Democrat Bill O’Neill says his campaign against Republican U.S. Rep. Steven LaTourette won’t be polite, but he’s eager to take on the veteran lawmaker from Bainbridge Township.
O’Neill, who ran against LaTourette in 2008, plans to announce his candidacy 1 p.m. today at the eastern end of the Regional Transit Authority’s (RTA’s) line in Shaker Heights, outside the 14th District he wants to represent. He’s launching there to illustrate a key point of his campaign: For too many years, the economic development train has stopped short of LaTourette’s district.
“He’s a congressman who has said no to anything that relates to jobs in northeast Ohio,” O’Neill said in an interview earlier this week.
The South Russell, Geauga County resident, wants to change that. He says a passenger rail line linking Lake and Ashtabula counties to the job and recreational opportunities in greater Cleveland would be a good start to reviving those counties’ economies.
“It is absolute nonsense that those trains stop in Shaker Heights,” O’Neill says. “It should go east, where the workers are.”
He said extending the line to the east would make it more feasible for 14th District residents to work in the booming Cuyahoga County health care industry.
“It’s clearly a jobs issue,” O’Neill said of the rail line.
O’Neill criticizes LaTourette for failing obtain the federal money needed to extend the line.
The candidate also is blasting LaTourette for rejecting health care reform, which O’Neill feels is essential for American businesses to compete successfully against companies located in nations where health care is government-sponsored.
He also raises the issue of LaTourette’s involvement in the banking crisis; the congressman has been on the House Commerce Committee during the past decade.
“He voted to deregulate the banks that caused the world economic collapse,” O’Neill charges. “He took in more than a million dollars in contributions from the banks and then looked the other way; he literally looked the other way.”
O’Neill, 62, is a retired judge of the 11th District Court of Appeals and a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel. He is a traveling and on-call registered nurse in the pediatric emergency department of Hillcrest Hospital.
No stranger to Ashtabula County, the candidate owned O’Neill’s Landing in Geneva-on-the-Lake.
His campaign strategy is to appoint 50 city coordinators across the district, which encompasses all of Ashtabula, Lake and Geauga counties, plus parts of Cuyahoga, Summit, Trumbull and Portage counties. He points out that he served as judge in five of the seven counties and never lost a Democratic primary in any of them.
O’Neill captured just under 40 percent of the vote in 2008, despite LaTourette’s campaign overspending his 4-1.
“This time, it’s going to be different,” says O’Neill, whose campaign theme is “End of the line for the politics of ‘no.’” He says the campaign strategy will be “replacing the politics of ‘no’ with the policies of ‘yes we can.’”
The candidate said he already has all the signatures he needs to file officially next week.
“The Ashtabula County Democratic Party takes very good care of me,” he said.
In addition to facing LaTourette and any primary challengers, O’Neill could be up against a third independent candidate from the Get Out of Our House movement, which is fine with the feisty judge-turned-nurse-turned-candidate.
“I would welcome a third-party candidate in this race. That would be fun,” he said.
The site of O’Neill’s announcement, at 1 p.m. today, is two miles west of Interstate 271, on Chagrin Boulevard at the RTA station.
Local News
Bill O’Neill announces another run against U.S. Rep. LaTourette
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