55 to 45
Forty-five percent of Ohioans vote for Democrats, but you sure can’t see it in State Government. Every single executive state-wide office but one is held by a Republican. The Governor, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Attorney General are all elected Republicans. Even the State Supreme Court is controlled by the GOP, with four Republican Justices and three Democrats.
Both Houses of the state legislature have “super-majorities” of Republicans, capable of not only passing legislation without the minority Democratic support, but even able to override the Republican Governor’s veto if needed. In the state Senate, there are only eight Democrats to thirty-three Republicans, less than 20%. In fact, there is only one statewide Democrat executive left in Ohio, US Senator Sherrod Brown. He’s up for re-election in 2024.
Blue Wall
This is a state that voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Ohio was once part of the “Blue Wall” that collapsed in 2016 to give Trump the Presidential win. Now national Democrats see Ohio, like Florida, as a pipe-dream and a waste of national campaign money. 2022 Democratic Senate candidate Tim Ryan is acknowledged to have run the “best” campaign in the nation – and lost to “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance, 47% to 53%.
Ohio is smug about the “efficiency” of its election process. The highly gerrymandered districts consistently return their Republican representatives to the State House, where they consistently push the state farther to the right of the political spectrum. When the Republican State Supreme Court ruled skewed maps unconstitutional, the rest of the state government simply stalled until there was no choice but to use them. The mapping issue will be back in 2024, but Republicans needn’t worry. The one vote (a Republican) on the Court that stood against their extremes will retire at the end of this year. They should have a clear four vote majority now.
Loyal Opposition
What happens when there is no “loyal opposition”? Sure, Ohio has unlimited “open carry” weapons laws. There’s no need to have a permit, go get your gun. Sure, Ohio led the way in abortion restrictions after the Dodds decision. But all of that isn’t enough for the Republican “super-majority”. To make sure that doctors “get it”, the President of Ohio Right-to-Life, an attorney and politician, was appointed to the state Medical Board.
And when the citizens of Ohio surprisingly elected a Democratic majority to the State Board of Education, the State Legislature immediately moved to strip most of the Board’s power over public school policy.
In fact, it really doesn’t matter what the citizens of Ohio want. Like many states, Ohio has a “referendum” option. Citizens can gather signatures and place proposed amendments to the State Constitution up for general vote. That’s why there was even a question about the highly skewed political maps. But Republicans now in power find that too threatening. The new proposal – amend the Constitution to require a 60% super-majority for any voter-initiated Amendment instead of a simple majority.
What are they worried about? That citizens will place an abortion amendment on the ballot like Kansas and Michigan. The Secretary of State is leading this campaign, and claims that it will protect the “people” from special interests. What it will really do is maintain the power of the legislature from any possible check or balance.
Capital of Corruption
And Ohio has the dubious honor of being named one of the most corrupt states in the nation. First Energy Corporation admitted paying a $61 million bribe to the former Speaker of the House, Republican Larry Householder. He is still awaiting trial. The money was used to pay for Republican campaigns all over the state, and reaches to the Governor himself.
The private education lobby spent millions of dollars to convince legislators to remove most financial controls from private, online schools. The largest donor ran an online charter school, the Electronic Classroom of Tomorrow. They falsified attendance records to maintain public funding. The now failed operation still owes the state over $100 million dollars.
Nail the Door Shut
And in case Democrats decide to take a stab at regaining some ground, state election officials are taking further steps to make voting harder in the state – all in the name of “election security”. They aren’t “closing the barn door after the horses got out”. That door was never open, and the horses never left. Voter fraud isn’t an issue in Ohio (or in the rest of the US). Instead, they are nailing it shut tighter, so that fewer voters can make their voice heard.
It’s hard to imagine what it would take for Democrats to regain some influence in the Buckeye State. Former State Democratic Chairman David Pepper is calling for a grass roots effort to rebuild a party that has only won the four-year Governor’s seat once in the past thirty years. It sounds next to impossible, but there is one ray of hope – there really are 45% of Ohioans who already are willing to vote Democratic. A ten percent swing, and the entire state could change.
At least, that’s the pipe-dream.
