After a quarter of a century, Dave Yost is leaving elected office in Ohio early next month, for a job with a conservative law firm.
The Ohio Attorney General, who went from a career as a journalist at the now-defunct Columbus Citizen-Journal to the administrations of Columbus mayor Dana "Buck" Rinehart and Gov. George Voinovich. In 1999, he was appointed Delaware County auditor and then elected county prosecutor. From there he won two terms as state auditor after dropping a run for attorney general against Mike DeWine in 2010. In 2018, he won his first of two terms as AG.
Yost had hoped to move from the AG’s office to becoming governor. But in an interview for "The State of Ohio", Yost said "it just wasn't meant to be". He ended his campaign last May when tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy was endorsed by the Ohio Republican Party and President Trump. He added that Republican politicians usually praise competition.
"They will preach that until the cows come home, until they might get competition in a primary. And then it's practically the end of the world and a Judas kiss," Yost said. "I support primaries. I've had a couple in my career and think that this one would have been helpful to Ohio and to the party, and didn't happen. And I had the trifecta of a billionaire self-funder, a Trump endorsement and a state where he wins by ten points. And then finally the party ended up falling along with him."
Yost said he always intended to serve out his term, but he got "this great opportunity" with the Alliance Defending Freedom. But he said he didn't leave seven months early so Auditor Keith Faber, the Republican nominee for attorney general, would be appointed to the job, starting a cascading effect that could have allowed Gov. Mike DeWine to appoint all four statewide executive officeholders. In fact, Yost said he opposed that idea, though he supports Faber for AG.
"The electorate is in a foul mood, you might have noticed. And it was my judgment—and I expressed this to the governor when I tendered my resignation—that ascending to the incumbency through an appointment would not help us in a difficult year," Yost said.
As AG, Yost has launched multi-agency operations against sex trafficking and anti-trust investigations into Google and Facebook. He filed multiple lawsuits against actions by the Biden administration and joined other Republican AGs in supporting the Trump administration, including a brief challenging the counting of ballots in the 2020 election. He’s defended Ohio’s six-week abortion ban following the approval of the reproductive rights amendment he opposed, and drew national attention when he raised questions about the legitimacy of the story of a ten year old rape survivor who had to go to Indiana to get an abortion when the procedure was illegal in Ohio in 2022.
He’s also known for his musical performances, at the Republican National Convention and at rallies and other events.
Yost turned especially thoughtful when asked about what he wants his legacy to be, saying politicians have become too arrogant and self-interested.
"The elected leader's job is to be the servant of all, to be the least important who is working for everybody else. And we've lost that sense of of service somehow. And we now have people competing for attention," Yost said.
"We at least nodded to the idea that humility was a virtue. We at least nodded to the idea that if you were going to self promote, you needed to do it softly. Now it's just every day, all day long, everywhere, all at once. And I think that it's rotting the foundation of our society by having a rulership governing class that acts like that."
Yost's last day as attorney general is June 7. Ohio Department of Public Safety director Andy Wilson will then take over as AG.
