Ohio Attorney General election, 2014

Ohio Attorney General Election

Primary Date: May 6, 2014

General Election Date: November 4, 2014

November 4 Election Winner: Mike DeWine

Incumbent prior to election: Mike DeWine

Ohio State Executive Elections Top Ballot Governor • Lieutenant Governor • Secretary of State • Attorney General Down Ballot Treasurer, Auditor

The Ohio Attorney General election took place on November 4, 2014. Incumbent Mike DeWine (R) was first elected in 2010 and ran for re-election. The primaries took place on May 6, 2014. DeWine won in the general election.

DeWine and his Democratic challenger, former Hamilton County Commissioner David Pepper, were unopposed in their respective primaries. The Libertarian candidate, Steven R. Linnabary was controversially disqualified.

While DeWine defeated then-incumbent Democrat Richard Cordray by just 1.2 percent in the 2010 election, the 2014 race proved a much easier victory for DeWine.

A primary election is an election in which registered voters select a candidate that they believe should be a political party's candidate for elected office to run in the general election. They are also used to choose convention delegates and party leaders. Primaries are state-level and local-level elections that take place prior to a general election. Ohio utilizes an open primary system. In an open primary system, a voter does not have to register with a political party beforehand in order to vote in that party's primary. In Ohio, voters select their preferred party primary ballots at their polling places on Election Day.

For information about which offices are nominated via primary election, see this article.

Candidates

General election

• Mike DeWine - Incumbent
• David Pepper - Former Hamilton County Commissioner

Disqualified

• Steven R. Linnabary

Results

General election

Attorney General of Ohio, 2014
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Republican	Mike DeWine Incumbent	61.5%	1,882,048
	Democratic	David Pepper	38.5%	1,178,426
Total Votes				3,060,474
Election results via Ohio Secretary of State

Race background

See also: Ohio attorney general election, 2014

Incumbent Republican Mike DeWine and Democrat David Pepper ran for Ohio Attorney General in the 2014 general election. Both candidates were unopposed in the primary. The race was treated as contested, with The Columbus Dispatch saying in a review of the candidates, "The DeWine-Pepper clash has been the most spirited of statewide campaigns other than the gubernatorial race."

Minor party legislation

See also: Ballot access requirements for political candidates in Ohio

Ohio passed two laws before the 2014 election establishing requirements for qualifying as a political party which the Libertarian Party, Green Party, and Constitution Party alleged in a lawsuit restricted minor party's participation in the 2014 primary. Judge Michael Watson of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Ohio ruled the laws constitutional in a March 2015 decision.

Campaign themes

David Pepper and Mike DeWine participated in editorial interviews with the Northeast Ohio Media Group in mid-October. The following sections quote verbatim their responses to common questions.

Campaign finance

Mike DeWine

“	NEOMG: Your opponent has raised questions about the relationship between campaign donations you've received and contracts your office has awarded. What policies would you favor to remove potential or perceived conflicts of interest? MD: When there's criticism, we try to evaluate it. We've had criticism from editorial boards about this. One criticism was there was really no paper trail [to show how contracting decisions are made]. So we created a paper trail. Now, when a special counsel is hired for a statutory client, there's a form that has to be filled out.	”
—Cleveland.com, (2014)

David Pepper

“	NEOMG: Your campaign has been called out for running a misleading "pay to play" ad that equates Mike DeWine's repayment of a personal campaign loan with some major scandal. Why do you believe this is a fair attack for your campaign to promote? DP: I didn't say he broke the law. He's obviously not in jail. But I don't think that's much of a defense. This is the largest [campaign] loan, we believe, in the history of Ohio. If you look back, you do not see loans nearly this size. I think what's driving all that pay to play is that over the last 3 ½ years on a regular basis, the money he's pulling in from [donors who receive state contracts] he is transferring back to himself in six figure increments over and over. I can tell you as someone in politics, walking away from three years worth of fundraising and moving half the money back to myself would really change the motivation of the fundraising.	”
—Cleveland.com, (2014)

Investigating rape cases

Mike DeWine

“	NEOMG: So how have you changed the status quo? MD: No. 1 is changing the crime lab so that evidence is returned to police and processed quickly. DNA processing was one of the biggest problems. We have gone from 125 days to 23 days on average, and we have done that in spite of the fact that we have had a fourfold increase in the amount of DNA that comes into our office. No. 2 is the old rape kits. We've tested over 5,000. The third thing I would mention is something we did in conjunction with the governor. The pill mill problem – we went hard after that. We've taken the licenses of over 50 doctors. Heroin is a huge problem as well. We're doing things that haven't been done before. We set up a heroin unit. We are providing technology and expertise to local law enforcement when they're investigating heroin dealers. We've had success already in Lorain County. NEOMG: What's been the single biggest achievement with the rape kit testing? MD: Getting these all tested. These had been sitting around and hadn't been tested. I took that protocol. This doesn't have the force of law. It's a protocol. I wrote letters to every sheriff and every chief of police in the state and said we have this protocol, I think these rape kits should be tested. When they started, nobody had a clue how many there were. We thought Cleveland had hundreds, then 2,000. We're at 4,600. All of these departments have been very cooperative about bringing them in. I had no clue that 37 percent of the cases would have a match.	”
—Cleveland.com, (2014)

