A mandated face mask in public did not go over well in Ohio, forcing GOP Gov. Mike DeWine to reconsider and leave it "highly recommended."
"It became clear to me that that was just a bridge too far," DeWine told ABC News' "This Week." "People were not going to accept the government telling them what to do.
"My ability to communicate to the people of Ohio frankly I thought was going to be really impeded, and we were going to get hung up on the mandatory masks for someone going in as a customer, and it just wasn't going to work," he added. "You've got to know what you can and can't do."
DeWine added the face coverings are going to remain "highly recommended," even if they are not mandated.
"At the same time we pulled this back, I said this is highly recommended," he added to host Martha Raddatz.
"But when you go into a retail store, that is the kind thing to do, because I worry and we should all worry about the folks who are stocking shelves in grocery stores, the people who are at the checkout line, who work there all day. We've got to protect them."
When told about data suggesting Republicans are more inclined to move forward with Reopening America Again, DeWine pointed to a philosophical – not malign – difference in politics.
"Generally, Republicans are less inclined to have the government to tell them what to do," he admitted. "And that's generally how I am. I'm a conservative Republican. We're better off not having the government tell us what to do, but we are in the health crisis.
"What we're trying to do in Ohio is to move from orders that we put out, where we have to close this, we're now in a phase – yeah, we've got a few orders out there – we're starting to pretty aggressively phase business back in, and what it's going to depend on now is how individual Ohioans react to this.
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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