Former Ohio House Speaker William Batchelder dies at 79

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — William Batchelder, a longtime state lawmaker and influential conservative leader in Ohio, died Saturday. He was 79.

House Speaker Bob Cupp confirmed Batchelder’s passing in a statement Saturday evening. He did not mention a cause of death.

“Whether he was working in the ‘People’s House’ to solve the great challenges of the day or in mentoring a new legislator or young staffer, his impact was positive and lasting,” Cupp said.

The son of a prosecutor and county Republican Party chairman, Batchelder first won his northeast Ohio district in 1968, at age 25. The Medina Republican served as House speaker during his final years in office. Term limits forced him to retire in December 2014. He left holding the second-longest tenure in the Ohio House at 38 years.

To Batchelder, serving in the House was the pinnacle of his public service, though he also spent time as a common pleas and a state appeals court judge.

“I’ve always said the Ohio House of Representatives is the highest office there is,” Batchelder told The Associated Press in an interview shortly before his exit from the House. “I mean, we can really deal with problems. I’ve been involved so often when we were there.”

One such time was in 1985. Then-Democratic Gov. Richard Celeste tapped him for his financial expertise when Ohio faced a crisis in its savings and loan industry. Batchelder helped write legislation to solve it but declined to vote for it on philosophical grounds: He cringed at government intervention.

With his signature dark-rimmed glasses and seersucker suits, Batchelder would often weave history lessons into legislative debate or conversations with reporters. He would frequently pull from his extensive knowledge of the state Constitution or Ohio Revised Code. He also liked invoke his favorite Ohioans, former President Ronald Reagan or 18th century economist Adam Smith, author of “The Wealth of Nations.”

Despite his success on the state level, Congress never really appealed to Batchelder. “The process in Washington is obviously screwed up,” he told AP.

Batchelder exited the House after helping to bolster the GOP majority. Republicans secured a record 65 seats in the 99-member chamber in the 2014 elections.

That was quite the shift from the more than 20 years Batchelder spent in the minority, most in the iron grasp of a man simply called “Mr. Speaker” — Vern Riffe, a Wheelersburg Democrat. Batchelder, who was then a member of the staunchly conservative “caveman caucus,” felt so left out of the process that he once wore a dog muzzle on the House floor.

Former Rep. Bob Hagan, a Youngstown Democrat, has said he saw similarities in the two speakers’ approaches, contending Batchelder took few Democratic bills seriously.

“But he was always gentlemanly. He was always respectful as he screwed you over,” Hagan said of his Republican colleague as the two wrapped up their tenures in the House. Both men served together for more than 20 years in the Legislature and disagreed on almost all policy matters.