Never letting losses get you down — A Conversation with Governor Ted Strickland
By Sohini Mukherjee
While great leaders may emerge from any walk of life, those from humble beginnings often have the most empathy for those most vulnerable in our society. This is true of Ted Strickland — as the son of a steelworker from Appalachia, one of nine children living in a “chicken shack,” he never imagined he would be able to go to college, let alone serve in Congress. However, with encouragement from his family and teachers, he became the first in his family to pursue higher education, going on to serve as an ordained United Methodist Minister and a university professor. Trained as a psychologist, he served as a consulting psychologist at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, an experience that helped set his agenda in his later political career.
He was elected to Congress in 1992, and although losing re-election in 1994, was reelected in 1996 and each subsequent congress until he became Governor in 2006. During his tenure as Ohio’s governor, he managed a state suffering from economic hardships and tackled emerging public health crises and long entrenched social issues. He left office in 2011, becoming a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at Harvard University, and also served as a United States Alternate Delegate to the 68th United Nations General Assembly. Governor Strickland spoke candidly to the Voices in Leadership audience at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health on Governing and Mental Health Policy: Addiction, Poverty, Guns and Prisons, explaining to Dr. John E. McDonough, Professor of Public Health Practice in the Department of Health Policy & Management, how he never let his losses get him down. Reflecting on his long public service, he said,
“If I’ve learned anything in public life, it’s that you’ve got to be persistent and you’ve got to be resilient. And if you desire to do something, you never give up.”
Opioids — A Slow Moving Crisis and the Need for Justice Reform
In the midst of the ongoing national opioid crisis, Governor Strickland’s experiences lent him a unique perspective, given that his district in the mid-1990s was ‘ground zero’ for opioid use and abuse. He relayed the shocking and heartbreaking scene in Ohio of medical malpractice and abuse, describing the “pill mills” all over his Congressional district that moved from community to community, saying,
“Opioid abuse was so prevalent. And I’m glad its now recognized. But it took it a long, long time. And this scourge…has been centered in certain areas of the country. And one area has been the Appalachian area…where there has been lack of treatment available.”
In order to tackle this then-emerging problem, Governor Strickland mobilized the Ohio Prescription Drug Task Force, pulling together key stakeholders in law enforcement, the physician community, and the community of faith, to come up with recommendations for the ongoing problem.
Governor Strickland highlighted the connection between the opioid epidemic and other public health issues and the correctional system, something that he has a special connection with having worked for ten years in a maximum-security institution. He emphasized that the country was overdue for criminal justice reform at both the state and federal level,
“You cannot return 25 years to a person. And so our criminal justice system…is in need of reform. In my judgement, we lock up too many people for too long a period of time. And this is a system that needs to be reformed significantly. And I was hopeful that could happen at the federal level.”
Making Hard Decisions and Getting Things Done
Governor Strickland spoke about the difficulties he faced during the economic collapse, when he lay awake at night worried about the people he met who were facing financial distress. When expanding the services that could be provided through Medicaid, he kept his constituents in mind with every ‘gut-wrenching’ decision to cut something from the budget. For example, after meeting a woman who could not afford her oxygen, he expanded Medicaid as an optional service for in-home oxygen care — he refused to deprive anyone of the basic right to breathe. Despite the hard choices at the state level, he appreciated the role he played as Governor, saying,
“Not only did we create schools, we created jobs in the process. And you can’t do that when you’re a legislator. You’re one of many. But when you’re a governor, you can actually make decisions that have tangible results that you can see. And that’s a major difference between being a legislator and being an executive.”
Moving Forward
Despite the many successful moments in his career, Governor Strickland did not shy away from relaying the lessons he learned when he did not achieve what he set out to do. Most recently, Governor Strickland lost the race for the United States Senate in 2016 against Senator Rob Portman, and highlighted his concerns about unregulated money in politics, saying,
“I do think the country is facing a difficult set of circumstances. The Supreme Court basically has said that money is speech. And I think that’s a problem because if you’ve got a lot of money, you’ve got a lot more speech than the average person.”
Despite these difficulties, Governor Strickland shared his belief that “things are getting better,” citing his own story of rising from “the chicken shack to the Ohio Governor’s residence.” He encouraged us to not let the losses get us down, saying,
“There are ups and downs in progress…And I think we are seeing real progress over time in spite of the perhaps temporary frustrations that we feel now.”
For more from the Voices in Leadership (@VoicesHSPH) series at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health (@HarvardHSPH), visit www.hsph.harvard.edu/voices.
Story by Sohini Mukherjee, a second year student in the Master of Science program in Global Health and Population at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, interested in gender equity, maternal health, and health policy and governance.
