Fraility of Life and Mike DeWine--December 2012
Mike DeWine is impatient. Trivia irritates him. There is a sense of urgency to Ohio’s 65-year-old attorney general. He’s not angry or unhappy. In fact, he says he loves being the state’s lawyer and top cop. It’s just that he wants to get things done. Now.
Mike DeWine is impatient. Trivia irritates him. There is a sense of urgency to Ohio’s 65-year-old attorney general.
He’s not angry or unhappy. In fact, he says he loves being the state’s lawyer and top cop.
It’s just that he wants to get things done. Now.
Those things involve an array of subjects in addition to his statutorily assigned task of legally representing agencies, and in that sense, he’s an activist attorney general like few others.
He has tackled human trafficking, prescription-drug abuse, “bath salts” drug sales, increased DNA testing, crimes against children, consumer-credit scams, shady Internet cafes, sex offenders, foster children and urban renewal through housing demolition.
The list goes on. Ask DeWine what he did in his first two years as attorney general and he will tell you -- for an hour nonstop.
DeWine, who has been in one political office or another nearly all of the past 35 years, seems more energized in a job that resonates with his core interest as a prosecutor, where he began his public career in 1977.
“I want to use the bully pulpit of the attorney general’s office to get things done,” DeWine said. “Part of my job is to stir things up, and I’m pretty good at that. I’m never satisfied.”
He rose quickly from Greene County prosecutor to the Ohio Senate, U.S. Congress and lieutenant governor before things changed. DeWine lost his daughter Becky in a car crash near the family’s Cedarville home in 1993. A year earlier, he suffered his first political defeat, losing to popular U.S. Sen. John Glenn. Both were life-changing events, DeWine said, particularly his daughter’s death.
“I made up my mind, because of the frailty of life and the nature of politics, to maximize every day and make a difference,” he said.
That was followed by two terms in the U.S. Senate, a seat he lost to Sherrod Brown in 2006. He was elected attorney general in 2010, defeating Democrat Richard Cordray.
In the past two years, DeWine kicked into a higher gear, Statehouse observers agree. He took an upfront role in pushing back against prescription-drug abuse, even going along on some raids of ” pill mills.”
“I wanted to see it and feel it myself,” he said.
He tackled another goal immediately after taking office: building up the Bureau of Criminal Investigation, part of his office. Crime-lab results that took an average of 125 days to produce when he took over now come back in 33. He wants to cut the number to single digits.
Not everyone is onboard with DeWine, but even Democrats aren’t making much noise about him midway through his term. One organization that wasn’t in his camp now acknowledges his accessibility.
“We don’t always agree with his positions, but we have an open door with him,” said Jay McDonald, president of the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed Cordray in 2010. “He’s been very out-front on a lot of different issues.”
McDonald said law enforcement is pleased that DeWine followed through on his campaign promise to beef up BCI. Many smaller agencies across the state, and even some large cities, rely on BCI for crime-scene and lab work.
Fran, DeWine’s wife of 45 years, sees him as “a problem-solver who thrives in crisis.”
“At this point in his life, he had the ability to get things done. He’s able to just take his ideas and go.”
When they travel visiting children and their 18 grandchildren, she drives and he works constantly on his phone and iPad.
Franklin County Prosecutor Ron O’Brien, a Republican, said DeWine’s aggressiveness on a variety of issues, including BCI and the national mortgage settlement, is supported by county officials.
“He’s been good for prosecutors. He has tried to do everything he can to help us out in the 88 counties,” O’Brien said. “A lot of promises are made in elections, but he’s followed through on it.”
One decision DeWine made unilaterally was to use $75 million of the state’s $335 million share of a $25 billion national mortgage-fraud settlement to funnel to cities to use for demolition of blighted housing. Columbus is getting $8.2 million from the fund and is using it to tear down dilapidated buildings.
Former Attorney General Jim Petro, now chancellor of the Ohio Board of Regents, pointed to a lesser-known area of DeWine’s office.
“The attorney general has done some good work around public-records-law mediation,” Petro said.
The Public Records Mediation Program serves as a go-between for those requesting public records and the local agencies that keep them. It was welcomed by the Ohio Newspaper Association, among others, because of myriad records exceptions being piled on by state lawmakers.
DeWine said he will seek re-election in two years when his current term expires. He finds running for governor appealing, but that door is closed with Gov. John Kasich planning to seek a second term in 2014.
Still, he has no notion of retiring, following the example of his father and grandmother, who worked in the family seed business in Yellow Springs, in western Ohio, until shortly before their deaths in their 80s.
“You know, you don’t have very much time,” DeWine said. “You have to make the best use of the time you have.”
