Candidate Cordray on heroin epidemic, the rainy day fund and his - WFMJ.com News weather sports for Youngstown-Warren Ohio

We're going in-depth with Democratic candidate for Ohio Governor Richard Cordray.

According to the latest statewide poll, he narrowly leads the wide-open Democratic side of the governor's race.

In traveling Ohio, the Democrat says one of the "kitchen table issues", as he refers to them, that keeps voters up at night is the heroin and the opioid epidemic. He feels Ohio clearly has not done enough because 14 people continue to die a day from overdoses.

"It involves law enforcement. Keeping that out of our communities, and going after the drug pushers very aggressively. We need treatment and prevention. We need the intervention of the Narcan, but we also need to get people on a path where they can kick this long term and that requires residential and bed space and so the Medicaid expansion is really important for us to maintain that in Ohio and not take that away from Ohioans," Cordray said.

When it comes to Ohio's rainy day fund, he has no problem loosening up the purse strings because he feels it's raining pretty hard around Ohio.

"I'm a big fan of us doing more with infrastructure in Ohio.  That's the kind of issue that we can always put off until tomorrow or next week, or next month or next year and then we never get around to building and renovating things," Cordray told 21 News.

And the Democrat would even support using that money to deal with the pothole problem that's taking the Mahoning Valley for a long and bumpy ride.

"We're seeing pothole problems here in Youngstown, we're seeing pothole problems in Columbus, we're seeing them all over the state. We're not keeping up with our infrastructure.  And again that's pennywise and pound foolish," Cordray said.

Cordray said the bottom line is he has a proven track record of fighting for the Mahoning Valley as a former state treasurer and attorney general.

"We fought Forum Health when they were trying to take jobs and healthcare away when they were being merged with that Tennessee Company.  We saved jobs and healthcare here.  I fought for the Lordstown plant during the General Motors bankruptcy to make sure that they were protected, and we worked to save thousands of people from foreclosure during the foreclosure crisis," Cordray said.