Each candidate said they’d prioritize public safety, though they bring vastly different experiences with law enforcement. Plummer served more than a decade as Montgomery County sheriff. Green has multiple felony convictions and witnessed one of the most gruesome acts of gun violence in Ohio history.
Both candidates spoke with the Dayton Daily News about their legislative goals, should they be picked by the voters of House District 39, which now encompasses parts of Dayton, Clayton, and all of Englewood, Huber Heights, Union, Vandalia and the townships of Butler, Harrison and Wayne.
Ohio House representatives serve two-year-terms and earn a base salary of $63,007. The winner’s term would commence in January 2025.
Democrat Dion Green
Green, a social worker, sees himself as a candidate for change in this race.
He was with his father Derrick Fudge during the Oregon District shooting. The experience and the loss of his father pushed him to begin advocacy work and create the Fudge Foundation, a 501(c)3 in honor of his late father which has seen Green work alongside victims of gun violence and other traumas, including human trafficking and domestic violence and participating in mentorship programs to guide at-risk youth in the area.
“Since I’ve already been advocating for safer communities around the country and here in Ohio, it was just time to step up and to hold our elected officials accountable but also bring change into our statehouse,” Green said.
Green views public safety as the No. 1 issue facing his district and believes safe communities are a requisite to improve other areas of society, but he said he’d approach public safety in a different manner than his opponent.
“The difference between me and him as an advocate and him as a sheriff: I’m proactive, he’s reactive. Police, they usually respond when something already happened, right? I’m in the community trying to intervene to stop something from getting to where it’s going to happen,” Green said. “I’m in those communities, I’m with those people, I’m boots-on-ground.”
Green says he’s uniquely suited to help the state curb crime. His own record contains an extensive list of run-ins with law enforcement, including felony convictions, guilty pleas, and more than eight years of prison and jail sentences.
In 2002, Green pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine in Preble County and was sentenced to a year in prison. In 2009, Green was sentenced in Greene County to seven years in prison following pleading guilty to engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, trafficking in cocaine and marijuana, and possessing weapons under disability.
In Franklin County Municipal Court, Green received an array of misdemeanor convictions, including in 1998 for trespassing; 2001 for an expired license; 2003 for soliciting; and in 2004 for driving under a suspended license.
In December 2023 Green was charged with OVI in Dayton Municipal Court. He pleaded in April of this year to a lesser charge of misdemeanor having physical control of a vehicle while under the influence and remains under community control.
Green told this outlet that his past mistakes taught him humility and resilience.
“Growing up, we didn’t have a lot of mentors, so when you walked on the front porch, it was just negative stuff going on, whether it was crime or drugs. To not have a positive influence or a role model beside you, you tend to just follow wherever the crowd is going,” Green said. “That is why I do my programs with the youth and giving them hopes and aspirations, letting them know that life is bigger than the things you see in your community.”
On gun legislation, Green said he supports red-flag provisions, universal background checks, and more community violence interruption programs. “I’m not sitting here taking a gun, but at the end of the day, (the government treats) guns as more valuable than life. That’s what I’m trying to understand,” he said.
Green said he particularly doesn’t understand why Ohio hasn’t passed laws mandating that firearms are stored safely and securely. He called it a “common sense thing” that can save the life of individuals killed on accident in homes, can keep guns away from children who might want to carry out a shooting, and stem suicides by firearm. “I mean, the things that I’m sharing are things that we know that can save lives,” Green said.
On education, Green said he wanted to assess the state’s newly-expanded private school voucher program, which the state spent nearly $1 billion on in its first year and mostly went to students who already attended private schools. “That is money that’s being taken away from public schooling that can be used to revitalize it, to invest back into it,” Green said.
He also said he wants to increase access to mental healthcare in schools, believing that it would be an effective way to reach people in communities that have been traditionally difficult for mental health professions to reach.
