Boring Ohio
Ohio has a reputation as a “boring” state, where nothing big ever happens. In the heat of the current social-media Presidential crisis in Springfield, Ohio’s leadership acts like they’re trying to do the right thing. Even Governor DeWine has found courage in his lame duckness. His career is over, with nothing more to win. So he can stand and scold the Trump/Vance ticket without fear of retribution. In two years, he’ll be retired to his country estate in Cedarville, a rural college village just ten miles south of Springfield. And he still supports Trump, so he can show up at the local diner for lunch.
But in reality, Ohio is one of the most corrupt states in the Union. Behind the façade of big rust-belt cities and gentle cornfields, the politics of Ohio is all about money and power. The former Speaker of the State House of Representatives took a $60 million bribe from an energy company. That’s not the worst of it. While almost every State Republican politician was involved, they were all more than happy to let that Speaker stand alone in Federal Court (he’s now serving a twenty year sentence). The two other Party leaders legally snared in the scandal did “the right thing” for their party. They committed suicide. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Power Corrupts
Not to be too partisan, but corruption is endemic to the Republican Party. That’s not because Democrats can’t be corrupt. It’s simply that the state government is so overwhelmingly Republican, that Democrats don’t stand a chance of “bellying up” to the money bar. Democrats in the state legislature are forced to choose which side of the Republican agenda to support: extreme or extremely extreme. The Democrats talk a good game, but they are powerless.
There’s a political axiom: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. If you need to see that in action, come to Ohio.
Politically Ohio is (at most) 55% Republican, 45% Democrat. Yet the state legislature is overwhelmingly Republican, with 66% of the House seats, and 79% of the State Senate seats in Republican hands. Sure, it’s a veto-proof majority. But no need to worry about vetoes. The Governor is also Republican, along with all of the other state-wide elected executives . And the State Supreme Court is split four Republicans to three Democrats. If that’s not enough power; the Governor’s son is one of the Supreme Judges; a Republican, of course.
Gerrymandering
The foundation of Republican power is the ability to draw the state legislative districts. As long as they can draw the map, they can control the state legislature. Newsweek rates Ohio as the third most “gerrymandered” state in the Nation, behind West Virginia and Wisconsin. (Newsweek). So it’s not a surprise that Republicans will do almost anything to hold onto that precious ability to decide who votes in what legislative district.
Gerrymandering is nothing new. In fact, the name itself came from 1812, when the Governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry, drew a district that looked like a salamander – a “Gerrymander” the newspapers called it. It’s a straight-forward process. Divide the state so that one particular party’s voters are maximized, and the other party is minimized. Either give the weaker party a few concentrated districts, or split up and dilute concentrations of opposition strength into multiple districts. In Ohio that becomes a few overwhelmingly Democratic districts, then a lot of “pie slice” districts, where urban/Democrat areas find themselves diluted by huge swaths of rural/Republican areas. And, of course, there are the remaining Republican areas, too far from any Democrats to matter.
On the Map
A quick example is Ohio’s 15th Congressional District. It stretches from the Republican suburbs of Dayton, around but excluding the Democratic areas of Springfield, then continues to pick up the Democratic west and south sides of Columbus. It then extends far south to include Chillicothe and all of the countryside in between. The District is nearly 100 miles east to west and 100 miles north to south, carefully diluting Democratic pockets with large swathes of Republican countryside. It’s a great example of Gerrymandering reducing the power of one party and enhancing the other.
(Trivia Question: what does the west side of the City of Cincinnati and the village of Ansonia, a farm community in Western Ohio more than a hundred miles north, have in common? Not much, except the same Congressman. Both “towns” are in the 8th Congressional District).
Extremists Win
Besides creating super-majorities in the legislatures, gerrymandering also makes the primary election the only one that really counts. In most districts here in Ohio, whether a Republican or a Democrat will win the general election is seldom in question. Who will represent the majority party in that election; that’s selected in the primary. And since primary voters are usually more motivated and partisan than general election voters, the majority party often selects the more extreme candidate over moderate ones. All that means that the legislature is not only loaded, but also extreme; elected by the few Party voters rather than the majority of voters closer to the “middle”.
Ohioans look to two institutions to reform re-districting. First, Ohio has an “initiative” process. Citizens can place a State Constitutional Amendment directly up for a vote, bypassing the legislature. In both 2015 and 2018, re-districting reform was passed by better than 70%. However, the state legislature and executives failed to follow those amendments, and the state remains skewed.
Scofflaws
When the Amendments were ignored, reformers went to the state Supreme Court for help. And for a while, even though the Court was four Republicans to three Democrats, the Republican Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor sided with Democratic Justices and reformers. Unfortunately, Republican legislators and executives chose to ignore the Court rulings, and Gerrymandering continued. Then Justice O’Connor was age-limited out of the Court. Now the four Republicans rubber-stamp their fellow partisans in the other branches.
So Justice O’Connor led a reform movement herself, one to take re-districting completely out of the hands of career politicians. Her proposal establishes a non-politician board, divided evenly among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. That board would follow a carefully written mandate to re-district based on community and county boundaries, maximizing competitive districts. This was written into a proposed State Constitutional Amendment, and will appear as “Issue One” this November.
Flip the Script
The State Elections Board is chaired by the Secretary of State, Republican Frank LaRose, and dedicated to the gerrymandered status quo. The Board gets to write the “ballot language” that will appear to every voter. Even though Issue One supporters got over a half a million registered voter signatures on carefully worded petitions, the Elections Board literally flipped the script. In a two column, ten point “explanation”on every ballot, the Election Board describes the Issue as a “Gerrymandering Amendment”.
- Repealing constitutional exceptions against gerrymandering passed in 2015 and 2018
- Eliminate the ability of voters to hold their representatives accountable for districts
- Establish a tax funded commission to manipulate boundaries to favor the two largest Parties in the state
- Require that a majority of the “partisan” commission are members of the two major parties
- Prevent commission members from removal for gross misconduct or willful neglect
- Reduce the ability to challenge re-districting in court
- Describes in detail the complex process of appointing commission members for ½ of an entire column
- Describes in detail the complex process of commission voting
- “Limits the right of Ohio citizens to freely express their opinions to members of the commission”
- Impose new taxpayer-funded costs.
And when Issue One supporters went to the Ohio Supreme Court to challenge the inverted explanation, the Court ruled four to three that it was “just fine”: no surprise there.
Ohio Knows
I know what Issue One is. It’s the best “shot” to change Ohio’s gerrymandered corruption. I’m going to vote for Issue One. Issue One is not what the Ballot Language says. In fact, the current process of behind closed doors, computer generated re-districting maps and Republican scoffing at Ohio law and voters is much closer to that ballot explanation than the real Issue One. And, if Issue One passes, it will be the petition language, that hundreds of thousands of Ohioans signed, not the warped ballot language, that will be law.
I think Frank LaRose out-smarted himself again. There’s so much, closely typed and intricate language on the ballot, that most voters won’t even bother to read it. They’ll listen to the real information outside the polling place, and, just like LaRose’s manipulations with 2023’s Issue One last August (to make the initiative process near impossible and stop the abortion amendment – it failed) and last November (the Abortion amendment itself, it passed and is now a right enshrined in the State Constitution), Ohio voters will figure it all out.
And maybe, for the first time since I was in college back in the 1970’s, I’ll get to vote in truly contested Congressional, State Representative and State Senator races once again.
