Oct. 20 – Warren County voters will choose between two candidates from Hamilton County on Nov. 5 when electing a member of Congress.
Greg Landsman of Cincinnati is seeking re-election against Orlando Sonza of Springfield Twp. in the 1st District of the U.S. House of Representatives, which includes all of Warren County and much of the southern and eastern portions of Hamilton County.
Landsman, a Democrat, was a Cincinnati city councilman when he defeated longtime Republican incumbent Steve Chabot two years ago.
Sonza, a Republican, sought the Senate seat of Ohio’s 9th District in Hamilton County that year and lost to Cincinnati Democrat Catherine Ingram, a three-term member of the Ohio House, for an open seat.
Landsman, 47, is a former public school teacher. He was director of Faith Based and Community Initiatives and led Ohio’s efforts to help churches and synagogues provide education and food programs, according to his website.
Landsman also helped run the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center before working as executive director of the StrivePartnership, an education advocacy group.
He received a bachelor’s degree from Ohio University and a master’s degree from Harvard Divinity School. Landsman credits his work on the Preschool Promise initiative and was elected to council in 2017.
“I will be part of a new generation of leaders who bring us back to normal in our politics, where we stand up to the extremes” and where “pragmatism and bipartisanship dominate our politics.”
Sonza, 33, is an attorney and executive director of the Hamilton County Veterans Service Commission. He earned a bachelor’s degree from the United States Military Academy at West Point, a master’s degree in taxation from the University of Cincinnati and a law degree from Georgetown University.
Sonza served as an infantry officer and U.S. Army finance officer with the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, Georgia.
According to his website, he was also a Certified Public Accountant at Ernst & Young and interned at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he worked in the criminal and tax division.
“My professional and personal background… give me insight and ideas that can help improve the lives of those I would serve and represent in Congress,” Sonza said.
Different booths
In interviews with this news organization, both candidates said economic and immigration issues are top concerns but have offered vastly different approaches to addressing them.
Landsman wants to rewrite the tax code and says change is long overdue because it favors the wealthy. Sonza supports reducing government size and spending and renewing tax cuts that Congress approved in 2017.
Landsman supports an immigration bill that failed several months ago due to insufficient bipartisan support. Sonza, a Filipino resident whose father is a naturalized U.S. citizen, said the proposal is too lenient.
They both talk about “common sense” gun rights reform. Landsman said he wants universal background checks. Sonza said he supports strong Second Amendment rights for “law-abiding citizens.”
But Landsman and Sonza are on opposite sides of the aisle on abortion. The procedure was legalized nationwide 51 years ago when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in its favor. The current Supreme Court has overturned that decision, ruling that abortion must be decided on a state-by-state basis.
Landsman said he saw Roe vs. Wade, wants to codify the landmark 1973 case. Sonza said he prefers states that have jurisdiction and is “pro-life” but supports exceptions for rape, incest and the life of the mother.
Landsman’s priorities
Landsman said his top legislative issues include fixing “the parts of the economy that are broken,” including the tax code.
“Right now, the tax code — and it’s been decades in the making — is rigged for the super-rich billionaires and big corporations,” he said.
It needs to be revised “so that it works first and foremost for working people in the middle class,” Landsman added.
He supports expanding the child tax credit, relief for small businesses and expanding housing options. Landsman said he supported an unsuccessful bill to “give working people a serious tax break” and called the child tax credit “very successful in causing almost half of child poverty.”
Congress can help families and businesses in need, but it will have to “show a lot more courage and go after these companies and start punishing companies for price gouging,” Landsman said.
Federal lawmakers need to “start looking at places where there is not enough competitiveness or where capitalism is not as healthy as it should be,” he added.
Landsman also said he would work to end “voter suppression across the country” and focus on “restoring freedom, reproductive freedom” and stopping “all kinds of other really un-American things that are hurt a lot of people. have died.”
Landsman said he would vote for legislation allowing abortion nationwide because “politicians should refrain from telling people what they can and cannot do with their bodies.”
Most people “don’t like it when the government comes and tells us what to do, especially if it turns deadly, which they have,” he said. “And it is, and that’s not the business of state politicians. It’s not the business of federal politicians. It’s the business of women and their doctors, period.”
The bipartisan immigration legislation “will dramatically increase the number of border agents. It will dramatically reduce the number of people crossing the border,” Landsman said.
“Because the asylum procedure lasts from six years to six months and fewer people will submit an application,” he said. “And when they do, they will be filing from home, their home country.”
Sonza’s priorities
Securing the southern borders is a priority for Sonza, second only to the economy, he said.
Sonza said he supports a “strong, legal” immigration process and that federal officials should “stop the bleeding at the southern border,” which allows millions of immigrants to enter the U.S. without thorough vetting.
The massive processing of immigrants at the border in recent years has led to a “surge in crime that we are seeing in our communities,” he said.
These practices have fueled the wave of a “fentanyl epidemic” in southwestern Ohio, as well as an increase in crime, Sonza said, adding that he has prosecuted such cases in Hamilton County.
“That has to stop,” he said. “I will always be the strongest advocate in this race for maintaining a strong legal immigration system because I am a product of a legal immigration system.”
“We must close the southern border and give our border agents exactly what they need to do their jobs,” Sonza said
Economically, cutting federal spending to reduce the size of government and preserving the tax cuts passed seven years ago are focuses to help the middle class, he said.
“It makes no sense for the government to just continue to spend and spend gasoline on an open fire that is our inflationary environment,” Sonza said. “We need to make sure we keep as much money in the pockets of everyday Americans as possible.”
Allowing the tax cuts to expire would hurt small business growth, he said.
“We want to send them the message that we support you. We believe in what you are doing to strengthen our American economy,” Sonza said.
Restoring international perception of the US by ensuring a strong military is also a key issue, he said.
“We have to continue to protect that strength to ensure that we have that strength as we give our U.S. military exactly what they need to do their job so that we are prepared for the conflicts when they arise,” Sonza said.
On abortion, Sonza says he is “pragmatic” on the issue, noting that he favors exceptions.
“The majority of Americans are not for extremes,” he said. “The majority of Ohioans on this issue are not for extremes.”
Gun rights
Landsman and Sonza both see the need for gun reform to make communities safer, but they differ on the restrictions.
Landsman said he supports legally raising the age to purchase firearms, establishing universal background checks and making “weapons of war” — rapid-fire weapons with large magazines — illegal.
“And that means standing up to the big gun manufacturers and saying, we’re going to introduce fundamental, but hugely impactful, new rules,” he said.
“People will obviously be able to keep their guns,” Landsman added.
He said law enforcement should be empowered “to work with judges to get guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them because they’re going to do something bad.”
Sonza said he is a strong supporter of the Second Amendment, but people with serious mental illness or violent criminal records should not have access to firearms.
“We need to make sure our children are safe in their schools,” he said. “We want to make sure we have plans in place that allow the administration and parents to intervene” to prevent school tragedies.
Sonza said he wants law enforcement to be equipped to protect communities and add more school staff.
“We want to make sure we support the people whose job it is to protect us,” he said.
