Ohio leaders say they want more competitive districts

 By Marty Schladen

Pictured is Ohio's congressional delegation as it has looked after the 2012, '14, '16, '18 and '20 elections.

Gov. Mike DeWine and Lt. Gov. Jon Husted on Tuesday said they hope a new system of drawing congressional and state legislative districts will result in more competitive elections. But, they cautioned, the task will be far from simple.

Ohio has among the worst partisan gerrymandering, according to multiple analyses. 

Districts are typically redrawn once every 10 years to reflect population changes when new census data become available. Until now, the party in control of the Statehouse has commanded the process and, using modern technology, that party has been able to greatly advantage itself.

A 2019 analysis by the Associated Press determined that in the U.S. House, Ohio Republicans got 52% of the vote but held 75% of the seats. They also held supermajorities in the state House and Senate that exceeded the portion of votes they received at the polls, the analysis found.

A separate 2013 analysis found that Ohio Democrats were the second-most underrepresented in the U.S. House and that Republicans were overrepresented by 18 seats nationwide. The imbalance was a consequence of the fact that the GOP wiped out Democrats in statehouse races in 2010 and had control of the last redistricting process in most states.

The problems created by such a partisan skew extend beyond unbalanced party representation. It also fuels polarization and extremism.

“We’ve all read the same studies about how many of the 435 congressional districts in the country aren’t really competitive and for many of them, the greatest… perceived threat to the incumbent is a primary,” DeWine said.

Voter turnout in party primaries tends to be much lower than in general elections and is dominated by the most ardent partisans — a dynamic that can result in winning candidates with fringe views that would make them sure losers in a competitive general election.

Think Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who has a record of expressing racist views, denying the reality of school shootings and whose speculations that California wildfires might have nefarious origins resulted in the mocking hashtag #JewishSpaceLasers.

He’s a member of her party, but comments by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Monday might indicate that even when they add to GOP numbers, highly gerrymandered districts are damaging to his party. He didn’t mention Greene by name, but his reference was clear when he said many of the “loony lies” expressed by her were “a cancer for the Republican Party.”

Gov. Mike DeWine and U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan.

Closer to home, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, endorsed Greene in her bid last year to win a crowded Republican Primary so she could run unopposed in the General Election. 

Jordan himself has espoused conspiracy theories — including speaking at one of President Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rallies on Nov. 5. 

Lies by fringe politicians about a stolen election pose an even more direct threat to American democracy. They fueled a Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that killed five and delayed certification of the presidential election.

One of Trump’s closest allies, Jordan was reelected to his District 4 seat with nearly 70% of the vote.

There was widespread speculation that Jordan might seek the GOP nomination to fill the U.S. Senate seat held by Rob Portman, a Republican who is stepping down in 2022. Jordan later announced that he would not seek the seat.

His office didn’t respond Tuesday when asked if the congressman had calculated that he couldn’t win outside of his gerrymandered district.

DeWine wasn’t asked about Jordan, but of the scarcity of competitive congressional races he said, “Truly, it is a national problem.” 

To address the issue, Ohio voters in 2018 overwhelmingly approved a system that would require bipartisan support for 10-year congressional maps. If that fails, four-year districts could be drawn with a party-line vote.

Husted, the lieutenant governor, said the new system has multiple goals, some of which may be mutually complicating.

In Ohio and elsewhere, the crazy shape of districts such as Jordan’s have been widely criticized. His zigs and zags and goes from just west of Columbus almost to the Indiana line, north almost to Toledo and east almost to Cleveland. 

Techniques known as “cracking and packing” have been used to draw districts that maximize partisan numbers. But they often result in maps that don’t make much sense when it comes to representing constituent interests.

The new system is “designed to hit the goals of making the districts more compact, less gerrymandered, keeping communities of interest together,” Husted said. “We think those are positive enhancements to the system and it will ultimately lead to representation that is more consistent among those communities.”

But doing that while also drawing competitive districts has become more difficult as politics have become more polarized — especially along geographic lines, DeWine said.

“The counties that were Republican 10 years ago may be much more Republican today,” he said. “In other words, the margins have gone way up and we’ve seen the same thing with Democrat counties.”

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This story is provided by Ohio Capital Journal, a part of States Newsroom, a national 501 (c)(3) nonprofit. See the original story here.

