Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine signed his own Declaration of Independence last Friday when he vetoed House Bill 68.
Free from the binds of the rampant Trumpism in the Ohio General Assembly.
The Ohio governor, who has been in politics since the 1970s, showed with his veto of House Bill 68 — which would have prevented transgender health care for patients under 18, as well as prohibit transgender girls and women from playing on female school sports teams — that he is a throwback to a day when Republican politicians believed in something the current GOP finds quaint and out-of-date: that government should not be butting into the private lives of citizens.
"Were I to sign House Bill 68, or were House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most: their parents," DeWine said when making the announcement last Friday.
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His decision also stood out as it showed he is able to listen to others and feel empathy for those who are suffering — as teens with gender identity issues and their parents are doing across the nation every day.
DeWine spent weeks visiting children's hospitals around the state, speaking with families and even legislators who support the bill. Then, he came to a conclusion. A veto.
But his fellow Republicans — the ones who make up the Ohio General Assembly's veto-proof supermajority — have shown time and time again they are not particularly interested in those two principles that guided Mike DeWine's decision to veto this bill.
"Mike DeWine strikes me as the kind of person who, when surrounded by people who are hurting, wants to do the right thing," said David Niven, political science professor at the University of Cincinnati.
Niven said that another example of that was in August 2019, on the day after nine people died in a mass shooting in Dayton's Oregon District.
"He went to the rally in Dayton, where people were begging him to do something about gun violence," Niven said. "He was affected by that. It began a brief dalliance with gun control which he abandoned when the Republicans in the legislature started to push back.
"But there is no question that, on that day, he felt the pain of people in Dayton."
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This time, though, DeWine did not cave to the Republican supermajority.
DeWine's veto unleashed a torrent of angry press releases and social media posts from Republican state legislators, and a number of other GOP elected officials who have nothing to do with the matter.
They all said basically the same thing — that if DeWine's veto were to stand, it would mean that hospitals in Ohio would be full of teenagers getting sex change operations without parental consent.
This, despite the fact that a child has never gotten such surgery without parental consent in Ohio.
The governor offered, in his veto announcement, to sit down with legislative leaders to work out a set of administration actions that would prevent it from happening in the future. And exactly a week later, he signed an executive order banning hospitals from performing gender transition surgery on transgender minors.
What his fellow Republicans are saying
Even Donald Trump weighed in with a Corleone-style dismissal of the Ohio governor.
"DeWine has fallen to the Radical Left," Trump said on his Truth Social platform. "No wonder he gets loudly booed in Ohio every time I introduce him at Rallies, but I won’t be introducing him any more. I’m finished with this 'stiff.' "
"What was he thinking," Trump posted on Truth Social. "The bill would have stopped child mutilation, and prevented men from playing in women's sports. Legislature will hopefully overturn. Do it FAST!!!"
It is hard to imagine that DeWine really cares that much about Trump's opinion.
Mike DeWine turns 77 years old on Friday. He has two more years left on his second and final term as governor.
After a career that has seen him elected to the state legislature, lieutenant governor, U.S. congressman, U.S. senator, Ohio attorney general and Ohio governor, DeWine has nothing left to prove.
He is free to do and say what he wants.
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Not so for DeWine's lieutenant governor, Jon Husted. Husted wants to follow DeWine into the governor's office.
Not surprisingly, Husted came out against the boss's veto.
"I've been asked my opinion on HB 68," Husted posted last week. "I support it for two main reasons: Men should not compete in women's sports. Permanent medical decisions concerning gender should not be made when you are a child. I hope the SAFE Act will become law in Ohio."
Both of the Republican leaders of the Ohio General Assembly, Speaker Jason Stephens and Senate President Matt Huffman, have spoken out against the veto.
If the Republican leaders want to, they may well have the votes to override DeWine's veto.
The override effort would have to start in the Ohio House, where the bill originated. It would take 60 of the 99 House members and 20 of the 33 members of the Senate to override the veto.
Given the fact that House Bill 68 passed the House by a vote of 64-28 and the Senate by a 24-8 vote, it's entirely possible that the legislature could override the veto — unless DeWine can convince enough of them to agree to administrative rules instead of passing a law.
Either way, DeWine has sent the GOP a message: he's not afraid to stand on his own two feet.
