Kilboy challenges incumbent Joyce to represent Ohio's 14th Congressional District

Voters in northern Portage County will go to the polls Nov. 8 to choose who to send to represent them in the United States House of Representatives.

Navy Veteran Matt Kilboy is running to unseat Republican incumbent Dave Joyce in the 14th Congressional District.

The district also includes Lake, Geauga, Trumbull and Ashtabula counties.

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Joyce, a lifelong Ohio resident, has represented the 14th Congressional District since first winning the seat in 2013.

After earning his law degree from the University of Dayton, Joyce worked as a public defender, first in Cuyahoga County and then in Geauga County. In 1988, he was elected Geauga County prosecutor, a position he held until 2012.

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According to his campaign website, Joyce was a co-founder of the Bipartisan Task Force to End Sexual Violence in the 115th Congress and is the vice chair of the Addiction, Treatment and Recovery Caucus.

He also serves on the House Committee on Appropriations, which looks into how tax dollars are utilized for federal spending.

Because Ohio was one of the states most impacted by the opioid epidemic, Joyce works to make sure that federal funding provided by Congress is used to fight addiction and support localized efforts to combat the crisis, according to his campaign website.

During his time as a county prosecutor, he prosecuted one of the region's more high profile criminal cases. In 2012, Joyce prosecuted Thomas Lane after Lane shot six of his fellow Chardon High School class mates, killing three of them.

Challenger Matt Kilboy is a Ravenna native who earned his bachelor's degree in nursing at Kent State University in 2006 and a master's degree in education from North Carolina State University in 2009.

From 2011 to 2019, he served as in the United States' Navy Nurse Corps as a commissioned Ensign.

According to his campaign website, Kilboy returned to KSU in 2014 to earn his master's in public administration with a focus on public policy. This year, he completed his doctorate in nursing practice at Ohio State University.

In 2021, Kilboy opened Kilboy Consulting Group, LLC, a firm providing consultations to health care organizations.

Joyce declined requests for a phone interview. Information relating to his stance on the issues has been gathered from his campaign website.

About the candidates

Kilboy said that there are a number of reasons that he decided to run for office.

"I served roughly a decade in the Navy," he said, "and this is kind of a continuation of my service to country and community."

The unrest he witnessed in the nation's Capitol also affected his decision to run.

Kilboy said he was in Washington D.C. working for the federal government when the previous administration tear gassed peaceful protestors on June 1, 2020, before then-president Trump had his photo taken in front of St. John's Church.

"I was also in Washington, D.C. the day that domestic terrorists had stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the government," Kilboy said. "I've seen this country start to head down kind of a scary path, but I couldn't sit idly by. Voting and activism wasn't enough for me. I had to do more, so me doing more is running for office."

In his conversations with voters, Kilboy said that one of the things that he's heard from people is a concern that American democracy is gravely imperiled, citing the June overturn of Roe v. Wade.

"They're worried about their rights being stripped away," Kilboy said.

He's heard voters express concerns that protections of voting rights will be stripped by the Supreme Court as well.

If elected, he said hopes to cool the political climate by working in a bipartisan nature to restore civil discussion in American governance. Kilboy said that he doesn't think he can do that all on his own, but he's willing to start the process.

"At the end of the day, generally speaking, most Americans want the same thing," he said. "It just we don't always on how we get there."

Joyce could not be reached for comment on why he decided to run for re-election, though his campaign site says, "He considers it a great honor to represent the people of Northeast Ohio and serve the communities where he was born and raised."

The Economy

The economy has been a major topic of discussion during this year's election cycle, and it's no different in the 14th Congressional District.

According to Joyce's campaign website, Joyce believes in an approach to the economy that enables employers and workers to succeed.

"As we work to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic," his site says, "my focus remains on reducing inflation by supporting fiscally responsible policies, cutting red tape, spurring economic growth, creating good-paying jobs, and supporting jobs-training programs to give workers career-ready skills for the jobs of today and those that will exist in the future."

Kilboy said we've learned through the pandemic that "our global supply chain is pretty fragile." To avoid further economic hardship, Kilboy said he'd like to bring manufacturing jobs back to the country from overseas.

"We could do that through a number of things," he said, "such as what we saw in the CHIPS Act — encouraging domestic companies to produce goods...in this country."

