Jean Schmidt
Jeannette Mary Schmidt is an American politician who is a state representative in Ohio's 62nd district. She was a U.S. Representative for, serving from 2005 to 2013. She is a member of the Republican Party.
Early life and education
Schmidt, born Jeannette Marie Hoffman in Cincinnati, Ohio, is a lifelong resident of Clermont County's Miami Township, along the eastern shore of Little Miami River near Milford and Loveland. One of four children of Augustus and Jeannette Hoffman, she has a twin sister, Jennifer Black. Her father made his money in the savings and loan industry, then ran an auto racing team that competed in the Indianapolis 500.She earned a B.A. in political science from the University of Cincinnati in 1974. Schmidt worked in her father's bank, the Midwestern Savings Association, as a branch manager from 1971 to 1978. Schmidt was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1984. She was a fitness instructor from 1984 to 1986, when she began a four-year career as a schoolteacher.
Early political career
Schmidt was elected as a Miami Township trustee in 1989. When Clermont County Commissioner Jerry McBride resigned in 1991 to become a judge, Schmidt was one of four candidates to replace him, but wasn't appointed. In her 1993 bid for reelection, she finished first in a field of four, taking 3,639 votes.One major issue during her service on the board of trustees was the city of Milford annexing parts of the township. She and other trustees lobbied the Ohio General Assembly for new laws to protect townships from such annexations. In 1993, a panel of Miami Township residents recommended the township incorporate to protect itself from annexations, to have greater control over its territory, and to obtain more money from the state. However, Schmidt as a trustee was not a participant in this effort, saying she had to be a "cheerleader" on the sides.
In 1995, she traveled to Russia to offer instruction about political campaigning in a country that had little experience of free elections. On her trip she ran in Moscow's Red Square: "Did I ever feel unsafe? No. And would I jog through Central Park in New York? No way."
Schmidt was reelected to a third term as trustee in 1997. She resigned her trustee seat to enter the Ohio House. The remaining two trustees appointed Mary Makley Wolff to the remainder of the term.
Ohio General Assembly
Ohio House of Representatives
Elections
In 2000, Schmidt ran for the Ohio House of Representatives seat being vacated by Sam Bateman, who was prevented by term limits from running again.Her district was entirely within Clermont County, containing Miami Township as well as Batavia, Goshen, Pierce, Stonelick and Union Townships, plus the villages of Amelia, Batavia and the city of Milford, and the Clermont County part of the city of Loveland. After the redistricting necessitated by the 2000 census, her district became the 66th and contained the same territory minus Pierce and Stonelick Townships."
Tenure
The Cincinnati Enquirer wrote she introduced and passed bills "remarkable in number and quality for a neophyte lawmaker." She sponsored legislation on the Clermont County courts, limiting the ability of public employees to collect both pension and salary simultaneously, urban townships, and protecting townships from annexations of their territory by cities, all of which were passed into law. She also pushed legislation on the health of women, suicide prevention, abstinence education, and to "lock killers away for good" by making it easier for judges to sentence murderers to life terms. Schmidt also supported Ohio's concealed carry law.Committee assignments
In the House she served on the Finance and Appropriations; Human Services and Aging; Banking, Pensions and Securities; and Public Utilities Committees. She was excited to be in the Statehouse: "Oh my God, I'm really a state representative" she was overheard telling a fellow freshman. In 2002, she was elected to the 125th General Assembly without opposition in both the primary and general elections.Second stint in the Ohio House of Representatives
In 2020, Schmidt was elected to a second stint in the Ohio House of Representatives from the 65th district. She took office on January 1, 2021.Ohio State Senate
2004 election
In 2004, Schmidt ran for the 14th District seat in the Ohio Senate to replace Senate President Doug White, who was retiring. The Senate seat included Clermont, Brown, Adams and Scioto counties and part of Lawrence County. Her opponent for the Republican nomination was Tom Niehaus, a fellow member of the Ohio House from New Richmond whose 88th District represented the half of Clermont County outside her district plus Brown and Adams Counties to the east. Schmidt told the Enquirer "The fear from many of the people I meet is that because the next senator will come from Clermont County, they will be underrepresented. But if you know anything about me, I don't under-represent anybody." She also said she worried about the state budget: "We do have a history of overspending in Ohio. But it's not just recent history. It's a 40-year-old habit." The Enquirer was dismayed by advertisements from the Ohio Taxpayers Association "twisting the two candidates' voting records to Schmidt's advantage" and endorsed Niehaus.Schmidt had endorsements from key state leaders such as Ohio State Treasurer Joe Deters and Speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder. The campaign was marred by allegations that Householder's staff had improperly tried to obtain Niehaus's withdrawal from the race and that Householder had told Niehaus's supporters to donate money to Schmidt's campaign. In the initial count of the Republican primary vote on March 2, 2004, she led by just 62 votes. A recount was automatically ordered, which reversed the outcome. Schmidt ultimately lost by just 22 votes: 17,076 to Niehaus's 17,098. She told The Cincinnati Enquirer on election night "This is the way my whole life has been—one tough race after another."
