A name I've not heard started popping up in the Ohio governor's race: Pete Dragonic.
Bio
From Dragonic's
website:
Pete Draganic is a native son of Cleveland, born in 1969 at Mt-Sinai hospital on the East Side of the city. His father's grandparents immigrated from Croatia and Slovenia, and his mother's parents immigrated from Sicily. Pete is proud to be descended from such solid, hard-working stock, and has never forgotten the work ethic he learned from them early in his life.
He got his first job at the tender age of 13, loading and unloading trucks for an ice manufacturing plant in his neighborhood. That's cold, hard work for a 13-year-old, carrying and stacking heavy bags of ice all day...but Pete Draganic has never been afraid of hard work. He proved this by following his father into the construction business after he graduated from high school.
But the construction business is cyclic, and in the 1990s, things took a downturn. So Pete, never afraid of a challenge, changed careers and worked as an investigator tracking down bail jumpers. Over the next six years, he was responsible for returning hundreds of fugitives to prison from 13 states. It wasn't until he was shot and almost killed in the line of duty that he realized this might not be the best line of work for a man with a family.
Pete's wife, Lisa, is the proverbial 'girl next door,' although she actually grew up at the other end of the street from Pete. They met as teenagers, started dating, and never looked back. They have been together ever since and have three beautiful children, Eddie, Brittany, and Petey. They live in Seven Hills, a Cleveland Suburb.
Pete has since returned to the construction business and is the president of Central Diversified Contracting LLC, a general contracting firm. He is also the owner of Dish Ohio, a Dish Network satellite TV retailership.
But Pete Draganic has always been fascinated by politics. "Politics is the way we control our destiny," he says. "When I was only 10 years old, I learned how important a good leader can be to a country by watching Ronald Reagan's successful campaign for President against Carter." Eight years later, Pete became the first Registered Republican in his family's history, a decision he has never regretted.
Over the years since Ronald Reagan first drew an impressionable young boy into the political world, Pete has learned a lot about politics, and about politicians. He has seen much that he liked...but much that he thought needed to be improved. And since Pete Draganic has never shirked his duty, nor walked away from a difficult job, it is only natural that he face the challenge of running for Governor when he sees so great a need for a new direction for Ohio.
WWDD?
From Dragonic's
website, here is a top ten list of what Pete would like to accomplish, if elected:
1. Cut at least 2% from the state budget in order to save $500,000,000.00 per year (1 billion dollars from the biennial budget). With this cut, challenge affected departments to find ways to cut fat and waste without reducing staff. The idea is to not unemploy people when there are limited employment opportunities to transfer to in Ohio.
2. Reduce the burden of excessive taxation and regulation on businesses so that Ohio can be competitive with other states, especially bordering states, in the acquisition and retention of businesses and associated jobs. To experience positive job growth, Ohio must be inviting to job creators.
3. Work together with Ohio’s largest retailers to once again fill their aisles with American and Ohio made products by offering incentives and by appealing to their sense of community and positive image building.
4. Assemble special incentive packages for companies associated with alternative fuel research and/or development, primarily bio-diesel that will also benefit the enormous farming community of Ohio.
5. Form an Ohio printing department for the production of textbooks to be used in all schools statewide. This will drastically reduce the huge financial burden of textbook cost from Ohio’s school districts and will also allow the state to mandate the educational agenda of all schools in an appropriate and progressive manner that is in line with proficiency testing and high standards as well.
6. Provide an alternative health plan for schoolteachers and employees that replaces the individual and higher cost plans that school districts now use. Consolidation and state bargaining power can be two very positive elements in a cost-effective system of health care that will save money for our school districts.
7. Begin a pilot program to study the effectiveness of student uniforms in Ohio’s most discipline challenged schools. It is my belief that proper dress codes can greatly affect a student’s behavior.
8. Establish a directive that teachers be judged by ability, not seniority when staff promotions or reductions must be considered. Teacher rankings will be a culmination of classroom achievement combined with factors of education and other achievement.
9. Convert assistance programs from the current all or none systems to progressive systems where a recipient is incrementally removed from each program as they earn more in their careers. Such a new structure of assistance programs will eliminate the current dilemma of families being deterred from success due to the fear of being completely cut off from valuable services and aid.
10. Institute rigid work, education and drug resistance programs in our prisons in order to create an environment that works effectively to reduce recurrences of incarceration and increases the abilities and hence the opportunities of released inmates for success in a productive life. Such a system would instill a familiarity of daily work patterns and would lessen the blasé environment that now exists and which promotes lack of achievement and betterment. This rigid program should also do well to reduce the necessary length of incarceration, as well as relative crowding and expenses, due to the increased effectiveness of reformation.
More detailed ideas about how to accomplish this, can be found
here. Some answers to some questions that really ought to be asked of all of the candidates can be found
here.
Evaluation
Well, he has some interesting ideas, but he has no chance of winning. He would be better for Ohio than Montgomery or Petro though...and definately better than Ted Strickland...but then again, who wouldn't?
