with people like Nick Fuentes, the anti-Semitic, white nationalist Holocaust survivor or Holocaust denier, rather, especially since the Anti-Defamation League says anti-Semitic incidents in Ohio have gone at 92% in 2021.

Yes, look, we have we have a problem.

We have to denounce these individuals who are Holocaust survivors or deniers.

Deniers.

I just.

Did the same thing with.

Holocaust deniers.

We have to denounce them.

You know, my father was a Dachau.

Shortly after it was liberated, he came back and told me the stories of what he had seen.

We still had some of the Jews who were who would survive and were there and emaciated.

His stories will stay with me.

You know, the rest of my life we're seeing anti-Semitism increase in the state of Ohio and across the country.

And we must we must denounce it at every opportunity that that we can.

In the last year, you announced some great economic news for Ohio and Intel, the LG Honda Battery facility.

Abbott You just mentioned a little while ago there was a lot of attention on Ohio with that.

But in the coming weeks it's going to be a lot of attention on Ohio with the trial of Republican former House Speaker Larry Householder.

And I'm just wondering, do you feel like that that potentially is going to change the national perspective that you were hoping people would have about Ohio?

No.

Look, our our system I'm a former county prosecuting attorney, as you know, by and large, juries get it right.

I hope, you know, whatever the jury comes up with, you know, I think we have to support we have to support the rule of law.

Do you think people think there's corruption in Ohio?

Look, I mean, people are going to listen to the evidence when it when it comes out.

And we will simply see what that evidence is.

I don't think we know all the evidence at this point.

But look, the system what I tell people is the system works by and large.

And as a former prosecutor, I'll tell you, I don't agree with it.

Every time the jury came back not guilty, they didn't come back not guilty too often.

But they did.

And but after I thought about it, you know, for a few days, I thought, well, you know, maybe we just didn't have enough evidence and you have to convince convict someone by beyond reasonable doubt.

So I'm a great believer in our system.

We have a system.

Let's let that system work.

Next month, let's see what happens.

We all have the chance to read in the paper or have you report on it.

And people will make their own decision.

Look, Ohio got a tremendous amount of attention, I think, because of Intel.

And I told our team as we were competing for Intel and we were one of 40 and we were a long shot, we began it.

But I told our team, Look, we know this is going to have a big impact.

Ohio, if we get intel, it's going to mean a lot of jobs.

It's going to breach spin off effect by talking.

The other thing it's going to do is send a signal to people and businesses across this country.

If you're thinking about moving, if you're thinking about expanding, you need to look at Ohio because Ohio has some special things that are going on and because we got Intel and some of the other companies that we've been able to get, people are taking a second look at Ohio and we're having more inquiries than we've ever had before.

And we're going to get not only our fair share of those companies, we're more than our fair share at this company.

In fairness, though, there is some public policy that's being discussed at the statehouse that seems to discourage diversity and community and seems to be very divisive.

Does that hurt the effort to try to bring young people and keep young people in Ohio and bring some of these jobs?

You know, as governor, I think I have an obligation to talk about diversity.

You know, we I look to the future.

We need more people in Ohio.

We need people who want to come here and work, raise their raise their families.

Look at the refugees that are in the state of Ohio.

You know, I've tried to do what I can to say we welcome you in Ohio, whether you're Ukrainian refugee or some other country, we welcome you.

We want you part of Ohio.

We want you to stay here.

We want you to raise your family here.

We want you to work here.

And so, again, as a governor, I have an obligation to use the bully pulpit of the office and make a big megaphone.

And you're going to continue to see me in the months ahead, do things that send it send that signal that we welcome people here.

You had said when you were inaugurated, you're going to have a second inauguration here shortly.

You said when you were inaugurated that you were going to be a governor for all Ohioans.

Do you feel that you've done enough for specific populations who feel like they are under threat?

People like the LGBT community, people like black Ohioans, people who feel that they aren't being protected and heard, especially by Republicans.

I don't think we can ever do enough.

And I ask myself that all the time if I don't enough.

And, you know, we keep looking for ways that we can do more and we will do more.

And finally, a personal note.

Thanks so much to Joe Ingles, Andy Chow and Dan Konik.

For all the long hours and great work they did during my leave last month.

And thanks to all of those who reached out to me.

Your kindness means so much and helps to make this world a better place.

And that's it for this week.

Please check out our Web site at State Newstalk and follow us and the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from Medical Mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans.

Peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP now with eight locations across the country, Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter right dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA.org.