He said he also believes that breaking up American monopolies is important. Kilboy uses the example of the meat-packing industry.

When the pandemic hit, he said, it crippled the ability of the meat-packing industry to ship food across the country because there are only several major players nationwide.

"We've got to break them up," he said. "First of all, monopolies are not beneficial to the people."

He'd like to see provisions in the upcoming 2023 farm bill that provides resources to farmers that enables them to form co-ops or create their own meat-packing operations. This would help people access local food and drive the cost of food down, he said.

"Obviously, that's just one example," said Kilboy. "There's numerous monopolies out there — everything from food, health care, to media such as print media, T.V., social media — there's a very few companies with very few people that control a lot of aspects of our lives in terms of goods and services in this country."

The environment

Climate change, Kilboy said, is something that's on the mind of middle-aged and older voters.

"They're worried about the environment and the future of their planet for their children and their grandchildren," he said. "I think we're already seeing the Congress and the administration take steps in a positive direction with the passing of the Inflation Reduction Act, which saw a number of pieces in there that fuel the transition from fossil fuels to green energy."

It's important to double down on those policies, he said.

"I think we need to keep pushing forward for other alternatives. I don't think we should just rest on the potential of moving towards electric vehicles or relying on wind or solar. I think we've got to keep pushing for further future sources of energy, green energy," said Kilboy.

A page dedicated to Joyce's stance on energy says that he supports a comprehensive approach for independent domestic energy production free from outside influence from countries like Russia.

The page says that Ohio's natural gas and oil industry has led on "clean, safe and reliable energy production for years."

"Between 2005 and 2015 Ohio’s power sector had the biggest carbon emissions reduction of any state in the country," the site reads, "contributing to America’s largest reduction of emissions in the history of conventional energy over the past decade. All of that was accomplished while, on average, lowering energy costs for American households and utilizing American energy like natural gas."

Abortion and health care

Creating and passing legislation to protect abortion for the entire country is an important step to guaranteeing equitable access, Kilboy said.

"I believe if you leave it up to the states, then the health care you get will be determined by the ZIP code you live in," he said. "I think the legislation should simply allow health care providers to follow the science and research in terms of what's best for the patient."

As a health care provider himself, Kilboy said that it's his job to provide information to patients to enable them to make informed decisions about their own care.

"It's research and evidence that drives those decisions," Kilboy said.

On Joyce's site, there's a page dedicated to his stance on health care. It says that he believes that all Americans should have access to affordable health care.

"I firmly believe the best way to achieve that is to provide Americans with a patient-centered health care system in which patients and doctors can make decisions without interference from the federal government," the site reads. "Rest assured, I will continue fighting until Ohioans have affordable and accessible health care of their own choosing, not the federal government’s."

In a statement released following the U.S. Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe v. Wade, Joyce said was "a long overdue victory for states’ rights and the sanctity of life."

"The power to protect the unborn has been rightfully returned to the people and those they elect to represent them," he said in his statement.

The opioid crisis

Joyce's stance on the opioid crisis is laid out on his campaign website.

"As a former prosecutor and as the vice chair of the House Addiction, Treatment and Recovery Caucus, I know that in order to successfully battle the opioid crisis, we need an all-of-the-above approach that includes prevention and education efforts, promotes treatment, cracks down on illegal distribution, and enhances resources for first responders and law enforcement."

Kilboy said that his approach to combating the opioid crisis involves changing the way America has dealt with addiction over the 54-year war on drugs, a crusade started by Richard Nixon's presidential 1968 presidential campaign.

"This constant drive to lock people up and stick people in jail with stiffer penalties, it's not going to solve the problem," Kilboy said.

Instead, Kilboy said, the war on drugs should focus on mental health and addiction treatment services.

"They start using drugs and become addicted because they're escaping some kind of pain in their lives," he said.

How to Vote in the November Election

Early in-person voting and absentee mail-in voting began  Oct. 12. Early in-person voting includes the two Saturdays, the Sunday and the Monday before Election Day on Nov. 8.

Check with your local County Board of Elections to verify your polling place.

Though the deadline has passed for voter registration, you can still check your registration on the Ohio Secretary of State's website.

Contact reporter Derek Kreider at DKreider@Gannett.com

This article originally appeared on Record-Courier: Matt Kilboy challenges Dave Joyce for 14th Congressional District seat