Mundy, Latta vie for House seat

FINDLAY — Democrat Keith Mundy is challenging Republican Bob Latta's bid for reelection in the Nov. 5 general election to represent Ohio's 5th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. The 5th District includes Hancock, Putnam, Wood, Seneca, Henry, Paulding, Van Wert, Mercer, Crawford, Huron and Lorain counties and most of Wyandot County. U.S. House members serve two-year terms. Latta, 68, of Bowling Green, is in his eighth full term representing the 5th District in the U.S. House. Keith Mundy Mundy, 74, of Parma, resides outside the 5th District. He would have to move into the district if he would be elected. He said he is running for the 5th District seat to give voters a choice. Mundy has a varied background in sales, and in the business of selling video games and pinball machines. He owned a search engine in the 1990s; and then owned CourtDelivery.com, which did research for law firms, served subpoenas for them and provided other services, including publishing a newsletter for labor law firms on the activities of the National Labor Relations Board. He operated CourtDelivery.com for 18 years before retiring. "Bob (Latta) is like a 4%-er lifetime on the environment, which to me is a major issue. He votes for the rich, the corporations and the military-industrial complex," Mundy said. "He opposes taxing businesses. He's against consumer protection and funding of education and environmental protection." He criticized Latta's voting record on labor rights and higher wages. "He fights against those things," Mundy said. "He doesn't want there to be a higher minimum wage." "We should be taxing the wealthy," he said. "Take a look at big oil. Look at the subsidies they take. … Corporate welfare is twice what we give the people. And yet Republicans still complain about what we give to the people, but yet they'll give even more to the corporations. And then we don't tax them enough. We should be taxing the living daylights out of them." Mundy has his own tax proposal: Make everyone's first $40,000 in earnings free from federal taxation. "You still (would) have to pay into Social Security and Medicare and also your state (and local income tax)," he said. "That would free up roughly $300 to $400 per month for the working poor. And it would benefit 100% of Americans equally." He favors Medicare for all. Mundy said that much of the immigration and border problem could be fixed through more supportive policy toward Central America. "If you go down to Central America and see what climate change is doing to those countries and you take a look at what we've done with our banana republics, the way we've set up countries down there to benefit our corporations … we don't treat them well," Mundy said. "They don't get treated well by their own government and of course (the foreign governments) are supported by our own government. We can fix 80% of the border problem by fixing Central America, but nobody wants to talk about that." On the issue of women's rights and abortion, Mundy said he is pro-choice. "I don't think as a man it's my right to tell a woman what to do with her body," he said. "I'm going to defend her rights to do what she feels she has to, to make her life productive and to make her happy. "We're talking about more than just abortion. We're talking about healthcare when you have a bad pregnancy," Mundy said. "Even if they want the child, things go wrong and they have to be dealt with." Bob Latta Latta is emphatically pro-life. "I've always been pro-life. We want to do everything we can to promote that," Latta said. "I think that's important." Latta favors reducing federal spending. Overspending by the Democrats caused the high inflation, which has made groceries so expensive, he said. He expressed concern that interest expense on the national debt keeps growing. "We've got to get this in check," he said. "We're at $35 trillion today in debt, and what we're going to have to see unfortunately is next year this country is going to be paying a trillion dollars just to pay the interest on the debt, so interest payments on the debt will be the number two (second highest) item that we have to pay" in the federal budget. Latta criticized the Energy Department's pause on pending approvals of exports of liquefied natural gas. The Biden administration has said the pending shipments' impact on climate change must be analyzed. Currently approved exports will be unaffected. Latta said the move could come at the cost of jobs and purchasing power. Secondly, exports of natural gas keep allies free of having to buy Russian energy and financing President Vladimir Putin's war in Ukraine, he said. Latta said he continues to work to help the U.S. meet its rapidly growing electricity needs. He has cited reports that business' data centers, which store data and support applications and activities, are using increasing amounts of electricity. Data center construction is expected to boom in the coming years, and the capacity of the data centers is forecast to grow. "These data centers that are coming online, you're looking at between a 4½% to 6% increase on top of what we already have by the end of next year, maybe 8%," Latta said. "So we have to have more energy-producing power because Americans are demanding more and more of it." It's not just a problem for the data centers and the affected businesses. "The problem you run into, if they start drawing down power for them, we have less power going into the grid (for other users of electricity)," he said. Latta has worked to increase availability of nuclear power — which is carbon-free — through smaller, "advanced modular" reactors. An advanced modular reactor the size of a large conference room could supply the needs of an entire city, he said. Latta favors stricter control of the border and immigration. "Over 10 million people have crossed that border since (Biden's) been president," Latta said. "He opened up the border on day 1. You have to have an orderly process in this country, and we don't have one." He blamed the 74,000 fentanyl overdose deaths which occurred in 2023 on lax border policy.