Schweitzer challenges Brenner, promising ‘honest representation’

Schweitzer

KATE LIEBERS

Staff Writer

Craig Schweitzer is hop­ing to replace “pol­i­tick­ing” with com­mu­nity val­ues, as he vies for the 67th Ohio House District.

“I think it’s imper­a­tive that we have a rep­re­sen­ta­tive that reflects our com­mu­nity,” said Schweitzer. “I’m that guy.”

As a vet­eran and busi­ness­man, Schweitzer said that he has spent his life serv­ing oth­ers. Now, he wants to help Ohio serve small, as well as large, businesses.

Schweitzer is run­ning against incum­bent Andrew Brenner.

Like Bren­ner, Schweitzer has advo­cated for less gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion to help ful­fill those plans. Yet Schweitzer crit­i­cized one of the bills Bren­ner spon­sored as one that allows banks to raise inter­est rates.

“As a busi­ness owner, that’s not busi­ness friendly,” said Schweitzer.

Through­out 17 years of estab­lish­ing and own­ing his fam­ily busi­ness, Mr. Mulch, Inc., Schweitzer said he has expe­ri­ence know­ing what it takes to sup­port a fam­ily and pro­vide pay­checks and ben­e­fits to hun­dreds of employees.

“It’s not been easy and the state of Ohio has not been much help,” he said. “Reduc­ing the

sti­fling effects of City Hall gov­ern­ment and bureau­crats on fam­ily busi­nesses, like mine, is an objec­tive for me to accom­plish in the Ohio legislature.”

Schweitzer said he would focus on mak­ing the U.S. 36/Ohio 37 and Inter­state 71 inter­change safer and more efficient.

He wants to stream­line taxes, fees and bureau­cra­cies, that he said takes energy and cap­i­tal away from cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing high-paying jobs.

He also wants to reform edu­ca­tional fund­ing and crit­i­cized the school voucher bill, which Bren­ner sup­ported before the leg­is­la­tion was pulled. The bill pro­posed redi­rect­ing pub­lic schools state fund­ing toward tuition costs for stu­dents opt­ing to enroll in pri­vate schools.

“When peo­ple go to bat for levies, either for or against, the expec­ta­tion is that the money is going to stay in the school dis­trict,” said Schweitzer.

He said the bill’s lifes­pan was a “prime exam­ple” of poor com­mu­nity representation.

Schweitzer also ques­tioned the suc­cesses of the bud­get bill Bren­ner sup­ported. The bill bal­anced the bud­get in part by cut­ting funds to local gov­ern­ment entities.

While Bren­ner said those cuts entice those enti­ties to find ways to run more effi­ciently, Schweitzer said it would result in local gov­ern­ments rais­ing taxes instead of the state government.

“They said they did it with­out rais­ing taxes, which is a farce,” he said.

Trust­wor­thi­ness is a major com­po­nent of Schweitzer’s cam­paign, in which he sep­a­rates him­self from the idea of a “career politician.”

“I’m not doing this because I need this job. I’m doing this because I want to serve,” he said. “We need some­one who under­stands they’re there to serve oth­ers, not their own self interests.”

Schweitzer addressed the IRS tax liens filed against Pres­tige Music Stud­ies, for which Bren­ner serves as vice pres­i­dent. Bren­ner said that while his wife is the pri­mary oper­a­tor of the busi­ness, he is help­ing her resolve those issues.

Schweitzer has had busi­ness liens filed against him, which he has since resolved.

Dur­ing his seven-year ser­vice in the National Guard, Schweitzer earned a degree in Crim­i­nol­ogy and stud­ied City and Regional Plan­ning at The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity. He began Mr. Mulch with his wife in 1995.

After his defeat against Bren­ner in the March 2010 pri­mary, Schweitzer became involved with the local Repub­li­can Party. He was elected to serve on the exec­u­tive com­mit­tee and appointed as com­mu­ni­ca­tions chair.

Schweitzer and his wife Linda have three chil­dren who attend Olen­tangy Local Schools.

Posted by Kate Liebers on Feb 15 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.