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DeWine facing push to impeach

Group alleges gov. violated laws with pandemic actions

Staff photo / R. Michael Semple Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine urges people to wear masks to help stop the spread of COVID-19 in the Mahoning Valley during an Oct. 9 stop at the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport in Vienna.

Four Republican lawmakers are seeking to impeach Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, also a Republican, largely over his handling of COVID-19, alleging DeWine violated laws by requiring masks in public and ordering some businesses to close.

The group on Monday filed a dozen articles of impeachment, the Dayton Daily News and other Ohio news outlets reported.

It is the second time in four months that state Rep. John Becker made a move to impeach DeWine over how he handled the coronavirus pandemic this year.

Becker, of Union Township near Cincinnati, filed the impeachment articles. DeWine, 73, who won his first term in 2018, moved early to close schools and restaurants and to delay Ohio’s primary election.

Asked about the impeachment effort, DeWine said, “I’d like for them to go in and talk to some nurses who are front-line nurses who are dealing with people who are dying. … At some point this foolishness needs to stop.”

Becker is joined by state Reps. Candice Keller, R-Middletown; Nino Vitale, R-Urbana; and Paul Zeltwanger, R-Mason. They take issue with DeWine’s public health orders that mandate face masks, set curfews for businesses and “weaponizing” the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation to “bully and harass businesses and the people” to wear masks.

“He continues to have callous disregard for the fact that his isolation policies have led to a shockingly high number of suicides, alarming rates of drug abuse, persistently high unemployment and the forced abandonment of the elderly by their loved ones,” Becker said in a written release.

DeWine spokesman Dan Tierney said he had yet to see the latest articles of impeachment but noted that Becker’s last impeachment attempt was “patently absurd.”

In August, Becker, Vitale and Zeltwanger filed articles of impeachment against DeWine.

Charging that DeWine has “assumed dictatorial powers,” Becker on Tuesday accused the governor of “putting nearly 12 million people under house arrest.”

“We can debate whether these moves have been effective at stopping the spread of the virus. I don’t know if they have,” Becker told NBC News. “What I do know is he’s done it outside the law.”

As of late, DeWine has been feeling the heat mostly from within his party. Statehouse Republicans pushed forward a series of bills recently that would limit his authority to issue orders in response to the pandemic, and they sent a letter criticizing him for telling businesses to act as “mask police.”

Early during the coronavirus outbreak, DeWine won praise for his aggressive steps to slow the spread, but since then, he has encountered criticism from those who think he went too far with business shutdowns and believe he backed down from protecting the public.

“A lot of people around here enjoy their liberties and feel he’s infringing on them in a big way,” said Richard Delzeith, the GOP chair in rural Mercer County, where DeWine won 80 percent of the vote two years ago. “People have lost their businesses to the shutdown. They will definitely remember this.

“People tell me they will never vote for DeWine ever again,” he said. “That’s pretty strong wording.”

The party’s leaders in a handful of other rural counties said it’s too early to know whether the frustration out there now will last.

Ohio GOP strategist Terry Casey said it’s likely that a Republican will challenge DeWine for his seat, but “the question is whether anybody with name ID and money, who knows who to run a state campaign, will actually file.”

Polling still shows DeWine has strong and broad support despite the frustration and unhappiness stemming from the pandemic, Casey said.

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