Politics has no off-season

By R. T. Andrews

There are no off-years in politics.

It’s a big mistake to think the long intervals between presidential elections are not every bit as consequential as the one day when we officially reject or retain an incumbent or elect a new president.

This should be clear if we understand politics to be how people living in groups make decisions so that they can live together as a community, as a state, as a nation.

In fact, if we consider January 2021 alone, it looks like there are no off months in politics, let alone off years.

The January 6th insurrection in our nation’s capital, incited by a sitting president, supported by a loose but extensive network that included police officers, military veterans, public officials, white supremacists — and which is being defended, excused or downplayed by 90% of a major party’s political leadership — was a transformational political event that will affect our nation for at least the next two generations. If ordinary citizens do not find effective ways to respond to this assault on our system, it will sooner or later become the norm. [Just yesterday, the military in Myanmar took over in a coup, claiming the recent election, in which 83% of the popular vote went against them, was fraudulent. Where might they have found a role model?

Two days earlier and closer to home, Gov. Mike DeWine signed “Stand Your Ground” legislation into Ohio law, caving into the state’s right wing legislature, and potentially turning any encounter outside your house into a lethal action.

Last week Ohio’s junior Senator, Rob Portman, made himself a lame duck, announcing that he will not run for a third term next year. Portman has been mostly MIA these past four years, fiddling with feeble calls for civility as his party and its unstable leader were setting ablaze many of the laws, institutions, traditions and protocols that make civility possible in a diverse nation of 330 million people.

(Highlighting the profiles in cravenness of Ohio’s top two Republicans reminds us to salute the stand-up vote of area GOP congressman Anthony Gonzalez, one of the fewer than five percent of his party’s House colleagues who voted to impeach Donald Trump for his incitement of insurrection.)

Getting even more local, former Cleveland city council president and state rep Marty Sweeney secured his return to public office by winning a close vote of the Democratic executive committee members  to fill the vacancy on Cuyahoga County council occasioned by Dan Brady’s retirement.

By the way, even as the process by which Sweeney returns to office was publicly savaged, many political observers including several Sweeney detractors, had to acknowledge his mastery of vote-whipping, while his opponent, ward leader and Young Dems president Brandon Heil, was perhaps too busy measuring curtains for an office he had yet to secure.

Also in January, Pernel Jones and Cheryl Stephens were elected by their colleagues president and vice president of county council. It’s fair to say few if any predicted council’s top two positions would both be held by African Americans. Perhaps even more remarkable than this stunner is how few eyebrows appear to have been raised by the feat.

Mano of the folk who opposed the reorganization of county government back in 2009 would have lost their fortunes on a bet that the black people they professed to represent might attain the level of success under the new system exemplified by Jones and Stephens.

This perhaps segues into the reentry into local politics of former state senator Nina Turner.

Turner, you may recall, was vilified as a sellout back in 2009 for being just about the only black elected official who supported the reorganization of county government.

Now, by virtue of her policy chops, celebrity, and fundraising prowess, she is the frontrunner to win the Democratic primary in the expected soon to be announced special election to succeed Marcia Fudge.

And that’s not even half of the area’s January politics.

Shirley Smith, Turner’s former state senate colleague, also declared her entry into the race last month, joining county councilwoman Shontel Brown and former Cleveland councilman Jeff Johnson.

Meanwhile, civic activist Justin Bibb heads a list of candidates who declared their candidacies for local offices. Bibb, 33, has an  impressive  set of career credentials to accompany a sterling academic resume and a policy nerdiness. He’s put together a tight political organization and raised over $200,000, more than enough to establish himself as a serious, credible candidate for Cleveland mayor.

Elsewhere, attorney and ward leader Rebecca Maurer announced her plans to run for council from her base in Slavic Village. In Cleveland Heights, Kahlil Seren tossed his hat into the ring to be Cleveland Heights’ first elected mayor since that suburb abolished its city manager structure.

It’s contests like these that trickle upward to build a base that can support political and social change or entrench the status quo. The choice is up to us.

We have written several pieces about Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, which for fifty years has been centered in Cleveland’s black community. Its political, social, and cultural importance is undeniable. But knowledgeable people tell us that turnout for the upcoming special election is likely to be around 25,000 voters. In a crowded field, the primary winner and likely next successor to Marcia Fudge could garner fewer than 7,500 votes.

