Party sees new Republican leaders for 2010

COLUMBUS – A new guard is set to lead Republicans for the next two years, the party’s incoming chair said.

Ohio Republican Party deputy chair Kevin DeWine made the remarks Thursday during a discussion of the Ohio GOP’s future following two elections of wide-ranging defeats for his party.

DeWine said he sees eight high and low-profile Republicans leading the party in 2010 during a press conference at party headquarters Thursday.

Seemingly gone from the future picture are former statewide elected officials Ken Blackwell and Betty Montgomery, whom DeWine said he hasn’t spoken to about future office.

“Frankly, what I think the party needs and where it’s going, is a new set of faces with a new set of ideas,” DeWine said, adding the national GOP needs new ideas and people as well.

However, DeWine said he sees John Kasich, Rob Portman, state Auditor Mary Taylor, former Ohio House Speaker Jon Husted, state Sen. Mark Wagnor, state Reps. Shannon Jones and Josh Mandel as well as possible U.S. Rep. Steve Stivers in the GOP’s future.

“For anyone who cares about the great state of Ohio, these will be visionary leaders who will solve problems, who will do so with real solutions to the real problems Ohioans are facing,” he said. “They will give the votes of Ohio a reason to be for them, as opposed to simply casting about a message that is in opposition to their opponents.”

Kasich has said he’ll make a decision about running for governor in 2009 and Portman has said he would consider a run for governor or U.S. Senate. Husted, who was elected to the state Senate after being term-limited in the state House, has been speculated as a candidate for secretary of state. If Stivers fails to win election to Congress after election returns finish, he will become a private citizen having left his position as a state senator.

Not to be left out, U.S. Sen. George Voinovich will help the party find a return to fiscal conservatism, ORP executive director Jason Mauk said.

Former attorney general Montgomery was approached by the ORP this summer to run in the special election for attorney general, but she said she was content with retirement from the political arena. Blackwell was almost entirely absent from the Republican slate’s campaign this year after losing in a landslide to Ted Strickland for governor in 2006.

Former attorney general and state auditor Jim Petro has said he may run for chief justice of the Ohio Supreme Court chief in 2010.