Ohio House 46th: Dansack (D) Gets On the Ballot

Congratulations to Ohio House 46th District candidate Mark Dansack (D-Monclova Township), who succeeded in getting himself on the November general election ballot through a write-in campaign.

Dansack, who is 44, earned a B.S. in engineering and an M.P.A. in Public Administration from the University of Toledo. He worked for nearly eighteen years at General Mills, Inc. in Toledo, until the plant was closed in 2002. He now works at the law firm of Gallon, Takacs, Boissoneault, & Schaffer in Sylvania Township. Dansack previously lived in Oregon, Ohio, where he served as President and Treasurer of the Oregon Democratic Club and as chairman and treasurer for local campaigns. He and his wife Heather have two daughters. The are members of St. Joan of Arc Parish in Toledo.

Dansack decided to run after seeing that no Democrat had come forward, because he believes "the stakes are too high not to challenge the status quo." Dansack says that his campaign "will concentrate on ethical concerns spawned by 12 years of one party rule in Ohio; educational funding reform; job creation and retention; and the retraining of displaced workers."

Inspiration to run also came from speaking daily to injured workers, clients of the firm where he works, who are incensed that their benefits will be cut before there is a resolution regarding the failed investments and scandal within the Bureau of Workers’ Compensation. Also, the General Assembly's failure to reform the education funding process, declared unconstitutional a decade ago, fueled his candidacy. Dansack feels passionately about the need to shift the brunt of the funding burden away from property owners who are increasingly asked to bear responsibility, and knows from experience of the need for effective programming to retrain workers, as he was one of five-hundred employees displaced when a major manufacturer left the Toledo area:

"Ohio continues to lag behind the rest of the country with respect to employment as thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past five years. After 12 years of Republican dominance, controlling the executive and legislative branches, we continue to fall behind and there seems to be no sense of urgency from the current leadership. Ohioans deserve better."

Dansack is shocked by the recent passage of workers’ compensation legislative "reforms" that were railroaded through by the GOP-controlled House and State Senate:

"You would think that the legislature would at least wait for the fall-out from the failed investments and 'coingate' scandal before attempting to balance the Bureau’s budget on the backs of injured workers. I’m obviously more concerned with injured workers getting the care and compensation they are entitled to than seeing well-heeled insiders walk off with the public’s money. ... People I talk with every day, including Republicans, Democrats, and independents, are outraged that while they are working hard and playing by the rules, they continue to fall behind while the politically connected are taken care of."

Dansack faces first-term incumbent Mark J. Wagoner, Jr. (R-Toledo), who won in 2004 with 62.03% of the vote against Nancy Patrick Greeley (D).