Fran DeWine stumps for husband in VW

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Fran DeWine saved the best for, well, next to last, as she completed her campaign tour of Ohio’s 88 counties on Tuesday with a stop in Van Wert and Allen counties.

Mrs. DeWine, wife of Ohio Republican gubernatorial candidate Mike DeWine, toured the Van Wert County Courthouse in her 87th county visit (neighboring Allen County was her final stop), and met with local Republicans, including County Commissioner and Republican Central Committee Chairman Thad Lichtensteiger, County Prosecutor Eva Yarger, Recorder Kim Hughes, Clerk of Courts Cindy Mollenkopf, Common Pleas Judge Martin Burchfield and recently appointed County Treasurer Nathan Vandenbroek.

Mrs. DeWine, who sported a campaign button that said “I Like Mike DeWine” with the “like” crossed out and “love” added in its place, noted that, in addition to spreading her husband’s campaign message, she does different things in each county she visits.

“Sometimes I go to a courthouse, like this; sometimes I go to homeless shelters or public libraries in inner cities,” she noted. “I’ve been to most of Ohio’s children’s hospitals.”

While at the hospitals, DeWine noted that she saw what was being done for babies whose mothers were addicted to drugs while they were pregnant, noting that her husband has focused on the drug epidemic in his current position as Ohio’s attorney general.

“Actually, the easiest and cheapest thing we can do, and something we’re not doing now, is educational prevention,” Mrs. DeWine said of an initiative her husband has stated he’d like to see in Ohio’s schools.

The program, as DeWine has promoted it, would work to help all children made better decisions about drugs and other issues, and would be a K-12 program, unlike the DARE program, which is only usually taught to students in just one or two grades.

“Places where this has been done, programs where this has been done have been very successful,” Mrs. DeWine noted.

Fran DeWine is definitely the person to talk about her husband, since the two first met in first grade and were high school sweethearts. The couple has eight children, although one died in an automobile accident in 1993.

“For most of my life, almost all of my life, he’s been my best friend and my partner,” she told those who gathered at the Courthouse.

In talking about Mike DeWine’s drug initiatives, Mrs. DeWine noted that her husband worked hard to cut the delay in drug testing by his office’s Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation labs from 123 days down to about 21 days on average.

He also worked with statewide law enforcement agencies to cut down the backlog of untested rape kits.

Mrs. DeWine also talked about her husband’s opposition to State Issue 1, which would downgrade drug possession charges from felony offense to misdemeanors.

She said the issue, if passed, could severely affect Ohio’s drug courts, since it takes away the “stick” of prison time judges now use with drug users to get them to go to treatment programs. Mrs. DeWine said she feels passing the issue would also bring more drug dealers into the state, since drug possession is still a felony offense in neighboring states such as Indiana and Kentucky.

Mrs. DeWine also talked about workforce development and her husband’s plan to provide more resources to the state’s vocational schools, noting that there are plenty of jobs available in the state, but that employers are having trouble getting employees who can pass a drug test and who have the needed skillset.

Also Tuesday, Mrs. DeWine was also distributing the traditional campaign cookbooks she developed during her husband’s earliest political campaigns. This version, which she compiled with Tina Husted, wife of her husband’s running mate, John Husted, is her 14th edition.