Gov. Mike DeWine has picked Ohio Department of Public Safety Director Andy Wilson to fill in the rest of the term of Attorney General Dave Yost.
Andy Wilson had been DeWine's Senior Advisor for Criminal Justice Policy in his first term. DeWine moved Wilson up to Public Safety Director in December 2022, when Tom Stickrath retired.
Yost announced last week he was leaving the AG's office to join the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom as its Vice President of Strategic Research and Innovation. Yost is term limited and wasn't running for any other office, after dropping out of the race last May.
Wilson will hold the office until January, when Yost's term expires.
"It was very important for me to make this decision quickly," DeWine told reporters in announcing his selection of Wilson. "The new attorney general, frankly, has to start conversations today with the men and women in the attorney general's office."
Wilson manages the agency overseeing the state highway patrol, the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, emergency management and other areas. When he starts as Yost leaves June 7, he’ll be in charge of law enforcement agencies and the state’s lawyer on criminal and civil matters.
"I'm coming to the attorney general's office and we're going to go, for the seven months that I'm there, we're going to go 100 miles an hour," Wilson said.
Wilson also said he plans to review all the cases the AG’s office is involved in, such as the retrial of two FirstEnergy executives in September.
"My plan is to sit down with the staff that is over there. I've learned through my career that trial prosecutors know the best about each and every case," Wilson said. "I'm going to go through each and every case that they have, and I'm going to evaluate each and every case on its merits."
DeWine could have appointed Auditor Keith Faber, who is running for AG. But that would have set off a chain reaction, as Secretary of State Frank LaRose is running for auditor, treasurer Robert Sprague won the Republican primary for secretary of state on Tuesday, and former Rep. Jay Edwards also just won the GOP nomination for treasurer.
"That was certainly a possibility. But frankly, when I thought about, that, it just seemed not the right thing to do," DeWine said when asked if he'd considered appointing Faber. "The idea of appointing one or maybe all of the statewide office holders, which was certainly a distinct possibility and certainly was an option, just didn't seem right to me. We have an election coming. We're only six months away from the election. For me to step in as governor and appoint literally every single statewide office holder just didn't look right to me, didn't seem right to me, didn't seem like something that I should do."
Yost had planned to run for attorney general in 2010, but left that race as DeWine got into it. Yost ran for auditor instead, and he and DeWine both won. Yost served two terms in that office before he was elected to his first term as attorney general in 2018.
