[ Legislative Leaders ]
Keith Faber ’91,
JODI MILLER
president of the Ohio Senate, talks about the gridlock in Washington, D.C. and the art of negotiation in legislation in his office at the Ohio Statehouse on Oct. 15.
Keith Faber on … LEADERSHIP: It requires the patience of Job and the conviction of Solomon.
THE TEA PARTY: People who have the courage of their convictions and the desire to get involved with their government.
THE OHIO CONSTITUTIONAL MODERNIZATION COMMISSION: A work in progress. Much opportunity, but it needs to be a little bit more proactive. They’ve been in place for a year and a half, and they’ve organized. That’s it?
HIS REPUBLICAN HERO: Ronald Reagan. He came at a time when the nation needed bucking up. It needed pride. It needed to focus on America’s innate greatness, and Reagan was able to conceptualize, verbalize, and be the representation that our greatest days were ahead of us. Frankly, he was just the embodiment of the American idea.
YOUR DEMOCRATIC HERO: Probably (John F.) Kennedy. The concept that a young person can make a difference. His vision of trying to spur people onto greatness not for themselves but for a greater good.
YOUR MOST VIVID LAW SCHOOL MEMORY: Probably being in Professor (Douglas J.) Whaley’s class. He was a very colorful professor, and it was an exciting time to learn. There’s also a group of law school colleagues, about 15 of us, who hung out and did stuff on the weekends and studied together. Those friends from law school are in my best memories. 54
T H E O H I O S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y
for the Cleveland school voucher program. “That’s a scary experience,” he recalled. “Your bill’s going to the Supreme Court, and for all you know Scalia says something like, ‘If this dummy hadn’t badly executed this particular paragraph, we could uphold this voucher bill.’ We were the first in the country to clear the Supreme Court, and that was exciting.” When asked what he plans to do after leaving office at the end of 2014, he makes lighthearted jokes about tending to the fields of his 182-acre farm in Medina. The last time term limits forced him out of the House, Batchelder sat on the benches of the Medina County Common Pleas Court and the Ninth District Court of Appeals. Or perhaps he will return to the classroom. He has taught at The University of Akron and Cleveland State University, and he likens the relationship between students and professors to a caucus. “My father lived to 96, and he tried cases until he was 93. He tried three jury trials that year,” Batchelder said. “We’re kind of hyper people.” The jokes aside, Batchelder believes firmly in contributing where one can; it’s what brought him back to the House in 2007. “When you see what can happen to free societies – take the case of the Roman Republic – you have to say: Jiminy Christmas! We’re really in a very special time and a special place, and it behooves people who are willing to work hard to go forward to do so – to see to it that the system is passed on.” The Senate Mediator It’s a little after 7 a.m. on Monday morning, and Faber is steering his car past the fields where soybeans and corn were just harvested. More than 100 miles lie between his home in Celina and his office in Columbus, and he makes the most of the two-hour drive by taking calls and thinking of the week ahead. He often jokes that serving as president of the Ohio Senate is the only part-time job he’s ever had that consumes 65 hours a week. The Ohio Senate is part-time in the sense that it gathers for session a couple of times each week. But as the leader of the Senate, Faber maintains a jam-packed schedule behind the scenes, broken into 15-minute increments that start with breakfast meetings in the morning and end with evening caucus meetings that can stretch to 11 p.m. There are clear differences between serving in the senate and as its leader. From a public policy perspective, Faber has to look at how issues will affect 11.4 million Ohioans instead of just his 360,000 constituents. He must interface regularly with Batchelder and Kasich on those issues.