Mike DeWine

He’s the republican governor who says act now before it’s too late. This week on Firing Line

DEWINE ON 7/15: Our way of life in Ohio is in danger.

When COVID 19 took off in March Ohio Governor Mike DeWine ordered some of the swiftest shutdown measures in the country… Earning bipartisan praise

DEWINE ON MARCH 12 There is going to be light at the end. It’s going to get darker first.

But with reopening underway, covid-19 cases are surging

DEWINE ON 7/22: This is a very dicey time. This is a very crucial time.

Ohio is also in the spotlight this week for an unprecedented bribery case. 

DEVILLERS: These allegations are bribery, pure and simple.

…one of the state’s top Republicans arrested

DEWINE ON 7/22: It’s a disgusting story. 

What does Governor Mike DeWine say now?

‘Firing Line with Margaret Hoover’ is made possible in part by… And by… Corporate funding is provided by…

HOOVER: Governor Mike DeWine, welcome to Firing Line. 

DEWINE: Good to be with you. Thank you very much.

HOOVER: You are the Republican governor of Ohio and you took very early action to contain COVID-19 in your state, earning bipartisan praise from across the country and for the past six weeks, cases have been rising again in your state. And you say that Ohioans have reached, quote, the most critical point in our battle against the Coronavirus. What did you mean by that?

DEWINE: I think it can go either way in Ohio at this point. You know, we went back and looked where Florida was a month ago and they’re about, then, they were about where we are today, about six and a half percent positivity. So these things can go south on you real quick. And so we’re, we’re concerned about it. But the real message for Ohioans is, you know, we all need to wear masks. We all need to keep our social distancing. We all need just to be careful. We can do this. We can bring the economy back. We go to work, but we have to be very, very careful. And I’ve been trying to see exactly where the spread is actually taking place. And it’s a lot of what you would expect. Some of it’s occurring in bars. Some of it is occurring in churches. But, you know, a lot of it is just with people just being people and having friends over and having a backyard picnic or having a bridal shower. And so you got to assume that people have this because so many people we now know, we now know, have it and don’t give any signs it and they don’t know they have it.

HOOVER: Let’s take a look at an image, Governor. The following graph shows new cases reported daily in Ohio. And in April, you can see there’s an intense spike. And now there is a more steady climb. And the daily totals are worse now than they were in April with a new record of more than 1600 cases from one day last week. Why is that happening, Governor?

DEWINE: Well, I think it’s happening because Ohioans are tired of staying home, they’re going out. You know, if you look at our highway data, we’re pretty much back to normal driving. If you look at cell phone data, which, of course is available to anyone on the Internet, you’ll see in Ohio, we’re pretty much back to normal activity. So we knew that we would see some increase. But, you know, our message to Ohioans is we can do this. We can bring the economy back. You go back to work, but it’s not normal time. We can’t pretend like this is over with. This is, this is not over with. Now, we’ve seen some encouraging things in the last week or so. We went to mask orders several weeks ago in what we call red counties, which are our level three. We have four levels. We think we’ve started to see some results. More and more people clearly are wearing masks. We know that for a fact. And we think that we’re starting to see some results. So what we hope is we’re entering a plateau and then we hope, obviously, we would hope to start seeing these numbers come down. And that’s kind of our message. Look, we’re in this together. You wear the mask to protect yourself. Mostly you’re wearing that mask to protect other people.

HOOVER: And you have just in Ohio ordered a mask mandate, which is something that you actually did back in April. And then reversed yourself within 24 hours. Why is it going to be different now?

DEWINE: It was clear to me in less than 24 hours that there’s great pushback on that, that Ohioans were not ready to accept that. And so we pulled back on it. Part of this is leading, but it’s also, you know, you’ve got to be able to lead and keep people with you. But what has happened since then, as you pointed out, is our numbers are worse. I think people are also, frankly, watching TV and seeing what’s going on in Florida, seeing what’s going on in Arizona and other states. We’re seeing our numbers go up. So we’ve, we’ve, over time, I think, changed the culture. People are accepting it more. That doesn’t mean there aren’t a lot of people out there today that were very upset with me to take, take the mask order statewide. I know there are. But I think there’s more acceptance today and more possibility for people to actually do this. Because ultimately it comes down to what people in Ohio do. I can put all the orders you can ever think of, but it comes down to what people do and the individual choices in their individual life.

