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Two governors from two different states and two different parties share common concerns and possible solutions.

That's this weekend.

The state of Ohio Just.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen.

Counselor.

It can be hard to find instances of bipartisanship and civil discourse in politics, especially when the opposite is what gets clicks and goes viral.

But it happens when people come together to listen to each other and share common concerns and solutions that they've seen at work.

Last month, two governors, usually separated by political party as well as the Ohio River, met to do that at the Portman Center for Policy Solutions at the University of Cincinnati.

The center was created in 2023 by Republican former U.S.

Senator Rob Portman, who decided not to run for a third term in 2022 because of Partizan gridlock and political polarization.

JD Vance won Portman seat in an expensive and often nasty battle with former Congressman Tim Ryan.

Then Lieutenant Governor John Houston was appointed to the Senate when Vance became vice president, when Donald Trump won the presidency a second time.

And that has set up another costly and potentially bitter race with Democratic former Senator Sherrod Brown next year.

The event last month brought together Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine and Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.

Both are former attorneys general and in their second terms as governor.

Unlike DeWine, though, Beshear has expressed interest in running for president while Beshear has been in politics for a decade.

DeWine has served in local, state and federal offices going back nearly 50 years, including two terms in the U.S.

Senate.

Like Portman, who moderated the event.

What's the secret to success and where have you failed?

You know, where have you not been able to get something done that you wanted to get done?

And, you know what what what did you learn there?

You know, you like me.

Well, I think one of the most important things is patience.

And that can be really difficult in politics.

But I've always believed if one person's yelling and another person starts yelling at them, all you have are two people yelling and nobody can hear a thing.

And so it's it's important in these jobs to recognize that once you're elected, your job isn't to be a Democrat or a Republican.

It's to get results for your people.

And so if you get really mad about the fight you have one day and you carry it over into the next, you may miss the opportunity when somebody comes to you and is ready to pass that next most important bill.

Or to do that next most important thing.

And so I think one of the toughest things in politics is to put your ego aside.

But it's so important to actually getting things done.

I signed about 900 bipartisan bills, and I get that I'll have some folks in my legislature that says, oh, just because you sign them doesn't make them bipartisan.

I said, well, if I vetoed them, would it make them Partizan?

But but but I think the approach is, is that that word bipartisan is used a lot and maybe more than it should be, whereas nonpartisan needs to come back into our lexicon.

So I've had different opportunities where, we brought in a $5.8 billion economic investment.

We needed a package passed through the legislature, and most everybody jumped on board.

And I remember I had one legislator say, well, what do I say to people that say, well, this will be a win for you.

And I look back and I said, it's a win for you, too.

It's a win for the 5000 people that are going to be hired and don't mess up the single biggest economic investment that's been offered to us.

And so I think it's working through all those pieces.

And I also think it's recognizing that the best idea isn't always yours.

Now, I had a member of my legislature come to me with the idea to invest about $300 million into our career and technical education centers across Kentucky, as manufacturing is changing, as the different skills that are needed in the country are changing.

It was just a perfect time, especially in this boom that we were having then of of of reshoring and of investment.

And we grabbed a hold of that.

We put it in our recommended budget.

It ended up in that final, budget.

And then it's the people come around.

You may have a fight.

I remember in 2022, my legislature ended our, our, emergency for the pandemic a little bit early and a sacrifice.

$50 million of Snap benefits, $50 million of food for our people.

And I pushed hard.

But one of the people that cast one of those votes, just pushed us to do more in senior meals this time around.

So it's trying not to be judgmental.

It's trying not to to to kind of get your hackles up, but always be willing on that next day and the day after to listen to work with someone, because it's really not about us.

It's about the people we serve, too.

The fellows here, we've talked about this, but, you know, one lesson I get from this is and Mike, you do this well, but don't burn your bridges.

You can get pretty upset with a legislator or a governor and, you know, carry that grudge.

But that's going to be your champion the next time around.

And, and that's certainly true in the legislature and in Washington and also sharing credit.

And when you talk about really important and, Ronald Reagan used to say, I don't care who gets the credit as long as it gets done.

My thoughts you have on how do you work with the legislature, and you've been very successful in getting things done?

Well, I think, Rob, the most important thing, and I'd say this to all your scholars out there, I think the most important attribute of someone who is in public office, is to be a good listener.

You know, many of the things that we have been able to do weren't originally my ideas.

They came from they came from somebody else came from a private citizen.

Sometimes they came from my staff, sometimes they came from the legislature, you know, so being able to listen, I think is, is very, very important.

And, you know, I had the experience of, as you did Rob of 12 years in the United States Senate.