Green told this news outlet that he believes in a woman’s right to choose, noting that he thinks the state government gives guns more rights than women. He supported the idea of granting tax breaks to small businesses and finding a solution to rising property taxes. He’ll be voting for November’s Issue 1, which would replace Ohio’s controversial politician redistricting commission with a citizen panel.
Republican Phil Plummer
Plummer, the Montgomery County GOP chairman and a factional, unofficial leader of the Ohio House GOP Caucus, said he expects to get an official position within leadership in his next term, should he win. He said this would give him more decision-making authority over legislation, including the all-important state budget. “We will get our piece of the pie, trust me,” he told this outlet.
If Plummer is reelected and does make it into leadership, he said he’ll bring a focus on education and mental health — two areas he believes the state hasn’t adequately addressed over the years.
Plummer told this outlet that he was pleased that the state put record funding into public schools in the last budget and hopes that even more will go to public schools in the next general assembly. He views education as an antidote to violence.
“Statistics show, if we educate our kids early it pays off in the long run. So, I think we need to invest more in education,” Plummer said. “As a sheriff, 75% of people in my jail was people that didn’t have an education, so they’re in the streets hustling. We either invest early or we pay late.”
Plummer brings a similar perspective to mental health. He told this outlet that nearly half of all inmates within local jails are people experiencing mental health episodes, but there aren’t enough resources within the community to take them anywhere but jails. “We need local assets with professional skills to deal with people in a crisis,” he said, noting that he’d like to see privately-run, inpatient mental healthcare centers enter the region.
Efforts to create such a program have been tried and failed, Plummer noted, referencing the short stint of a company called RI International, which received over $6 million in taxpayer funds but ultimately severed its contract with the Montgomery County Alcohol, Drug Addiction and Mental Health Services.
“The problem being a legislator is, yeah you can pass laws, we can send resources back to our communities, but when you have the same local people misspending our resources, I’m not happy with our outcomes here,” said Plummer.
For the most part, Plummer said he was pleased with the state’s decision to invest more money into the private school voucher program, though he holds reservations with the fact that most of those funds have been routed to families who were already sending their children to private schools.
“I’m not real thrilled about paying wealthy people’s school tuition. I think they can afford that themselves. I’d like to see some tweaks on the voucher side,” said Plummer, who also noted that he believes the state ought to regulate private schools in a similar manner to public schools if they’re going to receive taxpayer dollars.
Plummer said he intends to tackle property taxes, which have become increasingly burdensome for homeowners in recent years due to a stark increase in property valuations in tandem with local governments’ increasing reliance on property tax levies to provide services.
“We lowered income taxes in the state of Ohio, but we take a step forward and then three steps backward with all of these levies we’re constantly seeing,” Plummer said. “So, it’s going to take some leadership to start streamlining our taxes here, and that’s one of my goals. We’re taxing elderly people out of their homes, unfortunately.”
As a result, Plummer shied away from a proposal to do away with the state income tax entirely, an idea that has become more and more popular among Statehouse Republicans.
“You need certain taxes for certain government jobs, right? We’re supposed to educate you, incarcerate you, medicate you, so you need a revenue stream for that,” Plummer said. “So, unless we start cutting government, which needs to be done because government’s too large, we have to be very, very smart about cutting taxes.”
On gun legislation, Plummer said he’s “leery” about red-flag provisions and any other measure that would interfere with Ohioans’ ability to “defend themselves whatever way and means possible.”
His preferred method to curb gun violence is to give judges the ability to more strictly punish convicted felons who are caught with weapons despite being unable to legally possess them. “That’s who’s creating all these problems in our communities,” Plummer said.
Plummer said he will be opposing Issue 1 this November due to fear that Ohioans will be unable to hold a citizen redistricting commission accountable, adding that the “current system performs perfectly because people in the commission are elected.”
On abortion, Plummer said that he will respect the public’s decision. “My opinion is the public spoke, and who am I to overrule the public’s will? So I’ve accepted the public’s vote, and it’s enshrined in our Constitution. To me, that issue’s over.”
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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