DeWine leads while Trump dodges

What Mike DeWine said Thursday morning would have been unremarkable in any other presidential election year. "Joe Biden is the president-elect," DeWine, Ohio's Republican governor and a supporter of the GOP incumbent, Donald Trump, told coanchor John Berman on CNN's "New Day" program. This year, though, his simple statement of fact generated headlines because the president has insisted, against all evidence, that he won reelection and many Republicans have been loath to acknowledge Biden's victory. DeWine's willingness to acknowledge reality probably stemmed in part from his lesser vulnerability to Trump's wrath than Republicans in states where the president is challenging the election outcome. He won Ohio by 8 percentage points over Biden, a Democrat, and has raised no objection to the result. U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Cincinnati, the state's second-highest-profile Republican, also has pushed for accommodation to reality, agreeing with a few other Republican senators that Biden should have access to classified briefings on national security issues. In addition, Portman went further Tuesday than Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had Monday in reaction to media reports the previous Saturday that Biden had won. Unlike McConnell, who contented himself to extoll the virtues of courts as arbiters of election disputes, Portman actually challenged the Trump camp to produce evidence of election fraud. So far, Trump has offered only accusations of it. "Right now," Portman said, "former Vice President Biden is leading in enough states to win the presidency. But there are still votes being counted. In this close election, President Trump has every right to insist that all legally cast ballots are counted. He also has the right to appropriate recounts and the right to go to court to resolve any questions about irregularities. At the same time, the Trump campaign has an obligation to come forward with evidence to support any allegations of election fraud." Like McConnell, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Florida, focused on Trump's right to "pursue all these things" under the law, and he chided "those in the media who are angry that Republicans won't just take their word for it that Biden won," saying, "I think you need some self-awareness." Never mind that the media have been calling elections for decades, including Trump's win in 2016; that The Associated Press, which many newspapers and networks rely on, didn't call the election for Biden until four days after Election Day; and that its calls were based on state-by-state analysis of results. Papers as different as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal are referring to Biden these days as president-elect. True, Portman didn't congratulate Biden on his victory, as Republican Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah and Susan Collins of Maine did, but Portman has to face voters in two years. Collins won handily this year, and Romney's term won't be up until January 2025. DeWine, too, must face voters in 2022, but his fate at the polls likely will depend more than Portman's on the impact of the coronavirus in Ohio. Both men will need support from Trump's strong base in the state, but DeWine could be particularly vulnerable to defectors who abandon him because he has treated the virus with a seriousness entirely lacking in Trump, holder of super-spreader events. On the other hand, DeWine could get backing from voters, including independents and Democrats, who appreciate his willingness to use the power of government to protect them. His order last week that retailers deny entrance to customers not wearing masks was an example. Yes, he put the onus on stores, which can be penalized if state inspectors discover employees or customers unmasked, but the order simply extended a sort of insistence on decency that many stores already practice with signs that caution customers: "No shirt, no shoes, no service." Adding "no mask" to the list only expands the insistence to include the decency to protect others from illness and death. Perhaps the virus crisis will be entirely in the past by the campaign season in 2022, courtesy of vaccines, but given the way it's raging these days, responsible leaders can't in good conscience leave their constituents on their own to protect themselves. Contrast DeWine's news conference Thursday with Trump's on Friday. DeWine welcomed the news that a vaccine had shown great effectiveness in a trial, but he urged Ohioans to remain vigilant against the virus by wearing masks and practicing other risk-reducing behaviors. He detailed the latest statistics on the virus in the state, talked about revised health orders he'd issued the day before and others he might issue, and took questions from reporters for almost an hour. Trump boasted about the news on the vaccine, which was indeed encouraging, but also attacked the company developing it and the governor of New York, avoided acknowledging that a Biden administration was soon to take over the fight against the virus, mentioned nothing about the specific actions people can take to limit its spread and took no questions despite not having made any other public statement in more than a week. Whether one agrees or disagrees with DeWine's orders, he was trying to lead. Trump was trying to score points and evade both the truth and accountability. Andy Young is editor emeritus of The Chronicle-Telegram. Contact him at (440) 329-7111 or ayoung@chroniclet.com.