Seth A. Richardson

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Put Richard Cordray and Mike DeWine in a room together, and they're bound to fight over just about everything.

That's the way it was on Thursday during a cleveland.com/Plain Dealer editorial board meeting featuring Cordray, a Democrat; DeWine, a Republican; and Travis Irvine, the Libertarian Party nominee for governor. (Green Party nominee Constance Gadell-Newton chose to come in for a separate interview.)

Through the 90-minute sitdown, Cordray and DeWine argued about nearly every topic that came up -- health care, local government funding and criminal justice reform, just to name a few.

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Pre-existing conditions

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Insurance protection for people with pre-existing conditions has become arguably the most prominent issue in the governor’s race – as in other races across the state.

On the surface, Cordray and DeWine both say people with pre-existing conditions should not be charged more or turned down for health care coverage.

But Cordray has taken issue with DeWine’s past actions against the Affordable Care Act, the law more commonly known as Obamacare that barred insurance companies from discriminating against people with pre-existing conditions.

DeWine’s first campaign promise when he ran for attorney general in 2010 against Cordray was to file a lawsuit to overturn Obamacare, including the pre-existing conditions portion. He was ultimately unsuccessful with that challenge.

DeWine said he still opposes Obamacare, particularly the individual mandate that requires people to purchase health insurance and some taxes, but that he’s always supported coverage for pre-existing conditions. How he proposes to do that isn’t clear, though he mentioned subsidized premiums and high-risk pools as possibilities.

“They have to be covered. They absolutely have to be covered,” DeWine said. “There’s nobody – no politician who could go out there and talk to people, I don’t think, and come back and say no, we’re going to be heartless, we are not going to cover them. How they are going to be covered is a different issue.”

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Cordray is an ardent supporter of Obamacare and has been since its passage. DeWine ran attack ads in 2010 against Cordray for his support of the law.

“For eight years as attorney general, pre-existing conditions has been a front-and-center issue in American politics and American government,” Cordray said. “You’ve had plenty of chances to protect it. You haven’t done it.”

The evolution of Republican support for provisions of the Affordable Care Act is a monumental exercise in political gymnastics. In short, Republicans opposed the law completely and were swept into office in 2010 when it was unpopular.

The GOP eventually came around to supporting the provisions that proved more popular.

As the law itself became more popular, the GOP tapered its attacks on the bill, culminating in its failure to repeal the ACA after years of promising its demise.

In nearly all DeWine’s attacks on the ACA, he’s never made a carveout for pre-existing conditions. As recently as 2017, he supported repealing Obamacare, including the plan backed by Republican President Donald Trump that would have greatly reduced protections for people with pre-existing conditions.

“He went to court twice, for years, to wipe that out,” Cordray said. “When he says he’s for it, I don’t really know what that means.”

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Medicaid expansion

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The other prominent health care topic dominating the governor’s race is the Medicaid expansion, another part of Obamacare. The Medicaid program covers the poor, disabled and children, and the expansion helped more than 700,000 Ohioans obtain health care coverage.

Gov. John Kasich implemented the Medicaid expansion, something he’s taken flak for from fellow Republicans.

DeWine position was vague during the primary when he faced Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, who ran to DeWine’s right particularly on ending the Medicaid expansion. Taylor, despite being an ally of Kasich, wanted to do away with the Medicaid expansion. DeWine did not commit one way or another, but was critical of the program, calling it unsustainable.

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After the primary, he came out in favor of the Medicaid expansion with work requirements.

Cordray said DeWine was trying to do an end-around to shrink the rolls, which DeWine denied.

“You want to throw people off the rolls,” Cordray said. “Either the work requirement makes no difference at all or it will throw people off the rolls.”

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Issue 1

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Issue 1, the criminal justice reform ballot initiative that would lessen the severity of sentences for low-level drug crimes, has become another major sticking point in the governor’s race.

DeWine has criticized Cordray’s support for Issue 1 as soft on crime, and said Thursday it would allow drug dealers to walk free and contribute to more deaths from fentanyl.

“This is a crazy thing to put in the Constitution. … It is absolutely nuts,” DeWine said. “We are constantly trying to change our drug laws to keep up with new drugs. The idea that you would enshrine this in the Constitution makes absolutely no sense.”

Cordray supports the initiative and said Thursday it was not perfect, but at least a step in the right direction of alleviating the opioid crisis.

“The Trump administration CDC report said we had the highest increase of any state in the nation,” Cordray said. “What we’re doing right now is not working. What am I for? I’m for anything that will change what we are doing right now.”

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Local government funding

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Cordray has made returning local government funding a cornerstone of his campaign. He said his first budget would send back local funds that are now used to fill state coffers in Columbus.

“The local government fund should never have been raided in the first place,” Cordray said. “That was a promise made 80 years ago when we passed the state sales tax was to share the money back with local governments in Ohio. And local governments depend and count on that money to provide local services, community services. The state government does not provide much in the way of face-to-face services around the state.”

Cordray said he would not need to raise taxes to restore local government funding, especially since the state has been running a surplus the past couple of years.

DeWine said he wanted to “dramatically increase” local funding for children’s services, but stopped short of saying if local government funding should be fully restored.

“I don’t want to be in a position in this campaign where I’m going to promise something if I can’t do it,” DeWine said. “So we’re going to do whatever we can because local government is key.”

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Assault weapons ban

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Both Cordray and DeWine said they do not support an assault weapons ban, but did support smaller-scale reforms.

Cordray said he supported universal background checks and banning items like high-capacity magazines.

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Education funding

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Both Cordray and DeWine said they wanted to increase funding to schools in some form.

Cordray, however, said one of his main K-12 education funding initiatives would be reining in charter schools like the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow, more commonly known as ECOT.

ECOT is accused of bilking the state out of more than $180 million while inflating its attendance figures. Republican politicians once heralded ECOT and other charter schools as a shining example of school choice.

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We are all Travis Irvine

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Needless to say, the interview was nothing short of contentious, but Libertarian Party nominee Travis Irvine, who hopes to be the state’s first “millennial governor,” provided a few much-needed moments of levity, at times offering to sit between DeWine and Cordray if necessary.

As the candidates were wrapping their statements, DeWine brought up the rape kit testing backlog, something he’s attacked Cordray for in debates and through several television commercials.

After a bit of bickering between Cordray and DeWine over the issue, it was Irvine’s turn to speak.

“I would really like for both of you to acknowledge that on the rape kits issue, you both did a good job,” Irvine said. “You both made it better. (Former attorney general) Marc Dann gave you a mess. Mr. Cordray made it better and Mr. DeWine made it better. So if you guys could please just shake each other’s hand and congratulate each other on doing that for the women of Ohio, I think that’s a big deal.”

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Cordray and DeWine turned and shook each other’s hands – and fell right into Irvine’s trap.

“If I could do that, imagine what I could do with the state legislature,” Irvine concluded.