Buckeye Reporter

President Joe Biden visited Ohio on February 17 while Ohio gubernatorial candidate Jim Renacci took the opportunity to criticize Biden as well as incumbent Ohio Governor Mike DeWine.

President Biden traveled to Lorain on February 17 to promote a $1 billion cleanup effort that would improve injured areas of the Great Lakes region, according to a report from Reuters. The funding for this will be derived from an infrastructure bill that was signed in November. 

“Since Mike DeWine is too much of a RINO to do it, I’ll do it for him: welcome to Ohio, Joe Biden!" Renacci said in a press release. "Please remember today that Ohio is Trump Country, and you lost our state in the biggest landslide loss for a Democrat in decades. Ohioans don't want to hear about your Left-wing trillion-dollar spending bills. They'd rather talk about your ridiculously unpopular mandates and shutdowns, which our current governor was more than happy to carry out for you in Ohio, or your open borders illegal immigration crisis, which our current amnesty-supporting governor refuses to get serious about."

Conversely, DeWine has praised Biden in the past.

"We've had a good relationship with the Biden Administration," DeWine said. 

Renacci said that DeWine was one of the first governors to entirely close his state, as reported by AP News in March of 2020. DeWine was criticized by some as an alarmist, as he was the first governor to close schools throughout his state as well as sporting events in the state before sports seasons all being officially postponed. Renacci also criticized DeWine's decision to close the state, saying it resulted in hundreds of thousands of jobs being eliminated, some of which have still not returned.

The Columbus Dispatch said in a March of 2021 report that Ohio shed 892,300 jobs at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and that the unemployment hit a state record of 16.4% in April of 2020. Roughly two-thirds of those jobs had come back as of March 2021. Renacci also criticized DeWine for the perception that his coronavirus rhetoric matched Biden's and for his recognizing Biden's victory in the 2020 Presidential Election. 

DeWine and Renacci will run against each other in the 2022 Republican gubernatorial primary on May 3. The general election will be on November 3, 2022.