Lieutenant Governor: Anita Rios
and community organizer
Anita Rios is a longtime union activist and community organizer, with a background in mental health casework. She grew up as one of eight children of parents who were Mexican American migrant farm workers.
Her parents still live in the two-bedroom house where she was raised. Spanish was her first language, but she still managed to get her G.E.D. and graduate from college.
Like many Americans, Anita has worked in a variety of low-wage jobs, as well as jobs with better wages and benefits because of union contracts. As a result of her strong communication and organizing skills, she was elected to head the union at the Zepf Community Mental Health Center, which serves Lucas County with a wide range of behavioral health services. She negotiated two union contracts, and was the union's representative to the regional labor council of the AFL-CIO.
A longtime Green Party activist and proponent of one-person-one-vote democracy for all people, Anita was active in the Ohio recount after the November 2004 election, and served as the lead plaintiff in the Rios versus Blackwell lawsuit. That case was filed in Federal District Court in Ohio in December 2004 to try to stop the Electoral College from certifying Ohio's electoral votes when so much fraud and obstruction had occurred during the 2004 campaign and election in Ohio. This case, a catalyst for election reform, is scheduled to be heard the week of August 22, 2006.
Anita lives with her husband and two sons in Toledo's Old West End historic district, where she is a well-known community activist.