HOOVER: I mean, you have you’ve received praise for issuing the mask order. But as you said, you have real detractors for your mask order as well. You have even had anti-mask protesters marching outside of the Ohio State capital. Governor, why has mask wearing become so political in your view?

DEWINE: I’m not really sure. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense to me. You know, this is about science. This is about, you know, taking care of each other. That’s been my message that, look, we’re wearing masks for each other. As I said, for a number of months, we’ve had an order on that, you know, in business. If you go into a grocery store today, you go into a drugstore. Everybody there is working. There has to have a mask on. That’s been the order of the state. And what our message has been to people who patronize those stores is, look, you know, they’re wearing a mask for you. You need to wear the mask for them. You need to help them. You may have somebody who has to work, who’s 70 years old. He is doing something in that story, stocking shelves or he or she is the cashier. Stocking is doing something. It may be maybe a 25 year old who has some medical problems, but who who needs to work. And so we need to protect them. And we know so much more today about masks. At least I know a lot more than I knew four months ago. And the evidence is just overwhelming. I mean, there’s just no doubt about it. That mask or that added layer that you put that together with distance. And we are a lot safer because of those masks.

HOOVER: So that first time this week, President Trump actually tweeted that “many say wearing the mask is patriotic.” And he clearly stated – again for the first time – that masks, quote, “have an impact.” Do you think that helps make it easier for you to institute this mandate in your state?

DEWINE: Absolutely. Look, it makes a difference. The president has a lot of people who are following him, you know, and I was very delighted when I saw that. I said this is, this is a very good thing. 

HOOVER: So then governor is the fact that he didn’t do it until then, until now, also, is the inverse also true that that made it harder for you to institute that mask, mask mandate back in April?

DEWINE: Look, I’m not going to blame the president for what we do or what we don’t do in Ohio. The buck stops with me. The buck stops with me in making these decisions. Would I have preferred him to do it earlier? Of course.

HOOVER: I think you’re saying it would’ve helped you. 

DEWINE: Well, sure. I mean, look, look, I mean, what. Here’s what– We’re trying to try to get everybody on board. And the president has the biggest megaphone of anybody in the country. So it’s important. And the president tweeted that out this week. That was, that was very, very good news.

HOOVER: Why do think it took him so long? 

DEWINE: I don’t know. I don’t know. You know, that’s. I don’t know that.

HOOVER: Well, you also gave an address to your state last week calling on Ohioans to unite. You talked about how Ohioans came together back in the beginning of the crisis and that you rose to the occasion and you answered the call. And you said, quote, I am asking you now, I am calling on all of you to once again unite. Did you need to say that because Ohioans were not united?

DEWINE: Well, look, we’re at a different point. But it’s human nature if we start back up, frankly, which some people seem to hear was that, hey, you know, things are OK. And I think it’s human nature. I think human nature is that, you know, we want to get out and get around. So what I was simply trying to do is say, look, we’re tough. We’re strong. If we want a good fall. If we want our kids to go back to school in the fall. If we want sports in the fall, if we want whatever you want in the fall. If we want those things, what we do right now, right now is going to make all the difference in the world. The one lesson from history, whether it’s 1918 pandemic or whether it is what we’ve seen with this virus in other countries, is you must act quickly. So, look, Ohio has been in a relatively good position. We’ve never seen this go crazy in Ohio. We never seen it out of control in Ohio. We’ve been able to keep it under control. So what Ohioans I think, are looking at right now is, as I said, at a time when we thought we could go either way, we’re at about six out, I don’t know 6.2 to 6.5 % positivity. You’ve got other states that are 18 percent, 20 percent.

HOOVER: But you don’t want Ohio to become that?

DEWINE: No, that’s exactly right.

HOOVER:  You don’t want Ohio to become Florida. 

DEWINE: And part of part of our part of our message was we don’t want to. We love our friends in Florida. We don’t want to become Florida. We’ve seen the agony that they’ve gone through. And so that picture of what’s going on in Florida, I think is frankly very helpful for me to be able to tell that story, that that great tragedy. We look at and say, look, we don’t want to go down that pathway. But to stop that from happening, we’ve got to move quickly. 