And so we came you and I both operated in a in a body.

We're getting 50% of the 51% of the vote was not enough.

Yeah.

You got you had to get 60.

And so everything that we did was everything I wanted to do.

And I started every legislative session with an agenda, just as I do as governor.

And Andy does.

We all have our own agendas.

But, I knew that I had to get support on the other side of the aisle.

And so what I found is that you could you could find common ground.

You know, if I had an issue of one things I care a lot about is foster care.

Jay Rockefeller was the person I went to on foster care.

He was also the person that I went to on on highway safety.

Chris Dodd, Democrat from from Connecticut.

If it was a children's health issue, that's who I went to, to to partner with.

Dick Durbin on Aids issues.

So, you know, you figure out who cares about these issues.

And in dealing with the legislature, you also figure out who cares about a particular issue.

And you try to see where where they are, you know, what do they care about?

And then try to come up with something that, you know, everybody can maybe not everybody agree with, but at least the people who care about it in the legislature, that you can work out, work out something and, you know, you you don't get 100% of what you want.

That's not where our system was designed.

So you're not supposed to get under percent as much as I'd like to get 100%.

But if you can get a lot of that and move the ball forward and advance that, you know, that's what I learned in the U.S.

Senate.

And that's that's the way I've approached the state legislature.

There are so many other topics to address, but one I want to touch on is our cities.

And both of you have, you know, vibrant cities that are a significant part of your economic growth in your, in your states.

And, and yet we have a public safety concern in our cities.

And the National Guard has been called up, as you know, in certain cities.

And this has become a controversial issue.

But could you talk a little about that, talk about public safety generally and what the solutions are?

And then more specifically, what do you think about having National Guard units go to these cities?

Yeah.

Well, first of all, every one of my big city mayors is a Democrat.

And that was true obviously during during Covid, every single day, every single day.

At 1130, I was on the phone with every big city mayor in the state of Ohio.

Why?

I wanted to tell them what we were going to do at the 2:00 press conference.

But I also want to hear from that and more importantly, hear from them.

What what is going on in their city?

What are they?

What are they hearing?

And so that, you know, wasn't that's not a Partizan issue.

It's not Democrat Republic.

What's going on?

So you know, to specifically Rob answer to answer your question, Ohio, like many states, is a very, very local government state and our services are really delivered locally.

And whether that's at the county level, where that's the city level or the village level.

And so these, these, these mayors are obviously very, very important.

As far as the delivery of the service, as are the county commissioners and others.

So one of the big, big issues that we talk a lot about, you referenced is crime and great concern.

So we tried to figure out, even though we're a local government state, we do not have a state police.

We have the highway patrol, but they're not a state police.

How can we help the local cities?

And we we've come up several years ago, actually, shortly after I became governor, we became came up with a plan where we can bring the highway patrol land to work with the local city, with the local police.

We can we can also bring some other state departments and liquor control, for example, can can come in, to, to focus.

What they can do is they can focus on people who are literally going into bars that we know are hotspots and identify and they can identify where these individuals who are going in, frankly, are convicted felons who aren't supposed to have guns anyway and may have they may have a gun on, we also bring the state, parole people in so we can we can surge into into the cities.

That is the most effective thing that we can do from the state to help deal with the crime problem.

And we have seen it remarkable results where we surge in and we're not just don't we're not in there every day.

We're surgeon for 2 or 3 days and target the repeat violent offenders.

The facts are that the vast, vast majority of violent crime in this country today, in Ohio and across the country is caused by a very, very small percentage of the criminal element.

You simply have to target them and you have to go after them.

The most effective way to do that is with law enforcement.

People who are trained to do that.

And so that's why when people say, you know, governor DeWine, are you going to send the National Guard to Cincinnati?

You're going to send it to Cleveland?

My answer is that is not that they have a role.

And I have sent the guard into different cities in Ohio.

When the the mayor asked us to and we had an agreement, this is the best thing to do.

They were for civil disturbances.

There are natural disasters.

You had some of the same ice we did a few years ago, and we sent the National Guard down to southern Ohio to, frankly, just clear the roads from all all this stuff.

That's what the guard can do.

So I look at this is what is the most effective tool to go against to deal with the crime problem.

If it's a crime problem we're talking about, most effective is get other law enforcement agencies involved to help the local the local city.

So that's kind of how I approach it.

The guard has a real role.

It just if you deal with crime, the role generally is best role is is it the police officers and related to the criminal justice system?

Yeah, sure.

Well, I think all of our people both deserve to be safe and to feel safe.

And right now you can point to different statistics and say violent crimes going down in most places.

