Meet the Candidate: Erin Rosiello
My name is Erin Rosiello and I am running to Represent Ohio’s 62nd House District in Warren County.
A Southwest Ohio native with a family history of advocating for civil rights and social change, I grew up in Dayton, Ohio among activist, freedom-rider parents compelled to service to others and fight for civil rights. They provided me selfless examples of how ordinary citizens can bring about change.
Because of a life-altering event, I decided to run for State Representative. Several months after leaving my job with the State of Ohio, I opened a first small business and within months I was diagnosed with lung cancer. As one might imagine the circumstance required significant and hard decisions to be made about my business, marriage, home and medical treatment
As I transitioned through treatment of my cancer, I had to navigate keeping health coverage, without an income, without a business and without a spouse. I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about health insurance, medical costs and the difficulty one faces with our current “system.”
The silver lining? While battling for my life I forced take a “time-out” to concentrate on my health and safety, allowing me to reflect and re-evaluate priorities. I used this time to research on the state of our state, and I didn’t like what I found. I discovered just how corrupt and tone deaf the majority, Republican Party, has been for the last twenty years and decided that if I could battle cancer, I could certainly fight for transparency and leadership that represents the people and voters, not those who line their own wallets.
There is so much opportunity to re-imagine education finance, roll-back and implement fair taxes, enhance access to affordable healthcare, write legislation that makes sense, and elect lawmakers that care about hard working people and small businesses. I guess you could say that I am carrying my parents torch in my pursuit of public service as State Representative. It is time to fight for the voters and stop the politics.
While my concerns about fair taxes, public education, healthcare, and workers’ rights with has not changed, because of COVID-19, the virus has amplified and further exposed these issues as Ohio attempts to balance its budget. What hasn’t changed is the majority party that composes our “leadership” in Columbus, the Republican Party. COVID-19 has exposed eroded workers’ rights, like lack of paid time off, erratic unemployment, limited access to healthcare and limited choices about exposure to COVID-19 at work. Now that the majority is faced with ongoing adjustments to Ohio’s budget because of the pandemic, we see clearly their values by which programs’ funding they choose to cut.
We are at a place in time where we need all leadership to be consistent in their messaging and purpose slow the spread of the coronavirus and keeping people healthy. We need a plan for economic recovery and a path to creating good paying jobs, while also protecting our local, small businesses during the pandemic. In order to make Ohioans strong, so that we may start moving our economy in the right direction, we need to make health care more affordable and accessible to all and we must address funding our public schools in a way that is fair, constitutional, and allow public schools to be sustainable.
Ohio, now is the perfect time for change and to step back and look at Ohio’s overall Revenue problem and our state budget as, historically, in times of crisis, new narratives and policies have been established, but to do so, we need new leadership, I want to be that leader for you.
To follow Erin’s campaign, visit her website erinrosiello.com. You can also follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
