‘I like my chances’ against DeWine, Taylor says
Mary Taylor has Mike DeWine just where she wants him.
“A head-to-head race ... I like my chances,” Ohio’s lieutenant governor told The Dispatch on Tuesday afternoon after the departure late last week of Jim Renacci from the Republican race for governor to instead pursue the U.S. Senate nomination.
“From our perspective, this race now being down to two, I would say it’s advantage Taylor. We’re pretty comfortable with where we are,” Taylor said.
Taylor may not be comfortable, however, with the campaign cash balance of Attorney General DeWine and Secretary of State Jon Husted after they combined their accounts.
Husted, who also was running for governor before he joined the ticket with DeWine on Nov. 30, closed out his account Dec. 27, transferring $4.6 milion to DeWine for Ohio after making refunds to contributors who made maximum donations to both men.
Combined with the $4.7 million DeWine had on hand at midyear, the ticket has $9.3 million — not counting donations received by DeWine during the last half of 2017. Taylor had $436,884 on hand at midyear. Updated campaign finance reports covering the last six months of last year are due Jan. 31.
Asked about her fundraising before the discovery of Husted’s sevenfigure check to DeWine, Taylor said, “I will have the resources I need to tell my story and get my message out there in a way that ultimately is going to be successful. I do not need even money to beat Mike DeWine.”
Taylor believes the DeWine-Husted ticket will suffer when GOP primary voters begin to home in on the differences with her ticket, including running mate Nathan Estruth, a Cincinnati-area businessman whom she praises for his conservatism and privatesector experience.
“We have made it very clear in this Repubican primary we are the conservative, outsider ticket and Mike DeWine and Jon Husted are the establishment, career politician ticket,” she said.
Asked if she also is not a veteran politician with seven years of service as No. 2 to Gov. John Kasich and four years as state auditor after serving as a state lawmaker, Taylor said DeWine “has been on the ballot every decade for the past five” while she also spent 16 years as a certified public accountant working with small businesses.
“I have been inside this administration, but my record is pretty clear. ... I challenge the status quo from inside the administration,” she said, citing her internal opposition to the expansion of Medicaid health care to the working poor as financially unsustainable and her early warnings as insurance director that the premium costs of Obamacare would spiral. “I am no part of the administration that goes along and gets along.”
While Kasich has endorsed Taylor’s bid for the nomination, she did not answer when asked if the governor will campaign on her behalf.
“The fact is, a lot of the political team that was close to the governor and what I call the Columbus establishment is firmly behind the DeWine-Husted ticket,” she said.
Taylor continues to insist she is the only true conservative in the governor’s race. “He’s not really as conservative as he likes you to believe,” she said of DeWine, citing his onetime grade of “F” from the National Rifle Association as a U.S. senator (The NRA now gives DeWine an “A-”) and his oppostion to some conservative judges nominated by former President George W. Bush.
DeWine campaign spokesman Ryan Stubenrauch responded, “It’s sad to see Lt. Gov. Taylor resorting to this kind of negative campaigning. It’s what you do when you’re so far behind in every category like she is. Voters will be highly skeptical as to why it took Lt. Gov. Taylor seven years to announce her opposition to policies of her own administration. For her to flame out this way with desperate, false and negative attacks just isn’t what Ohioans want from their leaders.”