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Posted Sep 25, 2020
In a July 2019 file photo,
U.S. Reps. Anthony Gonzalez, a Rocky River Republican, left, and Colin Allred,
a Texas Democrat, discuss Allred's then-upcoming trip to Gonzalez' Ohio congressional
district.
By Editorial Board,
cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer
U.S.
Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, the freshman Rocky River Republican representing Ohio’s
16th Congressional District, has been in Congress fewer than two years but is
already making his mark as someone eager to reach across the aisle to achieve
compromise.
Gonzalez,
36, a former star football player at
Cleveland’s St. Ignatius High School who played in the NFL for
five years before knee injuries cut short his football career, is looking for
bipartisan solutions not just on small matters, like allowing battlefield crosses in
U.S. military cemeteries. A member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus,
Gonzalez is also seeking potentially breakthrough
solutions to consequential disputes, such as the gridlocked
coronavirus stimulus aid package.
And he told our editorial board during the
endorsement interview this week that he’s also working on legislation to
improve on health care delivery and costs, including drug costs -- to go
beyond, not to discard, the Affordable Care Act.
Gonzalez is, in fact, one of those rare
Republicans who says he opposes abrogation of the ACA -- as is being sought
single-mindedly by the Trump administration in a case the Supreme Court has
agreed to hear. Rather, he said, his legislation will propose a series of
innovative ways to address issues such as health care cost transparency and
prescription drug costs that the ACA failed to solve.
Gonzalez
is being challenged for reelection by Westlake
Democrat Aaron Paul Godfrey, 34, a physicist who has worked in the
aerospace and defense industries, who has a compelling life story of his own.
He grew up in a lower-income family in Lorain County, where his father could
not afford the regular insulin treatments needed for his diabetes until he
reached an age that qualified him for Medicare. By then, according to Godfrey,
it was too late to restore his father’s health fully, and his father died of
complications relating to the disease, a decline that also meant Godfrey had to
leave his Ph.D. program at the University of Toledo to help care for his father
and provide for the family.
Godfrey
is earnest and well-versed on technical issues in energy policy, where despite
his strong support for the Icebreaker wind energy project on Lake Erie, he also
sees a role for nuclear power to keep the lights on for now. However, he needs
more political seasoning and to moderate partisanship that causes him to stake
out narrow and unachievable positions.
Anthony
Gonzalez is a refreshing example in a U.S. House that seems to have become
untethered from the people. He’s a congressional representative who wants to be
a doer, not a speech-maker or grandstander, and who is working in a focused
manner to achieve solutions that work for more Americans.
He
deserves reelection in the kangaroo-shaped 16th Congressional
District, which picks up parts of Cuyahoga, Medina, Summit, Portage and Stark
counties and all of Wayne County.
In the Nov. 3 election, voters in the 16th
Congressional District in Ohio should return Anthony Gonzalez to Congress for a
second term. Early voting starts Oct. 6.
The two candidates for Ohio’s
16th Congressional District -- incumbent U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, a Rocky
River Republican, and physicist Aaron Paul Godfrey, a Westlake Democrat -- were
interviewed by the editorial board of The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com on
Sept. 23, 2020, as part of the editorial board’s endorsement process. Listen
to audio of this interview below.
About our editorials: Editorials express the view of
the editorial
board of cleveland.com and
The Plain Dealer -- the senior leadership and editorial-writing staff. As is
traditional, editorials are unsigned and intended to be seen as the voice of
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