The race for Ohio’s 15th Congressional District pins an Ohio National Guardsman against a retired U.S. Air Force veteran.
The race for Ohio’s 15th Congressional District pins an Ohio National Guardsman against a retired U.S. Air Force veteran.
However, outside of shared time in the military, the Republican Congressman and Democratic Delta Airlines pilot have little in common.
Qualifications
Stivers: U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers, R-Columbus, is in the midst of his second term in the U.S. House of Representatives. He formerly was a member of the Ohio Senate and served in Operation Iraqi Freedom.
Wharton: Scott Wharton hails from Amanda, in Fairfield County. The 1980 Ohio University graduate is a Delta Airlines pilot and served with the U.S. Air Force during Operation Desert Storm in the early 1990s.
Plans for office
Stivers and Wharton both referred to creating jobs as the “number one” platform they’ve campaigned on. How they approach that challenge, though, differs.
Stivers: Stivers pointed toward a couple different laws he’s sponsored that he claimed improved the job climate for returning veterans. One, the “HIRE at Home Act,” now offers veterans the chance to use their military certification to do jobs like nursing and truck driving in the private sector upon returning stateside.
He also said he continues to work to “get our debt under control” — a challenge he said “should resonate with folks at OU.”
Though Stivers said “many folks in Athens certainly like for me to be for more (government) spending,” he said he has a track record of working across the aisle to get bills passed into law.
His HIRE at Home Act had a Democratic co-sponsor, and he’s also working on a bill with Louisiana Democratic Rep. Cedric Richmond to expand offshore drilling for oil and natural gas to expand the nation’s energy sources.
“I think the key thing is my temperament in that I work with everyone.”
Wharton: Wharton told The Post students should trust him more than Stivers, as he described politics as something that’s “not a career for me.”
“I can vote for what’s important and not be beholden to special interests … so it’ll allow me to be independent,” Wharton said, adding he’s focusing efforts on plugging for what he calls a “trickle up economics plan.”
He wants to raise the minimum wage and invest in research at universities — specifically at OU to study the effects of hydraulic fracturing — to stimulate spending from the working class.
“The idea is to put money in the hands of the working class,” Wharton said.
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