The attorney general of Ohio is the state’s chief law enforcement officer. Ohio has two candidates for AG with backgrounds as prosecutors — former U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach and Ohio Auditor of State David Yost.
Mr. Dettelbach, a Democrat seeking elective office for the first time, has much more extensive experience prosecuting crime. He will bring that deep and extensive experience, as well as the outside perspective so sorely needed both in this office and in state government generally.
Mr. Dettelbach, 52, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and was a federal prosecutor for 20 years. He was President Obama’s appointee as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Ohio from 2009 to 2016. He is now in private practice with the BakerHostetler law firm.
As a federal prosecutor, Mr. Dettelbach handled high-profile cases involving violent crime, immigration, drugs, and guns with demonstrable skill — he compiled a conviction rate close to 98 percent.
As attorney general, he has said he would seek to bolster Ohio’s sex trafficking laws. He makes a strong case that protecting children requires aggressive enforcement of human trafficking, rigorous charter school oversight, and prosecution of the opioid epidemic, whether going after drug dealers or the pharmaceutical industry.
Mr. Dettelbach arrives on the scene at a time when state government badly needs a renewed respect for ethics and the rule of law. We don’t know yet whether the pay-to-play investigation of former House Speaker Cliff Rosenberger is an aberration or the tip of the iceberg. Either way, there’s been too much of a one-party rule in Columbus and some political and intellectual independence is badly needed.
Mr. Yost, 61, state auditor of the last seven years, was auditor in Delaware County and then prosecutor from 2003 to 2011, where he won the county’s first death-penalty murder case.
Mr. Yost also played a role in exposing the lack of oversight of the online charter school, Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, which eventually shut down. But it was obvious that ECOT needed watchdogging for years before anyone in power in state government took action. Mr. Yost did eventually take action, but long after ECOT’s activities had begun to raise warning flags, and after accepting some $29,000 in campaign contributions from ECOT’s founder and related entities.
The ECOT scandals reveal a cadre of state leadership steeped in self-dealing and old boyism — a culture of corruption. Mr. Yost seems to be a straight arrow himself, but the political culture in Columbus seems not to bother him much. A fresh broom is needed. Mr. Dettelbach, in addition to a stellar record as a federal prosecutor, would bring a fresh broom.
First Published October 31, 2018, 5:30 a.m.