HOOVER: The pandemic has also put a spotlight on the debate about the role of the federal government versus the role of the states. And in 1967, William F. Buckley Jr., who hosted this program for 33 years, spoke to a newly inaugurated Ronald Reagan,  Governor of California. Let’s take a look at what he said.

BUCKLEY: Do you think that ten, twenty years from now, the office of governor will be almost like the office of the lieutenant governor of the provinces in Canada — pretty much ritual offices, hand-shaking offices?

REAGAN: Well, they’re going to have to fight with some governors before that happens, and I think with a lot of people.

HOOVER: Governor, conservatives have long argued, just like Buckley and Reagan did there, in favor of the principle of federalism, letting states take control. And you even recently said that “people turn to their governors in times of crisis.” So what then is the role, Governor, for the federal government in a pandemic?

DEWINE: Well, I think there’s some lessons out of this. When we all have a time, have a chance to sit back and not worry about what’s happening every single day, we can come up with the lessons. But, you know, certainly one that comes to mind is that we have to invest in public health. We have to do that at the state level. We have to do it at the federal level. We’ve not historically done that in the United States. And I think that’s one of the lessons. I think you’re also seeing, though, you know, that governors historically are looked to when there’s a flood, when there’s a natural disaster, when there’s a tornado, when there’s a hurricane, when something, it is the governors who normally we look to. And so I think people normally do that. They’re the closest to the people. So I think Ronald Reagan was right. You know, governors still matter. They matter a lot. And we’re the ones who are closest to the problem. What the federal government can do, you know, is to be here to assist. You know, one of things that the public doesn’t see or hear is every week, at least once a week, the Vice President gets on the phone with governors. I think we had 47 governors on the call or several days ago. And I think people would be delighted if they could listen in to that, because there’s no partisanship. It is just, hey, let’s just go fix the problem. What do you need? What are you seeing? What are you doing in your state? And that’s the great thing about our federal system, is they are the 50 laboratories of democracy. And I’m on the phone a lot to my fellow governors who are saying, hey, how are you handling this? How are you handling that? And those exchange of ideas are just very, very, very positive and very good.

HOOVER: We’ve heard you praised the vice president, the White House kind of virus task force, the CDC. Are you getting what you need from the federal government, Governor?

DEWINE: Well, look, you never get all everything you want in life, you know? You know, you never get everything you want. But they’ve been as responsive as they can be. They have to prioritize where the bigger problem is. Thank heavens in Ohio, we have not led that list throughout this. And I don’t intend to let us lead that list. So, you know, they are being very, very helpful. And it’s, it is, in fact, a partnership. But no you don’t get everything you want. Again, I go back to what I said a moment ago, one of the lessons is we have to invest in public health and we have to do it at the state level, at the local level, and we have to do it certainly at the federal level. And I hope that’s one of the lessons that comes out of this. The other lesson I hope that people realize – and I think both parties know this now – and that is, we cannot be dependent on China. We cannot be dependent on other countries to make everything that we use for medicine, and all the equipment that we use.

HOOVER: Governor, I mean, as somebody who has relied on your public health experts and who says we need to really invest more in public health. How did the White House attacks against Dr. Fauci strike you?

DEWINE: Well, I don’t pay a lot of attention to it. I mean, the doctor is still out there and still talking and people listening to the doctor. So I know, that’s I can’t explain it to you. I don’t know what’s going on. And, you know, again, we need to look to medical science. We need to look to professionals to how we handle that. Everything. This is what we tried to do in Ohio, based everything that we’re doing on the best information that we could get at the time.

HOOVER: Your economy has really taken a hit from COVID. Unemployment was over 13 percent in May. It came down a bit in June to ten point nine percent. Would you like to see an extension of the federal unemployment benefits from the 600 dollar a week paychecks, even though conservatives argue that that amount may be a disincentive for people to go back to work? What would you like to see?

DEWINE: Well, I think Rob Portman had a good idea. Rob came up with kind of a compromise where people, you know, it would help get them back to work, they would still get some of the money even if they went back to work. So I think Rob has a very, very good idea. I don’t know what chance he has of getting it passed, but it seems to me there’s a sweet spot in there that will work very well.

