AG race heats up with allegations of corruption

YOUNGSTOWN

The contentious race for attorney general pits incumbent Mike DeWine, a Republican, against David Pepper, his Democratic challenger.

Pepper, a former Hamilton County commissioner and Cincinnati city councilman, accuses DeWine of establishing a “pay-to-play” environment in the attorney general’s office in which those who contribute to the incumbent’s campaign receive lucrative outside legal counsel contracts for tax and debt collections.

“If this office is going to do the job on cracking down on corruption and pay-to-play at all levels in Ohio, this office has to be itself above reproach when it comes to those issues,” Pepper, a failed 2010 candidate for state auditor, said about the attorney general. “This office I think in the last three years has created a system of pay-to-play and an operation of pay-to-play like no other in the state of Ohio.”

DeWine — a former Greene County prosecutor, state senator, U.S. House member, lieutenant governor and U.S. senator who is finishing his first term as attorney general — said, “People have said a lot of things about me over the years. No one ever called me corrupt, so I’m offended by it very much.”

Read more of the allegations in Wednesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.