Mike DeWine: What to know about Ohio's governor

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Gov. DeWine: We have to continue banning gatherings

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine on efforts to slow the spread of coronavirus.

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Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, has been championed as one of the first officials to implement statewide social-distancing restrictions amid the global coronavirus pandemic.

Under his administration, Ohio also has taken the lead in testing the general public, with the goal of preventing the spread of infection by isolating and treating COVID-19 patients sooner.

​​​​DeWine was elected to serve as the 70th governor of Ohio in November 2018; he took office early the next year. In April 2019, he signed the Ohio "heartbeat" bill into law, banning abortions after a fetal heartbeat could be detected at around six weeks into pregnancy. A federal judge temporarily blocked the law that July before it was scheduled to take effect.

Following a mass shooting at a bar in Dayton, which happened less than a day after another mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, DeWine promised to ramp up gun-control measures within the state. However, amid GOP opposition in Ohio's General Assembly, he walked back a plan that October for a "red flag" law, which would have prevented people who showed signs of being a threat to themselves or others from buying or possessing any kind of firearms.

Instead, he asked the Republican-controlled state legislature to consider expanding the state's "pink slip" system, which placed mentally ill Ohioans in hospitals for up to 72 hours, USA Today reported.

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The Dayton gunman killed nine people before he died in a shootout with police; 27 other people were hurt. Ohio is a traditional open-carry state.

Before becoming governor, DeWine had a long career in public service, previously serving as the 50th attorney general of Ohio.

He was elected attorney general in 2010 after beating out the incumbent, Democrat Richard Cordray; voters reelected DeWine in 2014.

In a rematch of their 2010 election, DeWine beat out Cordray in the 2018 governor's race after running aggressive attack ads accusing him of neglecting to test rape kits while he was attorney general from January 2009-2011. In return, Cordray called DeWine an "opioid czar," claiming he waited too long to sue opioid companies over their aggressive marketing strategies leading to the death of thousands in the state, the Dayton Daily News reported.

Abiding by his pledge, "Protecting Ohio Families," DeWine, as attorney general in 2011, launched a special sexual assault kit (SAK) testing initiative after it emerged that hundreds of police departments across Ohio had thousands of untested rape kits stocked in their evidence rooms. Over the course of his administration, the initiative resulted in the indictment of approximately 700 alleged rapists, many of whom were serial attackers, connected to unsolved cases, The Plain Dealer newspaper in Cleveland reported in 2018.

DeWine also served as a Greene County prosecutor, a state senator, a U.S. congressman, Ohio's lieutenant governor and a U.S. senator.

DeWine issued a new public health order on April 1 instructing all hospitals to send specimens to one of four major medical facilities for coronavirus testing, claiming it was lagging at private hospitals in the state, Dayton Daily News reported. Those facilities had the capacity for rapid turnaround on test results.

Battelle Memorial Institute, working with researchers at Ohio State University, developed a test that identified positive COVID-19 cases within five hours. Abbott Laboratories, which has operated in Ohio, recently released a new, portable ID NOW COVID-19 test, with the company claiming it was capable of delivering a positive result within five minutes and negative results within 13 minutes.

"We could use all the testing we can get, basically," DeWine said. "The more tests you have, the better information you can get."

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine in March 2020. (AP Photo/Julie Carr Smyth, File)

After pushback from DeWine, the Food and Drug Administration [FDA] authorized the Columbus-based private research lab Battelle to deploy a system in Ohio, New York and Washington state that could sanitize 160,000 face masks a day. The FDA initially approved only 10,000 masks a day. The governor's office helped launch RepurposingProject.com to recruit businesses with the manufacturing capacity to ramp up production of personal protective equipment and tests within the state.

DeWine asked the Ohio National Guard to expand medical facilities, converting unused government-owned facilities and commercial buildings, dorms, and hotels across the state to house patients before an anticipated surge in COVID-19 cases in late April, WEWS-TV in Cleveland reported.

Ohio recorded at least 2,902 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with at least 81 deaths, according to state figures Thursday.

On March 30, DeWine extended his Ohio school shutdown order until May 1.

Declaring a state of emergency, and going against a Franklin County court ruling, DeWine had postponed primary elections in Ohio originally scheduled for March 17 until at least late-April, keeping people from going to the polls amid federal social-distancing guidelines.

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DeWine, 73, was raised in Yellow Springs, Ohio, where his family founded a seed business. He married Fran Struewing while they were students at Ohio’s Miami University. They share eight children and 24 grandchildren.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.