HOOVER: And what about, as you look at the state, things that could make Ohio more competitive coming out of COVID? Have you given any thought, Governor, to using the, quote unquote, emergency laws provision in the Ohio State Constitution to pass right to work legislation? Right to work, of course, is a law that would keep workers from being forced to pay union dues. As you know, several of the states in the Midwest around you have passed right to work laws in recent years, making them more competitive. And Ohio has not. Would you look at using the emergency laws provision to pass Right To Work?

DEWINE: No. Look, we have a good labor relations between employers and labor in the state of Ohio. I’ve never thought it was an essential part of moving Ohio forward. We’re very competitive today. We’re doing very well. You know we’ve all been hit by the virus. But I’m an optimist. My wife says anybody with 8 kids, Fran and I have 8 kids, anybody with eight kids is an optimist. So I’m an optimist. I see a great future for the state of Ohio. 

HOOVER: You recently told Ohioans — I’m going to read you the quote, “We must act now. My friends, this is not a drill, this is certainly not a hoax.” It seems to me that you need to say that because people believe that COVID-19 on some level is a hoax. Who thinks it’s a hoax, Governor?

DEWINE: Well, I think we’ve had a couple of legislators that seem to indicate that it might be, but look, Ohio’s no different than other states. We do have some people that don’t think that this is a serious threat. And I do think it’s a serious threat. I think that if you only want to focus on jobs and our economy, even if you totally discount human life, that you still need to get control of this pandemic. Because the biggest threat to jobs in Ohio, the biggest threat to Ohio moving forward is– and economy, is if this virus gets out of control in Ohio. And it won’t matter, if that happens, it won’t matter what I order, what I don’t order because people won’t go out. They won’t spend money. There they will hunker down. And so that’s why we have partnered with business in Ohio. Because business understands we’ve got to keep this virus down. If we keep it down, the economy can come back. These two are tied right together.

HOOVER: You’re gonna try to keep it down through the fall, you’re going to try to keep it down and see it in immediacy in the near future. But into the fall, something else happens, that’s the election in November. And you postponed the Ohio primary and held an almost all mail-in ballot primary. And you’re prepared to do the same thing in November. Are you confident that the mail in voting will be secure in your state? 

DEWINE: Well, you know, our viewers across the country don’t know this, but Ohioans know this. We have a lot of experience in doing this. So we are not concerned that this is going to cause any kind of — you know, the election won’t go well or that there’ll be a great deal of fraud. We do this, we do this all the time, we know how to do it.

HOOVER: There are some claims by the president that mail in voting is “corrupt” and “horrible.” Those are quotes. You’re confident that it won’t be corrupt and it will be secure in your state. You disagree with the president on that?

DEWINE: I mean, I can’t speak to other states. Some state that might be doing it for the first time, I don’t know. Ohio, we can do it well and we’ll run a good election.

HOOVER: And President Trump won Ohio, as you know, by eight points. And as you also know, for Republicans, all roads lead through Ohio. No Republican has won the presidency without winning the state of Ohio. Yet when you look at most of the polling now that polls Ohio, President Trump is trailing Joe Biden or in some polls, neck and neck. Is Ohio going to become a battleground state this year?

DEWINE: Well, I think Ohio is almost always a battleground state. I mean, you know, President Trump pulled away certainly in the last election, winning Ohio by a big margin that I don’t think anybody predicted. But Ohio is always competitive and is going to remain competitive. So, you know, I think the president could carry Ohio. I think he will carry Ohio, but it’s going to be a close race.

HOOVER: Let me ask you real quickly about the major corruption case that has been brought to light in your state. Of course, it’s Speaker of the House Larry Householder and several of his associates who were arrested this week in what the Department of Justice described as, quote, “likely the largest bribery money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.” What was your reaction when you heard these bribery allegations that involve prominent members of the Ohio Republican Party?

DEWINE: Well, it’s always, you know, very alarming and very sad when a speaker of the House is charged. So, yeah, it’s it’s it’s a very disturbing thing. And we have to say that everybody who’s been charged, all we have to assume they’re innocent. That’s what the assumption of law is. But that story that was described by the Justice Department is a very sad, sad story and it should infuriate every Ohioan.

