Jean Schmidt facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Jean Schmidt
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| Member of the Ohio House of Representatives | |
| Assumed office January 3, 2023 |
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| Preceded by | Scott Lipps |
| Constituency | 62nd district |
| In office January 4, 2021 – December 31, 2022 |
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| Preceded by | John Becker |
| Succeeded by | Mike Loychik |
| Constituency | 65th district |
| In office January 2002 – December 31, 2004 |
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| Preceded by | Daniel Sferra |
| Succeeded by | Joe Uecker |
| Constituency | 66th district |
| In office January 3, 2001 – December 31, 2002 |
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| Preceded by | Sam Bateman |
| Succeeded by | David R. Evans |
| Constituency | 71st district |
| Member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Ohio's 2nd district |
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| In office August 2, 2005 – January 3, 2013 |
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| Preceded by | Rob Portman |
| Succeeded by | Brad Wenstrup |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Jeannette Mary Hoffman
November 29, 1951 Cincinnati, Ohio, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | Peter Schmidt |
| Children | Emilie Schmidt |
| Residence | Loveland, Ohio |
| Alma mater | University of Cincinnati |
| Occupation | politician, teacher, bank manager |
Jeannette Mary Schmidt (née Hoffman; born November 29, 1951) is an American politician who is a state representative in Ohio's 62nd district. She was a U.S. Representative for Ohio's 2nd congressional district, serving from 2005 to 2013. She is a member of the Republican Party.
Contents
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 (two daughters, two sons) of Augustus ("Gus") 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 ("double dipping"), urban townships, and protecting townships from annexations of their territory by cities, all of which were passed into law. ..... 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 (49.9%) to Niehaus's 17,098 (50%). 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. ..... 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 (after Deborah Pryce) and the first woman to represent southwestern Ohio in Congress.
2006
During Schmidt's re-election bid, there were several controversies, which affected her campaign. One was a March 2006 report about Schmidt's past claims that she had a B.A. in secondary education from the University of Cincinnati, awarded in 1986. Schmidt's defenders pointed out that neither her current official or campaign website had the second degree posted, and said that Schmidt had completed the requirements for the degree but never filed the paperwork to be awarded a diploma. On April 27, five days before the May 2 primary, the Ohio Elections Commission voted 7-0 to issue Schmidt a public reprimand for "false statements" for her claiming to have that second degree. The Commission also found that Schmidt had made false claims of being endorsed by several organizations, but that these did not warrant any reprimand.
Schmidt won the Republican primary, defeating former U.S. Congressman Bob McEwen 48%–43%. In the general election, she defeated Democrat Victoria Wells Wulsin by a margin of 2,865 votes (1.3%).
2008
On January 20, 2008, Schmidt received the Hamilton County Republican Party's endorsement for the March 4 Republican primary. In the Republican primary, she defeated State Representative Tom Brinkman Jr. 58%–40%.
The Schmidt campaign sent out a fundraising letter accusing her Democratic opponent, Victoria Wells Wulsin, of harboring a "contempt for the culture of life" that led her to "participate in grotesque medical experiments" involving injections of "malaria virus" into AIDS patients in Africa and China without their consent. The "grotesque medical experiments" charge appears to be a reference to 2004 work that Wulsin did with the Heimlich Institute in Ohio. She examined data that was supplied to her as part of a literature review, taken from ongoing studies, of experimental AIDS therapies that Wulsin concluded had potential. "She never participated in any of the studies," said Wulsin communications director Kevin Franck. "She was never in a position to stop any of them while they were in progress ... Jean Schmidt knew that those complaints and those allegations had no merit when she mailed the letter." There is also no such thing as a malaria virus, as malaria is caused by protozoans.
In October, Schmidt was struck by a hit and run driver while jogging, and was diagnosed with two broken ribs and two fractured vertebrae. The injuries were not diagnosed immediately after the accident. However, the week following the accident she was embarking on a weekend fact-finding visit to Afghanistan when severe pain caused her to pass out while landing at a U.S. Air Force Base in Germany. As a sign of respect, her Democratic opponent, Victoria Wulsin, suspended her campaign while Schmidt rested at home.
On Election Day, Schmidt defeated Wulsin and independent David Krikorian, 45%–37%–18%.
2010
In the Republican primary, she defeated County Commissioner Mike Kilburn, Debbi Alsfelder, and Tim Martz 62%–22%–9%–7%. In the general election, she won re-election to a third term by defeating Surya Yalamanchili 58%–35%.
2012
In the March Republican primary, Schmidt was unexpectedly defeated by Iraq war veteran Brad Wenstrup 49%–43%. She carried six counties (all located in eastern part of the CD), while Wenstrup only won two counties (both located in the western part of CD): Hamilton County (59%) and Clermont County (50%).
Tenure
Swearing In
Schmidt was sworn in on the evening of September 6, 2005. (Ordinarily, representatives chosen in special elections take office immediately, but the House was in its August recess at the time of the election.) In her maiden speech, Schmidt said:
Environment
Schmidt has called for increasing use of ethanol and drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Schmidt told The Cincinnati Post "What's really important is to adopt an environmental policy that advances the American economy and national security. I supported the energy bill recently passed by the U.S. House that will expand the use of alternative energy sources and additives like ethanol."
Iraq War
Schmidt appeared in public with a button in her lapel containing a photograph of Keith Matthew Maupin, who was at the time the only prisoner of war of the Iraq campaign who had not been freed and who was a native of Clermont County.
Personal life
Schmidt and her husband, Peter W. Schmidt have one child, a daughter, Emilie (born in 1978). A Roman Catholic, she has been a member of Elizabeth Ann Seton Church since 1978. She is a marathon runner.
Schmidt was elected chairman of the Greater Cincinnati Right to Life organization in 2005. Schmidt was a trustee of the Clermont County Library from 1980 to 1992 and 1994 to 2000. She was reappointed to the board in 2005. She is also a director of the Mercy Hospital Clermont Foundation Board.
See also
- Women in the United States House of Representatives