David Pepper

“	NEOMG: You have been critical of how DeWine handles the testing of rape evidence kits, something many see as a positive for him. What would you do differently? DP: What I would do is be a lot less patient with the current pace. I give Mike DeWine credit. But especially since its obvious there are hits being made, when you know there are thousands of these kits all over the state and there are thousands now at the Attorney General's Office just sitting there, to me it commands a much more impatient, rapid approach than we're seeing today. I think there are clear ways to speed this up. When DeWine first got there, he sent evidence to local labs to be tested. I don't see why you wouldn't do that now when you have capable local labs. Now he says it's too expensive. NEOMG: But wouldn't your way cost more money? DP: I don't think so at all. There's a finite number of kits out there. You're going to have to pay a certain cost no matter what. It's just a matter of when. So by doing it quicker you front load the costs but that's good because you're getting through it.	”
—Cleveland.com, (2014)

Polls

Ohio Attorney General Race 2014
Poll	Mike DeWine (R)	David Pepper (D)	Other/Undecided	Margin of error	Sample size
Tarrance Group Commissioned by Ohio GOP August 17-20, 2014	60%	31%	9%	+/-3.5	800
Note: The polls above may not reflect all polls that have been conducted in this race. Those displayed are a random sampling chosen by Ballotpedia staff. If you would like to nominate another poll for inclusion in the table, send an email to [email protected].

Campaign advertisements

Mike DeWine

DeWine campaign ad: Daughters

Outside organizations

Moving Ohio Forward

Moving Ohio Forward ad: Sidestep

Past elections

2010

On November 2, 2010, Mike DeWine won election to the office of Ohio Attorney General. He defeated Richard Cordray (D), Robert Owens (C) and Marc Feldman (L) in the general election.

Ohio Attorney General, 2010
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Republican	Mike DeWine	47.5%	1,821,414
	Democratic	Richard Cordray (D)	46.3%	1,772,728
	Constitution	Robert Owens	3.4%	130,065
	Libertarian	Marc Feldman	2.8%	107,521
Total Votes				3,831,728
Election results via Ohio Secretary of State.

2008

On November 4, 2008, Richard Cordray won election to the office of Ohio Attorney General (Special Election). He defeated Mike Crites (R) and Robert Owens (I) in the general election.

Ohio Attorney General (Special Election), 2008
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Democratic	Richard Cordray	56.8%	2,890,953
	Republican	Mike Crites	38.4%	1,956,252
	Independent	Robert Owens	4.8%	246,002
Total Votes				5,093,207
Election results via Ohio Secretary of State.

2006

On November 7, 2006, Marc Dann won election to the office of Ohio Attorney General. He defeated Betty Montgomery (R) in the general election.

Ohio Attorney General, 2006
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Democratic	Marc Dann	52.6%	2,035,825
	Republican	Betty Montgomery	47.4%	1,833,846
Total Votes				3,869,671
Election results via Ohio Secretary of State.

2002

On November 5, 2002, Jim Petro won election to the office of Ohio Attorney General. He defeated Leigh Herington (D) in the general election.

Ohio Attorney General, 2002
Party		Candidate	Vote %	Votes
	Republican	Jim Petro	64.1%	2,007,411
	Democratic	Leigh Herington	35.9%	1,123,318
Total Votes				3,130,729
Election results via Ohio Secretary of State.

Campaign finance

Comprehensive donor information for this election has been collected by Follow the Money. Based on available campaign finance records, the candidates raised a total of $13,596,794 during the election. This information was last updated on April 3, 2015.

Campaign Contribution Totals
Candidate	Office	Result	Contributions
Mike DeWine	Ohio Attorney General		$7,825,691
David Pepper	Ohio Attorney General		$5,771,103
Grand Total Raised			$13,596,794

Key deadlines

Deadline	Event
February 5, 2014	Filing deadline
May 6, 2014	Primary election
November 4, 2014	General election
November 25, 2014	Completion of state canvass of vote results
January 12, 2015	Inauguration of all state-wide executive officeholders

Recent news

This section links to a Google news search for the term "Ohio + attorney + general + elections"

Ohio Attorney General elections News Feed

See also

• Ohio Attorney General
• Ohio state executive official elections, 2014
• State executive official elections, 2014

External links

Suggest a link

• Office of the Attorney General of Ohio