The congressman from the 16th District is Jim Renacci, a Republican elected in 2010. Renacci (Ren AY see) grew up in a working-class family outside Pittsburgh. His mother was a nurse, and his father was a railroad worker who lost his job when Renacci was eight years old. “Very early on, I understood the meaning of balancing a family budget,” he said. Renacci graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the first in his family to graduate from college. He worked for an accounting firm in Pittsburgh with nursing home clients, and in 1984, he moved to Wadsworth, Ohio, in Medina County and soon started his own chain of nursing homes. He also worked in Wadsworth’s volunteer fire department. He sold his nursing home chain and formed a company specializing in financial consulting for troubled businesses. Along the way, he accumulated a diverse portfolio of investments, including a share in the Columbus Destroyers, an Arena League football team, a concert promotion firm and several Harley-Davidson dealerships. He was elected to the Wadsworth Council in 1999, and went on to serve as mayor from 2004 to 2008. He says he was able to turn the city’s multi-million dollar deficit into a budget surplus without raising taxes by cutting costs. Read More

The congressman from the 16th District is Jim Renacci, a Republican elected in 2010. Renacci (Ren AY see) grew up in a working-class family outside Pittsburgh. His mother was a nurse, and his father was a railroad worker who lost his job when Renacci was eight years old. “Very early on, I understood the meaning of balancing a family budget,” he said. Renacci graduated from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, the first in his family to graduate from college. He worked for an accounting firm in Pittsburgh with nursing home clients, and in 1984, he moved to Wadsworth, Ohio, in Medina County and soon started his own chain of nursing homes. He also worked in Wadsworth’s volunteer fire department. He sold his nursing home chain and formed a company specializing in financial consulting for troubled businesses. Along the way, he accumulated a diverse portfolio of investments, including a share in the Columbus Destroyers, an Arena League football team, a concert promotion firm and several Harley-Davidson dealerships. He was elected to the Wadsworth Council in 1999, and went on to serve as mayor from 2004 to 2008. He says he was able to turn the city’s multi-million dollar deficit into a budget surplus without raising taxes by cutting costs.

As the 2010 election approached, Renacci decided to challenge Democrat John Boccieri, who had won the 16th District seat just two years earlier after longtime Republican incumbent Ralph Regula retired. Boccieri had served in the Ohio Legislature, was a former professional baseball player and an Air Force Reservist who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He had secured the seat with a respectable victory of 55%-45% in 2008, and on the surface, he did not seem an easy incumbent to beat.

But Boccieri had voted for President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus bill and for the Democrats’ cap-and-trade bill to curb carbon emissions. He had initially opposed the health care overhaul bill when it passed the House in November 2009, but when the final version came up for a vote in 2010, he said in a televised appearance with constituents who had health care problems that he would vote for the bill. His record made him vulnerable in what turned out to be a highly favorable year for Republicans and their claims that Democratic policies in Washington were making a bad economy even worse.

With help from national Republicans, Renacci campaigned on a theme that Obama administration policies were killing job creation and stifling the growth of small business. “We have a government that believes we can spend ourselves to prosperity,” Renacci said during a debate with Boccieri. “That just isn’t going to happen.” Democrats referred to Renacci as the “millionaire CEO” who “made his fortune off the government and taxpayers.” And they criticized him for a dispute over taxes in 2000 with Ohio authorities in which Renacci accepted a settlement requiring him to pay $1.3 million. Renacci spent $2.4 million on his campaign, but Boccieri remained competitive on that score with $2.1 million.

On Election Day, it wasn’t even close. Renacci won 52%-41%, carrying every county; the closest was Stark County where he led 48%-46%. He returned to the GOP column a seat that had been held by only two members, both Republicans, in the 58 years from 1950 to 2008.