The Republican governor has an extensive connection to Haiti. In 1998, DeWine and his wife, Fran, began their support of the Becky DeWine School, named after the DeWines’ daughter who was killed in a 1993 car accident at 22 years old.
The school was situated in a slum known as Cite Soleil in Haiti capitol Port Au Prince and run by a charity that had long been supported by the DeWines. Mike and Fran DeWine in 2013 traveled to Haiti to commemorate the school’s first graduating class.
The school closed last year amid the gang violence that overwhelmed the country. It was run by Helping Hands, a charity headed by Haiti humanitarian Father Tom Hagan, who DeWine still counts as a friend and who delivered an invocation before DeWine took the oath of office at a private ceremony following his last reelection.