HOOVER: And Governor, are you confident that no one in your office was involved?

DEWINE: Well, I’m confident no one in my office was involved. You know, we didn’t know about this investigation at all until yesterday morning when it became public. And the U.S. attorney was asked twice yesterday in the news conference whether or not this involved the governor’s office and the answer was no.

HOOVER: The criminal complaint, of course, alleges that Speaker Householder and his associates received more than 60 million dollars in secret payments from the energy company in exchange for helping to pass this piece of bailout legislation that was called House Bill Six. You signed, of course, House Bill Six. In hindsight, do you regret signing something that has cost the taxpayers of your state so much?

DEWINE: No, I mean, the issue is the merits of it. My position in Ohio has been, when I ran for office and after I became governor, is that we need a balanced energy policy. Nuclear power plants provide a lot of jobs in Ohio, but they also provide virtually all or almost all of our carbon free energy. If we eliminate our two nuclear power plants in Ohio, we would have virtually no carbon free energy at all. We would not have any kind of balanced plan. And the merits of the bill is something that I supported and continue to support.

HOOVER: Then the merits of the bill are that the taxpayers in the state of Ohio have to carry the extra cost of the nuclear–

DEWINE: Well that was fully, that was fully well known and debated. And the truth is that we cannot have, at least today, non carbon energy without subsidy. Every kind, whether it’s wind, whatever it is, it is all subsidized. The question is, are we going to keep these power plants that are providing non carbon energy in the state of Ohio? And the answer is, I believe that we should. But those issues were all publicly debated. What was not public was what was going on behind the scenes and the fact that 60 million dollars was being poured in for Lord knows what all reasons.

HOOVER: But does that impugn the case that you’re trying to make right? Now taxpayers come to find out that they’re paying a subsidy to something in which there was corruption.

DEWINE: I have no problem if this legislature wants to revote this, wants to take a look at it, wants to have a debate. I think that is fine. I, you know, I’m always open to debates and for people to look at what the merits of issues are. It is sad. It is a tragedy that a public debate about an issue is tainted by, you know, what a handful of people did. And it’s disgusting. 

DeWINE PRESS CONF 7/23/20: I’ve been thinking a lot about this…

MARGARET V/O: On Thursday the 23rd, the day after we recorded our interview, Governor DeWine changed his mind. He is now calling for House Bill Six to be repealed and replaced.

DeWINE, cont. No matter how good this policy is, the process, the process by which this bill was passed, is simply not acceptable. 

HOOVER: One more question. You and your wife Fran have eight children, but I also know you have 24 grandchildren. With Ohio going in the wrong direction and the new face mask order in place, what’s going to make you comfortable sending your grandchildren back to school in the fall?

DEWINE: We’ve got a few weeks, and I made this very clear to my fellow Ohioans, what we do in the next several weeks is gonna determine what we can do in the fall. But we don’t know yet. We don’t know exactly where we’re going to go. You know, you saw what the American Pediatrics Association came out with. They basically said, look, kids are suffering not being in school, we’ve got to try to get them back in school. We agree with that. We agree that we need to get kids back. We also agree that what we saw in the past when we shut down schools was some of the poorest kids and kids who didn’t have access to the Internet didn’t get the education that they should have got or that some other other kids in the state got. So we know there are a lot of downsides to remote education, a lot of downsides to not having kids in class. But we also know that there are dangers out there. So we’ve got to try to balance those.

HOOVER: One of the things you quoted in your press conference was the director of the CDC, Dr. Redfield, who said, if everyone would wear masks for four to six weeks, we could, quote, “drive this epidemic to the ground.” Is that the case for Ohio?

DEWINE: Yes.

HOOVER: With your face mask order will you end Coronavirus, or will you seriously curtail Coronavirus for your state? 

DEWINE: We’d knock it in the head pretty good. We’d take it to its knees if we could do that. We get 85 percent of the people wearing masks every single day and keeping the social distance, yeah. It’s pretty basic what we have to do. It’s not complicated what we have to do. So if we can do this these numbers are going to look very different and the fall is going to look very different.

HOOVER: Governor, we wish you the best of luck.

DEWINE: Thank you very much.

HOOVER: And thank you very much for your time, for coming to Firing Line. Thank you. 

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