BOWLING GREEN — He has been the face of a large portion of northwest Ohio in Washington, D.C. for more than a decade, and this November, U.S. Rep. Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green is hoping to continue in that role for the next two years.
For Democrat opponent Keith Mundy, the people of that district have not been truly represented during Latta’s tenure in the nation’s capital, and it is time for a change.
That is the choice in this year’s election for residents of Ohio’s 5th Congressional District, an area covering a large portion of northwest and north central Ohio, including Paulding, Van Wert, Mercer, Putnam, Hancock, Seneca, Wyandot, Crawford, Huron and Lorain counties and most of Wood County.
A congressman since 2007, Latta, 68, said his experience has helped him establish a track record of getting things done legislatively, especially through his work in the House Energy and Commerce Committee.
“I’ve had 33 different pieces of legislation signed into law coming out of our committee,” he said. “I’m there to work, but I’m not only there to work on legislation. Another huge component of our job as members, and especially for me, is constituent work, so we’re working on constituent work. So we’re working on constituent issues like Social Security, Medicare, veterans issues, the military, ag — I mean, it just goes across the board.”
Mundy, 74, comes into the race having previously helped with campaigns in Ohio for former Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as well as congressional campaigns for Jeff Sites against U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Urbana, and Craig Swartz, who had previously run against Latta and is currently running for election in the 87th District in the Ohio House of Representatives. Mundy had previously run for the U.S. House of Representatives in 2016, losing to former Rep. Jim Renacci in Ohio’s 16th District.
For Mundy, the need to run for Congress stems from his view that Latta has not worked to advocate for the people in his district.
“This guy never votes for the people,” he said. “(He has a) 4% lifetime (voting record) on the environment (according to a League of Conservation Voters scorecard). How can that be? He’s living on the same planet that you and I are living on, and he doesn’t see that we have a problem here that’s happening every day, and it’s getting worse.”
Along with the environment, Mundy pointed to women’s abortion access and addressing immigration through improving quality of life in Central America as key priorities in his campaign.
“These are human beings that are alive, that just want to survive, and we’re treating them terribly,” he said. “They want to become immigrants. They want to move to a country where they feel safe.”
Latta listed energy as one of the main priorities in his campaign, saying that tapping into the nation’s available natural gas and other energy sources can help create a growing economy and reduce reliance on foreign energy providers.
“When people think about oil and natural gas, they think about energy production, but at the same time, a lot of the products that our farmers use, especially our fertilizers, are coming from these products, with byproducts like anhydrous ammonia,” he said. “So it comes down to where we have to have that energy.”
Latta also promoted greater immigration enforcement, pointing to an August report from the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General’s Office that said immigration officials could not account for nearly 300,000 unaccompanied minors in the country.
“We’ve got all these little kids and we don’t know what happened,” he said. “We don’t know if they’ve been put in as sex slaves. We don’t know if they’ve been put in sweatshops.”
Latta also said he wants to continue working to expand broadband internet access to rural Americans, while Mundy also pointed to strengthening and expanding social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicaid as a priority for his campaign.
ON THE WEB
More information on Bob Latta: bit.ly/4eHplsD
More information on Keith Mundy: bit.ly/3U8fbcs