So people may be objectively safer.

But if you don't feel safer, there's still more work to do.

Because if you believe mental health is just as important as physical health, then that feeling is valid.

And it means that we have to do more.

But decrease in crime and making people feel safer is hard work that can't be solved by a stunt.

is hard work that can't be solved by a stunt.

Bringing the National Guard and I completely agree, who are not trained in law enforcement into a city or into a state may decrease crime in the week that they're standing there, but isn't going to do anything long term to make people safer.

Instead, it's things like we do have a state police.

We raised our salaries.

We have the most, state troopers in over a decade that are out in our communities.

They are trained, to to fight and reduce crime.

We are working on reducing recidivism, teaching skills inside of each of our prisons.

Because while we might not be able to stop that first crime, we can give people the tools so they don't commit that second, third or fourth crime.

We're working to intervene with our youth before they get into crime or when they're in that system.

Those are the actual, steps and work that you have to do the hard work if you want to reduce crime, over time.

And let me just this is important to me.

The National Guard of one state should never be sent to another state where the governor does not want them.

And objects to them.

If that is the case, if a president has a power to do that, we are not 50 states anymore.

I think it is a really important, issue that's out there right now.

And it's and it shouldn't it should be more than about just picking a fight with this or that.

And remember, crime isn't red or blue, but but the use of, of the guard in states that do not want them, that have said no to them and are working as hard as they can to decrease crime, just shouldn't be happening.

But I will say, one of our colleagues, JB Pritzker, made a statement that has a little bit of nuance on it that I think is being lost.

He said, send me all the FBI agents you want, send me all the DEA agents that you want.

Send me all of those federal law enforcement officials that do have that training, and we will work together to try to reduce crime in the short and in the long term.

But our guardsmen in Kentucky, they're they're they're not professional soldiers.

So they are trained.

They are not professional law enforcement.

They are welders and CPAs.

They're our neighbors.

And when they are called to do something like this, they kind of leave their family.

They've got to leave their job, and then they're put in a position that they're not trained for, that they are not necessarily safe then.

And so I feel very strongly about this, and I would feel just as strongly if the president was of a different party and this was happening a different way.

Okay.

So we're going to jump now to just this broader issue of civil discourse.

I mean, I'm, I'm inferring from what you guys are talking about, the governors probably have the ability to teach the national legislatures some stuff on how to get things done because you have no choice.

You've got to have a balanced budget.

You you've got to work with your legislators to get things done.

And, you know, both been pretty successful.

If you don't get results, you're not governor anymore.

That too, you got to get reelected.

And that's that's one of the issues, I think, is that in Washington, some you can get reelected without getting something done, as long as you're throwing out the red meat, to one side or the other.

But let's talk about what the National Governors Association is trying to do and get your views on that.

They're trying to come up with more, ways to encourage civil discourse, as I understand it.

Nonpartisan shift to use, the governor's term.

And they're focused on stopping, you know, the partizanship, that is acrimonious and even political violence, which unfortunately, we've seen more and more of, what do you all think about that?

Where does change start?

And, changes to the electoral system, to those earlier comments about how you get reelected?

Are they part of the answer here?

Just go ahead, governor.

Well, I, I distinguish a little bit in the National Governors Association as a unit that I think ought to be speaking out on the issue.

And Spencer Cox, who's our current head of it, Spencer, had a lot of courage after the he's the Republican governor and Republican governor of Utah, of how he spoke out after, the Charlie Kirk, killing.

He called for unity, which is what we're supposed to do in these situations.

And even with some pressure, he kept doing it.

And I think part of what we need to do in civil discourse is in addition to pointing out where we disagree, let's give people credit when they're doing something that we think is right, even if they're of another party, even if they're going to be up in another election.

Let's use positive reinforcement, when they're doing something that's that's good.

Certainly the way that I deal with our current president is the only way.

I think you have credibility when I disagree with him, when I think his policies hurt the people of Kentucky, I speak out.

I try to make it not personal, but about that issue.

But when he does something that has been positive towards my state, I want to say that to the flood response, especially in February of this year was the best I've ever seen FEMA operate.

And we've had 14 federally declared natural disasters in Kentucky in the last five and a half years.

And, you know, when that happens, it generates a different conversation the next time, it means that you can have a good relationship with someone or a better relationship with someone, even though you may disagree on a lot of things.

But let's let's give each other a little bit of credit, especially when we think somebody is doing that right thing.

You know, Rob, I think the things that, Governor Cox's emphasize when people really, really listen to him, is that we're not saying give up your principles.

In fact, you need to keep your principles.

You need to know exactly what you want to accomplish.

