House District 7: Term-limited Sen. Tom Patton now running for Ohio House
By Mackenzie Navratil
A college sophomore whose weakness was writing decided to take a journalism class. Interview one candidate in the 2016 election, plus one other person to provide context, do some online and documentary research and write it up: This was the assignment given to the journalism class taught by Professor Carrie Buchanan. Simple. Students believed they knew exactly what they were doing. That is, until students did not get the information they needed.
Republican Senator Tom Patton was the candidate this student selected. Going onto ohiosenate.gov, the student found Patton’s email and phone number and thought, “How awesome! This is going to go perfectly.”
Well, not so fast. The phone rang and rang and rang. The student thought, “No big deal. Just email.” After sending three emails, the student finally got a call back, not from the senator himself, but from Anthon Aquillo, a spokesman for Patton. Due to the fact that Aquillo was so busy, he asked the student if he could email the interview back after checking the responses with Patton. This was on October 7th. It hasn’t arrived yet.
The student was excited to start this project due to the fact that she lives in Strongsville, the same hometown as Patton.
Since 2008, Patton has been the Ohio Senator for District 24, which includes Cuyahoga County. He was unable to run again for the senate due to term limits. So he is now running for the Ohio House District 7, which includes Strongsville, North Royalton, Berea, Olmsted Falls and Olmsted Township.
As senator for District 24, Patton served as the Majority Floor Leader. Previously, he served as the vice chairman of the Senate Transportation, Commerce and Labor Committee. Along with his standing committees, Senator Patton also serves as co-chair of the Ohio Senate Autism Caucus and a member of the Ohio Athletic Commission, the ODOT Transportation Futures Steering Committee and the Legislative Service Commission.
In the Republican primary last March, Patton ran against Jennifer Herold, who is 30 years old and a mother of two infants. Patton said that he believed he should win a seat again due to all of his experience.
He said, “The gal that’s running against me is a 30-year-old, you know, mom — mother of two infants,” he said in a radio interview Jan. 18th on America’s Work Force Radio. He had to publically apologize about this mistake. He said he used a poor choice of wording. Patton did win the primary, and he is unopposed in the Nov. 8 General Election.
Also on America’s Work Force Radio, Patton expressed his thoughts on House Bill 377. This is Right to Work legislation, which if passed would mean that employees throughout Ohio could not be required or compelled to join to a union.
He said in the interview that he did not see the bill going anywhere. He also said, “I agree with the governor it is not necessary to pass. You don’t see people saying they are only coming to Ohio if there is a Right to Work (law).”
Patton did want to create jobs, though. To do this, while he was senator for District 24, he sponsored a bill to expand Ohio’s Motion Picture Tax Credit. This would create jobs because film crews would come into Ohio communities, along with everyone involved in the movie production. They would spend money in local restaurants, shops and hotels. Finally, people who see the movie could possibly be interested in where the movie was filmed and come to visit Ohio. Thus, if more film productions came to Ohio, it would create more job opportunities and bring money into the state.
Ohio District 13 Senator Gayle Manning and Patton got together to pass something called the Blue Alert, whose stated purpose was to keep the community safe. The Blue Alert notifies and flashes lights in the community when there is a police officer being killed or injured.
