Mike DeWine’s Only Link to Ronald Reagan
July 28, 2009 at 7:23 am
Yost, a candidate for state Attorney General, spoke briefly Monday to introduce himself. The current prosecutor in Delaware County, he will be facing former U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine in a Republican primary next spring. Yost argued that because he’s up-to-date on current law and prosecutorial methods, his experience gives him the edge over DeWine.
“He hasn’t stood in front of a jury since Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as president,” Yost said.
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Yost seems like a decent guy, and if he beats Dewine by talking about how he’d be a better Attorney General, good for him. But if he insists that he’s better because he does criminal trials, he’s sending a signal to everyone who knows about the AG’s role that he doesn’t know much himself about it. The AG’s office does almost no criminal prosecutions, because the county prosecutors do that. The AG is mostly a civil lawyer representing state offices. His biggest criminal role is overseeing the Bureau of Criminal Investigation (like a state FBI, with crime labs, DNA tests, etc.) and the Peace Officers (police) Training Academy. That’s executive management, not trial work.
Yost should know all that, and probably does, but can’t resist trying to gain from other people’s ignorance about the AG’s office.