U.S. House of Representatives
Elections
2005
When President George W. Bush nominated Rob Portman, who had just been elected to a sixth full term, to be U.S. Trade Representative, Schmidt and ten other Republicans entered the race for his seat in a 2005 special election. Schmidt's campaign literature noted her anti-abortion voting record, her opposition to same-sex marriage, and her high rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund. Pat DeWine was one of Schmidt's opponents, and his marriage became an issue in the campaign. In 2004, DeWine's opponent ran ads stating that DeWine had left his pregnant wife and their two children for a mistress who worked as a lobbyist. In her stump speech, Schmidt made it a point to emphasize the duration of her own marriage, stating, "I am a woman of character who has been married for twenty-nine years."On June 14, 2005, in an upset, Schmidt finished first in the Republican primary with 31% of the vote. Two days after the primary, an editorial cartoon in The Cincinnati Enquirer, commented on DeWine's marriage having been such a factor in the primary; the cartoon showed Schmidt asking Paul Hackett, who had won the Democratic primary, "You have a good marriage. I have a good marriage. What the heck are we going to campaign about?"
Schmidt faced Hackett in the August 2, 2005, special election. Hackett criticized Schmidt as a "rubber stamp" for Governor Bob Taft's "failed policies", and claimed she would continue in that role for George W. Bush if elected. At their debate at Chatfield College, Hackett said, "If you think America is on the right track and we need more of the same, I'm not your candidate" and asked, "Are you better off today than you were five years ago?", echoing Ronald Reagan's question in his debate with Jimmy Carter in 1980.
A month before the election, the inspector general of the Ohio General Assembly announced he was investigating three legislators for accepting gifts and failing to report them. Schmidt was implicated, but could not be investigated because she was no longer a member of the Ohio house. On October 24, 2004, the legislators had accepted dinner at Nicola's Ristorante on Sycamore Street in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood and Cincinnati Bengals tickets from a lobbyist for pharmaceutical company Chiron. Schmidt said she thought her $644 gift was from former Bengals player Boomer Esiason, who was, like Chiron, interested in cystic fibrosis. Schmidt repaid the lobbyist for the cost of the entertainment.
Hackett hammered on Schmidt's ethics. When she denied she knew or ever met Thomas Noe, at the center of the Coingate investment scandal at the Ohio Bureau of Workers' Compensation, Hackett produced minutes from a meeting of the Ohio Board of Regents that showed Schmidt had indeed met with Noe, once a regent. On July 29, the Toledo Blade reported on a 2001 e-mail from Taft's assistant Jon Allison complaining Schmidt was "bugging" him about setting up an Internet lottery for Cincinnati businessman Roger Ach, who gave her a $1,000 contribution the next year. Schmidt spokesman Fritz Wenzel said the candidate did not recall any conversations with the governor about Ach's business.
The candidates participated in two debates. The first was held on July 7 at Chatfield College in St. Martin in Brown County, moderated by Jack Atherton of WXIX-TV. The second debate was held July 26 at the Ohio Valley Career and Technical Center in West Union in Adams County. The two also made joint appearances on WCET-TV's Forum on July 28 and WKRC-TV's Newsmakers on July 31.
Schmidt defeated Hackett, 52%–48%. Schmidt's margin of victory was the worst showing of any Republican in the district since 1974. Nevertheless, she became the second Republican woman elected to Congress from Ohio in her own right and the first woman to represent southwestern Ohio in Congress. In her victory speech, Schmidt declared:
We began this race way back in late March, and no one had thought we'd be the focus of the national media or be the so-called first test of the Republican Party and the Bush mandate. Well, ladies and gentlemen, we passed that test.