2016 Congressional Election: The Unknown Candidate in the 9th Congressional District
By Connor Keenan
While talking to Donald Larson, an Ohio Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives, I couldn’t help but smile. His casual shirt and demeanor made him come across as an actual person, not a politician who dresses up for photo-ops and recycles memorized answers. Our interview was originally supposed to last around 15 minutes, but his passion for political change stretched the conversation to 40 minutes. Larson was so excited to be able to talk about his plans that he couldn’t stop—and who would want him to?
A quick search of cleveland.com for Donald Larson returns only four articles from the past six months that include his name (while more articles come up, they are for other people named Don or Larson, not this guy). What’s worse, not one of these articles is directly about him — Larson is mentioned only in passing, or among the group of Northeast Ohio candidates opposing congressional incumbents who decline to debate them. Nothing focuses on his plans, his policy stances, his dreams for the future of Northeast Ohio. And he has lots of those.
His opponent, Democrat Marcy Kaptur, has drawn all the attention away from Larson. With more than 60 articles about her in the same amount of time, the amount of available information on each of these candidates is drastically different.
What is concerning about these statistics is the fact that the election is a few days away. When residents of the broad band of territory from Cleveland to Toledo known as the 9th Congressional District visit a voting booth on Nov. 8, many might ask themselves, “Who is Donald Larson?”
The 9th District, bordering Lake Erie and stretching over 120 miles, has been dominated by Kaptur for 33 years. News outlets throughout the district have been focused nearly exclusively on covering her, causing citizens to be relatively uninformed in regards to this congressional race. Her support from past years is leading many to write off her opponent as unable to win, yet Larson continues to fight through the odds in an attempt to push his way to the top of the polls.
“I have no idea who Donald Larson is,” says Kayli Ralph, a freshman at John Carroll University who has lived in the 9th District for 18 years and plans on voting in the upcoming election. At this point in time, it is clear that many uninformed voters will be determining the outcome of the upcoming election. Without information about a candidate in an important political race, the system on which it stands cannot be considered fair.
Larson is a graduate of both The Ohio State University and Case Western Reserve University, where he received degrees in mechanical and nuclear engineering. During his time as a student, he decided to follow his lifelong dream of becoming a Navy pilot. He went through training, but was unable to acquire the position as a result of cuts in the number of pilots in the Navy, following the fall of the Soviet Union. Even with his dream position unavailable to him, Larson still served five years of his four-year commitment, fighting the war on drugs in South America.
Larson’s main motivation for running in this election is that he wants serious change for his district. In all her time as a congresswoman, Kaptur has never chaired a congressional committee.
“We are getting to the stage where it is almost impossible to do anything new in this country,” said Larson in an interview. The sheer number of layers of approval required to begin new projects is so high that by that time a proposal is approved, there is a high possibility that the person who proposed it will no longer be in office. “We have to actually change the focus,” he said, “the priority, to being able to get to a yes.”
A major issue that Larson is focusing on in his campaign is the problem he sees with the Food and Drug Administration and the aggressive reaches it is making into several industries. The FDA is currently undergoing plans to heavily regulate the selling of items such as electronic cigarettes, pipes and hand-crafted cigars, “none of which I am a customer to,” Larson emphasized. Particularly new industries, such as the vaping industry, have an extremely difficult time meeting the FDA’s regulation as they do not fit into any of the “grandfathered programs” that allow pre-existing drugs to be available for sale.
Not only is Larson’s support of these industries in response to FDA regulations, his particular focus on the vaping industry is partly because of his belief in the beneficial nature of electronic cigarettes. A good reason why this industry has seen so much growth is because of its ability to assist cigarette addicts in quitting smoking, according to thousands of testimonials from real people worldwide. There are many people who claim that as a result of taking up vaping, their lives were saved from the harmful effects of cigarettes.
Larson experienced these positive effects when he attended the premiere of a documentary about the industry, called A Billion Lives. It was here that he met thousands of customers of the industry, and got a chance to interact with them. “When 1,400 people come up to you in one day and tell you that same story, the evidence starts to add up,” said Larson.
Another issue Larson hopes to work on is the energy industry’s economic development. An energy station in South Sandusky is currently decreasing in size at an alarming rate, according to Larson. Larson claims that Kaptur refuses to face or fix the issue, causing an increase in layoffs.
“They’re down to 200 employees. They’re just dying,” said Larson. He hopes to take this massive plot of land, over 700 acres, and establish an energy research park there. This would stimulate the economy, opening up a large number of job opportunities, as well as allow the government to conduct research.
“This will pay dividends for decades to come. It’s not a one-time deal,” he said.
The final month before Election Day is an extremely busy one for Larson and his team. Patty Gascoyne, his campaign manager, said “We’re going to be stuffing envelopes with him every day.” Last-minute attempts to spread the word as far as possible are going on right now. It is up to voters to see across the seemingly massive gap between these candidates and become informed enough to make the right decision for themselves and their district on Nov. 8.
