Your desk and your personality

How messy is your desk?

Or, if that question doesn't fit your pistol, how clean is your desk?

Granted, these are personal questions. But I'll share if you will.

Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine recently shared with media outlets across the state an interesting article in The Columbus Dispatch.

The article was called "Desk-criptive decor," with a subhead of "State leaders make personal statements with office accouterments."

The Dispatch writer looked at the desks of AG DeWine, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor, Secretary of State Jon Husted, Treasurer Josh Mandel and Auditor Dave Yost.

In traditional Reader's Digest versions, here's what the Dispatch found about these state leaders and their respective desks. (The initial reports are from the Dispatch. My observations follow each entry.)

Gov. John Kasich

The governor says he doesn’t care what his office looks like.

“We have the wallpaper coming off the walls,” he said, pointing to an area where wall meets window and ragged edges of the paper don’t align.

In reality, Kasich’s office is impressive: Thirty stories up in the Riffe Center, it boasts a high ceiling and two polished desks — both all but bare.

Leaning against the shelf, on the floor, are framed photos of a golf outing last year with President Barack Obama.

Rather than show off the things in his office, he would prefer to tout the people who work there. During a 10-minute tour, he emphasized — a half-dozen times — that the space is a place not for objects but for people and ideas.

• I've been to the governor's office several times. It ain't bad. Wallpaper issues aside, it is indeed a place for people and ideas.

* * *

Attorney General Mike DeWine

The only item missing from DeWine’s 17th-floor office in the Rhodes Tower might be an apple pie. His desk is consumed with rows of unframed pictures of DeWine and his eight children, his 17 grandchildren and his wife of 40-plus years, Fran.

“If I actually want to work,” he said, “I walk into the conference room, because there’s no room to write here.”

Also on the desk is a framed photo of DeWine dancing with daughter Becky at the governor’s inaugural ball in 1991, two years before the 22-year-old died in a car crash.

• I like that Mr. DeWine has photos of his family. Nothing wrong with that. And as a father, every time I read about Mike DeWine's daughter or any other young person dying in an auto accident, I cringe more than a little. I imagine that there's not a day that goes by in which Mike and Fran don't think about Becky. In fact, I'm sure of it.

* * *

Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor

A sign on Taylor’s desk notes: “There cannot be a crisis this week. My schedule is already full."

Indeed, the lieutenant governor has been busy traveling Ohio — and she has the souvenirs to prove it.

Her office on the 30th floor of the Riffe Center features mementos from visits to all 88 counties.

She views the office as a place to get work done — a point nailed home by another sign, a small one in a top corner of her china cabinet: “To all employees, new incentive plan: Do work or get fired.”

• If I had a sign at the HCP office that read: “To all employees, new incentive plan: Do work or get fired,” one of them would shove it up my armpit. But it is an interesting concept.

* * *

Secretary of State Jon Husted

Its history is unknown, but the wooden bat in Husted’s office has a clear purpose, the Dispatch said.

“It’s my thinking bat,” he said. “I don’t even know whose it is or where it came from. It has just followed me from office to office — like a lost puppy.”

Husted seems indifferent to his 16th-floor corner office in the Continental (formerly Borden) Building, at E. Broad Street and Hamilton Avenue.

As he tells it, he picked out what he wanted to showcase — photos of his wife and three children, two hammers he received for being a “heavy hitter” as a cornerback at the University of Dayton, and a refurbished Civil War footlocker.

He proudly pointed to his framed copy of the Ten Commandments.

• Now, we're talking. Jon Husted has a wooden bat and a hammer at his desk and so do I – have for years. My 1960s Henry Aaron baseball bat and my grandfather's 1890s hammer are always at my desk. I can't think without them. In addition to family photos, I also have an anvil on my desk. This was courtesy of the late Jenny Behymer.

Years ago, Jenny read one of my columns in which I'd quoted my late dad, who told me: "Rory, you could screw up an anvil." (And I could.)

* * *

Treasurer Josh Mandel

Josh Mandel, who is also a U.S. Senate candidate, often makes a point of saying that his bosses are “the 11.5 million Ohioans” who live in the state.

His bosses might be happy to know that he takes a turn at watering the plants near the window of his ninth-floor office in the Rhodes Tower.

“When I came in the office, there were contracts; they were paying people to water the plants. To save money, we ended the plant-watering contracts,” he explained.

Like Husted, Mandel has a framed copy of the Ten Commandments on one wall. His favorite commandment is the fourth: “Honor thy mother and father.”

• Josh Mandel's comment about his bosses is steel on target. It also reminds me of what Adams County Prosecutor David Kelley used to say when people asked him: "Who's your boss?"

David would reply "The 27,000 people of Adams County."

I always appreciated that.

And I appreciate that Josh Mandel has found a few common-sense measures to save Ohio taxpayers some of our hard-earned dollars. Mandel might make a good senator, after all.

* * *

Auditor Dave Yost

Yost’s office in the Key Bank Building represents a virtual “who’s who” of Republican political lore.

Hanging in a corner, a framed picture of Ronald Reagan — “the greatest leader of my lifetime,” Yost said — shows the president exiting Air Force One with Yost’s former employer and mentor, Columbus Mayor Dana G. “Buck” Rinehart.

Rinehart had to shove past members of Congress to exit the plane next to the president, Yost said.

“I love it because of the audacity — that’s a bad word now — but the risk-taking,” Yost told the Dispatch. “He kind of seized the day.”

And Yost, too, has the Ten Commandments displayed on a wall opposite his fifth-floor view of the Statehouse.

• Without question, I agree with Auditor Yost's assessment of Ronald Reagan. For goodness sake, who else would qualify as the greatest leader of our lifetime (for those of us born after 1960)?

It's also interesting that at least half of these state officials have copies of the Ten Commandments in their respective offices. Nothing wrong with that. I have a Bible. Not far from the baseball bat, the hammer and the anvil. Draw your own conclusions.

And if The Highland County Press published a synopsis – or seven – about our personal desks, let's just say this: Since Brandy Chandler entered law school, the three messiest desks in our office belong to people with the same last name. I'm one of them.

On the other hand, if you move any little thing on the desks of Lisa, Angie or Stephen, you'd be inviting trouble.

Rory Ryan is publisher of The Highland County Press.