DeWine, Codray both stumble over facts in debate

Darrel Rowland

Mike DeWine seemed to walk into his own trap during this past week’s gubernatorial debate, when he criticized Democratic opponent Richard Cordray over ECOT, the now-closed online charter school accused of bilking Ohio taxpayers out of tens of millions of dollars.

“You continue to mislead on ECOT and so many other things,” the Republican attorney general told Cordray in the confrontation at Cleveland State University.

“ECOT was something that you could’ve taken action on. There was an auditor’s report which clearly showed that there was a problem, and you did absolutely nothing at the time.”

Wait — there was a state audit that “clearly” showing ECOT’s ripoff way back when Cordray was attorney general in 2009-10?

When asked to elaborate after the debate, the DeWine campaign cited a December 2009 audit under thenAuditor and Republican Mary Taylor. Note 18 on Page 30 of the 81-page document contains this line: “IQ Innovations, LLC and Altair Learning Management I Inc. have the same principal owner.”

Oddly, the DeWine camp cited Democrat-dominated think tank Innovation Ohio for the significance of that obscure sentence: It was the first time “that it became publicly known that (ECOT founder and mega GOP contributor Bill) Lager ran both firms — a relationship now called ‘corrupt’.”

So DeWine contends that this one sentence — which generated no remarks, much less action, by Taylor or her successor, Republican Dave Yost — should have prompted Cordray to go after ECOT in 2010.

But here’s a much bigger problem with that assertion: DeWine has steadfastly defended his own inaction on ECOT until earlier this year, arguing that under Ohio law, his office could not go after ECOT until a March 2018 court ruling after the school closed in January.

By the way, Dispatch Reporter Jim Siegel points out that The Dispatch, in a story headlined “Loose regulations allow for conflicts of interest,” reported in 2001 about the relationship of Altair and Lager; a 2004 state audit found a “material weakness” that Altair didn’t provide a breakdown of services ECOT got in exchange for nearly $4 million in taxpayer money; and many recipients of Lager’s campaign cash identified him as CEO of Altair dating back to 2000.

As for Cordray ...

The Democrat seemed to stretch things during the Monday debate in Cleveland, when he asserted that the Heartbeat Bill backed by DeWine “will set back the business climate in this state because it’s too extreme.”

When asked to back up that assertion, Cordray’s campaign cited Gov. John Kasich’s veto message when he nixed the bill passed by the legislature in 2016. However, the GOP governor didn’t say anything about the measure — which would ban abortions once a fetal heartbeat could be detected — hurting business.

Instead, he wrote, “The state of Ohio will be forced to pay hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to cover the legal fees for the pro-choice activists’ lawyers.”

The remaining material provided by the Cordray camp merely linked to 14 news stories about LGBT issues, not abortion.

Taylor likes DeWine — now

Despite their drag-down, nasty, adjective-filled Republican primary fight for governor, there’s some measure of a truce between Mary Taylor and the man she once denounced as “D.C. DeWine.”

In her first show of support for her fellow Republican, the lieutenant governor was the featured headliner at a DeWine debate watch party in Cleveland.

Asked by Dispatch Reporter Randy Ludlow if all had been forgiven, Taylor responded, “Look, primaries are messy right? There’s no doubt about that. This one, of course, felt especially messy because I was personally involved in it.

“At the end of the day, we need to support, I need to support (DeWine) … Mike DeWine is the best candidate to be our next governor. He has the right plans. He has the experience that is necessary. And he has the temperament to lead this state to its proper future.”