Swartz switches up campaign, will instead run against US Rep Latta

By BRIAN HEMMINGER

City editor

After originally announcing a run for U.S. Congress in the Cleveland area, Upper Sandusky resident Craig Swartz has shifted his sights. 

He’ll instead be looking to unseat incumbent U.S. Rep. Bob Latta. for Ohio’s fifth district.

“After some examination and some consultation with the folks up there, two mayors, some county chairs, state officials and my own family, it came down to the fact that while I have a good story to tell about growing up on the west side of Cleveland, graduating from Ohio State and then taking off for Europe, I’ve been gone for 40 years,” Swartz said.

“It came down to the fact that that is going to be a tremendously expensive race and I wasn’t going to be able to get my message out, which to me is one of the most important things. What I have felt the last several years, the direction our country is taking, which is not a very good one in my view, and it’s a view that’s shared by people from both parties. There’s a commonality that we all agree something is amiss, it’s just how do you address that?”

Swartz said he believes common ground can be found and practical decisions can be made by having rational consultation with constituents.

“That’s where we’ve fallen these past several years. There’s a very genuine disconnect between our elected officials and constituents,” Swartz said. “They’re not holding town halls to see where the true values lie.”

A good example of the country coming together was the recent tornado devastation in the Midwest. 

“If you look at recently what happened in Mayfield, Kentucky with that tornado disaster and you see the real reactions from people from all over the country pouring down resources, the federal government coming down, not caring what party they are, but showing compassion in a heartbeat about restoring these people’s lives,” Swartz said. “If you expand that to our whole country, the Build Back Better program that Biden’s proposing redresses a lot of things that we stopped doing. We stopped taking care of the communities, infrastructure, we’ve been spending our money elsewhere, been distracted elsewhere and we’ve been constantly leaving ourselves adrift economically and culturally in so many ways. That’s where my campaign comes in and it’s something I’ve been wanting to address for a long time.”

Swartz said many of his proposals like public banks are popular across both party lines. He believes infrastructure could be the key to bridging the divide between urban and rural America.

“We at one point had the largest passenger rail network in the world,” Swartz said. “Towns like Crestline, Mansfield, Marion, all connected to more urban areas. If you start working on these kinds of projects, energy, mass transit, infrastructure, Bucyrus just got a grant from the American Rescue Plan, these are practical solutions that are not getting pushed to the forefront because our representatives are not meeting with us.”

A major reason Swartz is running for the local U.S. Rep seat is to displace someone he views as a career politician. 

“Most constituents believe in term limits, whether they’re Democrat or Republican,” Swartz said. “These guys like Bob Latta, who’s been in office forever, who’s father was in office just as long as he was, it’s time to get out. It’s time to get out Bob. You’ve been there too long.”

Getting the federal budget under control is another important part of Swartz’s message.

“We spend 50 cents of every dollar on defense,” Swartz said. “Just this most recent passage by the Senate, they lopped on $20 billion beyond what Biden asked for no questions asked, and yet we can’t get simple things like child care in rural areas, because it’s perceived as too costly. Bob Latta and the rest of ‘em never bother to ask their constituents if this was the right thing to do.”

When he was running for state senate, Swartz said he asked people what they thought about the United States being the world’s policemen.

“And resoundingly, almost unanimously, people said, ‘No,’” Swartz said. “It begs the question, why are we doing the things that we are doing? I can honestly say when Trump was running in 2016, he was saying the right things. People were fed up with the forever wars, they were fed up with getting ripped off, all our jobs outsourced, communities lost during this 40-year period. You brought down the unions.”

Swartz believes his foreign policy views are a big strength in the campaign.

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“If we could just reduce some of the amount of violence that we’ve incurred internationally, maybe that will reduce some of our violence domestically, because I believe the two are correlated,” he said. “Look at how we’ve militarized the police because of the surplus weapons we’re buying from the defense budget. Our priorities are screwed up. We can do better than this. We have to.”

An important part of his upcoming campaign will be telling harsh truths, Swartz said, whether they call out Republicans or Democrats. 

“I can point to Democrat mistakes just as easily as I can point to Republican mistakes and explain how we got to this position, and people appreciate that,” Swartz said. “We’re all a little pent up, have been for some time, and we’re searching for answers. Trump came along and he provided some answers, there was just no execution. We don’t go after fraud, waste and abuse in the Pentagon. We got into trade agreements that decimated our economy, and we’ve been far too involved in foreign wars. We’re bombing six countries. We still have special forces in over 100 countries.

“The Democrats walked away from this part of Ohio a long time ago. We need to come back. We need to talk to people in this part of Ohio who have always been of the same mindset. It’s about community. It’s about taking care of each other and doing the right thing.”