2016 Congressional Elections, Ohio’s 16th District: Renacci’s hallmark a collaborative style in Congress
By: Nicholas Fiedler
Tags: 2016 Election

2016 Congressional Elections, Ohio’s 16th District: Renacci’s hallmark a collaborative style in Congress

By Nick Fiedler

Ohio’s 16th Congressional District begins its Tuesday mornings with the hustle and bustle of busses taking students to school and the buzz of employees gearing up for their work shifts. One resident of the district, however, is beginning his day miles away. Congressman Jim Renacci follows a slightly different morning routine in Washington D.C. as he meets, often over warm coffee and fresh donuts, with his Bipartisan Working Group, comprised of 13 Democrats and 12 other Republicans.

Photo courtesy of the Renacci campaign

In the U.S. House of Representatives, reaching across the aisle to consult politicians of both parties, then collaborating to enact serious reform, are part of Renacci’s day-to-day activities, according to the congressman’s website.

Just recently, Renacci and the other representatives in his Bipartisan Working Group introduced the Stolen Identity Refund Fraud Prevention Act of 2016, one of four bills the group has drafted that have passed the House. Should he be re-elected this fall, Renacci says he plans on doing more of the same. Lucky for him, there is little to no competition for control of his district.

Indeed, the election in the 16th District is noticeably uneventful this time around.

“Renacci should cruise to re-election with 60 to 65 percent of the vote at least,” says Colin Swearingen, a professor of political science at John Carroll University. It would be an unusually high margin of victory, considering that Ohio’s 16th District is, Swearingen said, not “overwhelmingly Republican.” But Renacci’s style seems to fit the district, if previous elections are any indicator. He’s not overwhelmingly Republican either, if that means adopting the current congressional approach of refusing to cooperate with Democrats.

Democrat Keith Mundy, Renacci’s challenger, has raised a mere $12,000 compared to Renacci’s roughly $1.9 million in campaign funding, according to Swearingen and the website OpenSecrets.org on Oct. 30. (It keeps changing, so the total might be different depending on when you check it, but the huge disparity in the two candidates’ campaign funds has remains similar for weeks.) This could be one reason Mundy has had trouble gaining traction in the race.

Renacci and his campaign are feeling so confident in the outcome that the congressman declined the opportunity to participate in the yearly Cleveland City Club debates alongside Mundy. He also declined the League of Women Voters’ invitation to participate in one of its candidate forums. He’s not alone in this: all of Northeast Ohio’s incumbent congressional representatives have frustrated attempts to convene a public forum where they would faces their challengers in this election.

Even if Mundy had run a more competitive campaign, Renacci is no stranger to a difficult congressional race. Back in 2010, when Renacci ran for his first term, he was elected over Democratic incumbent John Boccieri in one of the most expensive races of the election cycle. Two years later, in 2012, Renacci caught no break, as a process known as “redistricting,” carried out by the state legislature, changed the contours of his district and forced him to run against another popular Democratic incumbent, Betty Sutton.

Renacci is now the only sitting member of Congress to have run against and defeated back-to-back incumbents, according to Renacci’s campaign manager, Sean McCort.

If Renacci returns for a fourth term, he has a lot of “pet projects,” as McCort called them, that he hopes to see through the legislative process. Many of these projects are bipartisan and many of them focus on taxes and tax-reform — all things important to Renacci. Two major pieces of legislation that encompass both of these characteristics are the Fiscal State of the Nation and the congressman’s own Simplifying America’s Tax System plan.

As Renacci reports on his website, “The United States has a national debt that is over $19 trillion” and is expected to nearly triple in years to come. The Fiscal State of the Nation — the legislation’s official name is House Concurrent Resolution 140—if passed, would ensure that the chief auditor of the United States appears before a joint session of Congress to educate lawmakers annually about the fiscal situation of the country.

The fiscal state of the U.S. is not a partisan issue, in Renacci’s view. In fact, McCort confided that Renacci is known to say often, “There’s no such thing as Republican or Democrat problems, but rather, American problems.”

Renacci is also known to claim that America’s tax code is broken and outdated. For about a year now, according to McCort, the congressman has been working to draft a solution to fix the code. He calls it the Simplifying America’s Tax System plan. When asked about the plan, McCort explained that instead of starting from scratch, as many other tax plans do, Renacci “looked at everybody’s tax plans both past and current,” including those of Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz, and used them as a base.

The key to Renacci’s plan is that it moves corporate revenue taxes to a consumption tax, effectively discarding the current corporate tax rate, which is among the highest in the world, according to a 2015 comparison by The Tax Foundation. The Renacci plan proposes to increase revenue for the federal government while at the same time slashing tax rates for all taxpayers. One way this is accomplished is that under the plan, our seven-tiered tax rates will be reduced to three.

In typical Renacci fashion, he has the plan all prepared as a “white paper,” or summary, and is “trying to get comments from people on both sides of the aisle,” said McCort. In other words, the plan is being compiled in a way that, if passed, it will offer both parties things that they want dearly, while also promising big benefits for the government and taxpayers.

Not only has Renacci been able to work on important tax reform because of his professional background as a certified public accountant, he has also been able to sponsor bills that matter to him on a personal level. For example, he worked closely with Congressman John Lewis, a Democrat from Georgia, to sponsor and introduce the Stolen Identity Refund Fraud Prevention Act of 2016. This was personal for Renacci because both the congressman and his wife, Tina, actually had their identities stolen. Renacci then sponsored this bill, which limits the window of time in which companies can submit an employee’s W-2 form and attempts to catch some of the more than $20 billion in attempted tax fraud each year.

Rumors have been floating regarding the congressman’s plans for 2018—that perhaps Ohio could see Renacci run for a state-wide office. However, McCort reports that the congressman’s main focus is running for Congress, working to enact national tax reforms and staying committed to the people of his district. Due to Renacci’s busy schedule, he was unable to meet to discuss the issues in this election and did not offer any commentary via email.

Whether it’s preventing tax fraud or creating tax code, one thing seems to reign true for Renacci: his drive to work with other people. When asked about some accusatory remarks made by opponent Mundy in his biography, McCort shared yet another Renacci-ism:

“Jim will always say there are three kinds of people in Washington. There are people that are a part of the problem, there are people that are there to collect a paycheck, and there are people that are trying to be a part of the solution.”

On Nov. 8, voters in the 16th District get to decide which of those three they think Jim Renacci is.