So sometimes I think people hear him or hear somebody, maybe even they'll take away from this discussion today.

Well, those three guys up on the stage, they they think we should just, you know, compromise everything.

And, and, they don't really care strongly about those things.

Well, I can tell you I know Andy does.

I know you do, and I do.

We all we know what we think.

We know what our basic core principles are.

So that I think is sometimes a misconception, and that people just say, well, you know, how do you guys give up your principles?

It's not that you're giving up your principles, it's you're trying to figure out how you can actually take those principles and achieve something positive that you want, that you think is right.

You don't change what you think and, you know, you once you went through that yourself, you know, with, with the infrastructure bill, you know, there's probably I won't speak for you, but I'm sure that supports that infrastructure bill you may not like, but you understood what impact it would have.

You know, but for that, we would not be building a bridge across the river.

So I just think that's that's an important.

It's an important distinction is how you implement your principles.

And if you're if you have a stand off and nothing happens, you're not implementing your principles.

Mike, I think that's very astute.

And earlier, Governor Beshear said we should hold up people who are doing the right thing.

This instituted, three and a half weeks ago, had a meeting where we brought in a Republican senator and a Democratic senator.

One was from a very blue state, Ben Cardin.

And he's a good liberal.

One is from a very red state, West Virginia.

Shelley Moore, capital, who's a good conservative.

And we hold them up.

It's examples and chose them on purpose.

Mike, for the exact reason you just said, this is not about being a moderate.

Doesn't wrong with that, but this is about sticking to your principles.

And these two individuals do that every day, even though they represent a very blue state in a very red state.

But their attitude about government is to get things done and to make incremental progress toward their principles and their views.

And so I think you're absolutely right.

And there's a misunderstanding out there that somehow you need to be in the middle of the road.

That's where the skunks get run over.

Right.

Know, and that's fine if you want to be there.

But the more important thing is that everybody ought to get elected to public office with the attitude that you both have talked about here today, and it's important that our leaders don't see the world just through a red or a blue lens, because if you do that, suddenly everything good that happens in the world must be and can only be pushed by one party, and something bad must have been pushed by the other.

What?

What we see or what I see, is both candidates and leaders who see the world that way just aren't as effective.

I mean, I'll give you an example.

Lately I found myself agreeing with Rand Paul on a couple of things, and probably a couple of years ago, I would have said who to fuck?

But if you really looking at the issues, wanting to get those results and what you believe is right, or even with your convictions, when suddenly you realized somebody you thought you disagreed with on everything you agree with and with a similar conviction.

Right?

You don't have those colored contacts on, and all of a sudden you see different areas that you may be able to work together on.

And I think you see that other person as a little more human.

I think one of the biggest threats that we have in our government and to our society right now is the dehumanization of the other side.

Now, if you walk out in your neighborhood and you turn around and you look at the street, there's going to at least be a couple houses that the people are registered in a different way, but you don't want them to do poorly.

You want them to do well.

They're your neighbor.

Unless they put their grass clippings on your lawn.

And you want their kids to do really well.

For me, it's that driving golden rule that we love our neighbors ourself.

And the parable of the Good Samaritan that says everyone is our our neighbor.

We've got to stop.

And I know governor DeWine agrees with this.

We've got to stop depicting the other side as the enemy, because they're not, you know, they're human beings.

And if we want to get things done, you know, moving forward, the answer is never.

Well, everyone has to come to our side.

It's that we've got to find that common purpose.

And it's a lot easier when you view that person on the other side as a real human being.

Early on in that discussion, governor Mike DeWine mentioned the team of Ohio Highway Patrol troopers and other help the state can provide to fight crime in cities, which has been underway in Cincinnati, Cleveland and Dayton.

My statehouse News Bureau colleagues, Joe Ingles and Dan Connick, went to Cincinnati to see that in action last week.

And you can find that in our archive.

And that is it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Media.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our website at State News Morgue or find us online by searching State of Ohio Show.

You can stay in the know by registering for Ohio State House alerts through this QR code, or by texting state news to this number.

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Thanks for watching, and please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Just.

Support for the Statehouse News Bureau comes from Medical Mutual, dedicated to the health and well-being of Ohioans, offering health insurance plans, as well as dental, vision and wellness programs to help people achieve their goals and remain healthy.

More at Med mutual.com.

The law offices of Porter, right, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Porter, right, is dedicated to bringing inspired legal outcomes to the Ohio business community.

More at Porter.

Right.

Com Porter Wright inspired every day.

You know, Ohio Education Association representing 120,000 educators who are united in their mission to create the excellent public schools.

Every child deserves more at o h e talk.