In a Tuesday press release, former congressman and Republican gubernatorial candidate Jim Renacci blasted Gov. Mike DeWine (R) over what Renacci sees as a failure to stand up to the Biden administration and fight COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
“We have seen Mike DeWine promise one thing, yet do another, often at the expense of Ohioans – his tepid response to Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate is no different,” Renacci said in the release. “We simply cannot and must not trust Mike DeWine to lead our fight against Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate.”
Renacci also predicted that DeWine will impose another lockdown on Ohioans, which he said would be devastating to businesses that struggled to remain open during last year’s COVID-19 lockdown.
Joe Biden has decided to force his unconstitutional vaccine mandate on business owners, essentially pitting them against their own employees with the threat of government fines if they do not comply. We have experienced what a DeWine lockdown will do to our state—businesses shut down, jobs killed off, and our children losing a year of in-person education. Mask and vaccine mandates have no place in our society and if we do not stand up to these Draconian rules like DeWine imposed, we will have to live through another shutdown that we cannot afford.
The former congressman said that DeWine’s legacy will be a failure to protect the freedoms of Ohioans, and the “misery” caused by the COVID-19 lockdown.
For his part, DeWine said Monday that he asked Attorney General Dave Yost to file a lawsuit against the Biden administration, which announced last week that it will require all federal government employees and contractors to be vaccinated.
In response to that announcement, DeWine said that Biden made a “mistake.”
He encouraged Ohioans to take the COVID-19 vaccine, but said that “people and business owners should make their own decisions about vaccination.”
I think the President made a mistake by announcing federal vaccine mandates. We should be focused on the science of preventing virus spread – the vaccine is our best tool to stop COVID – but people and business owners should make their own decisions about vaccination.
— Governor Mike DeWine (@GovMikeDeWine) September 10, 2021
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Pete D’Abrosca is a contributor at The Ohio Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