If ever there was opportunity to make your voice heard, this would seem to be the time. The new technologies and platforms prospering under social media in the COVID era have made it easier than ever to educate yourself on the issues and the candidates. Just last week I sat in on a “meet and greet coffee klatch” from the comfort of my desk  and listened to a candidate in Cleveland’s Larchmere neighborhood engage with three dozen or so voters from all around town.

Now is the time to engage your family, neighbors, and friends and networks; and turn out the vote. Stacey Abrams lives in Georgia. She isn’t coming to Cleveland to do what we should do for ourselves.

Can I get an amen?

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This post first appeared at The Real Deal Press. Click here to see the original post.

COMMENTARY | WILL OUR UNION BE A VICTIM OF COVID 19?

FROM the PULPIT to the PUBLIC SQUARE

Marvin A. McMickle, Ph.D.

Will we still be the UNITED States of America after the threat of COVID 19 has passed? We have not seemed UNITED when centuries of social neglect have caused African Americans to die from COVID 19 at a rate that greatly exceeds our percentage of the national population. It is disheartening to discover that in my hometown of Chicago, African Americans are about 32% of the population, but they account for 72% of the deaths associated with COVID 19. That same pattern appears in states across the country. Jocelyn Wilder, a doctoral student at the University of Illinois School of Public Health, noted in the Chicago Tribune that we should “attribute the difference in mortality and infection rates to socioeconomic factors that preceded the epidemic.” 1

We do not seem UNITED when higher rates of high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, asthma, and heart disease make African Americans more susceptible to being impacted by and dying from this virus. Living in poverty, not having access to affordable health care, not having access to fresh meats and vegetables, and being reliant on public transportation that makes social distancing impossible are major contributors to these higher rates of infection and death. In Chicago, the Chicago Tribune reports that “food and pharmacy deserts are concentrated on the South side (where I was born and raised), and eight of the ten ZIP codes with the highest percentage of people without cars are on the South and West sides (which are largely African American communities). 2

We do not seem UNITED when this nation’s centuries-long history of racism has resulted in overcrowded housing, low-paying jobs, limited access to preventive health care, and an economic position that forces too many African Americans to use emergency room services as their primary source of medical care. We get sicker more easily because of these pre-existing and underlying conditions referred to as co-morbidity. We may die from COVID 19, but we were made more vulnerable to the effects of the virus because of so many existing health problems that allowed the disease to take hold of our bodies with more deadly results. 

We do not seem UNITED when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said during one of his daily news briefings about the impact of COVID 19 in his state, ”It always seems that the poorest people end up paying the highest price. Why is that?” 3

Why, indeed? This is the richest nation on earth in terms of economic capacity, technological capacity, medical research and resources capacity, higher education capacity, and military capacity. Nevertheless, we remain a nation deeply divided along lines of race, region, religion, and especially along lines of resources. Poverty is one of the great evils gripping our nation despite its great wealth. Like a scene out of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, it is the best of times for some Americans and the worst of times for others.   

One last problem has arisen that further divides us as a nation, and that is the rate at which African Americans are agreeing to be vaccinated against COVID-19. Bad enough that we are more susceptible to this virus resulting in increased rate of infection, hospitalization, and mortality. Worse than all that is the unwillingness of some people to protect themselves from a virus that has painted a bullseye on our back. White Americans are being vaccinated at twice the rate of African Americans even though we are twice as likely to contract COVID-19. 

Some persons may harbor suspicions about the safety of the vaccine or the speed with which it was developed. Some people may not trust a medical/research system that conducted the Tuskegee Experiment from 1932-1972 when 400 African American men who had syphilis went untreated so scientists could document the terrible effects of that disease on their bodies. The difference is that the Tuskegee Experiment was about medical help that was being denied to black bodies. Refusal to be vaccinated against COVID-19 is about medicines that black people are denying to themselves.  In more ways than one, our Union is a victim of COVID-19, and there is a lot of blame to go around.  

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1.  Nausheen Husain and Cecelia Reyes, “As Chicago blacks die from COVID 19, communities of color knew recovery from COVID 19 would be slow”, ChicagoTribune.com, April 21, 2000.

 2. Nausheen Husain and Cecelia Reyes, Chicago Tribune.

 3. Cuomo vows to investigate racial disparities in COVID-19 deaths: “Why do the poorest people always pay the highest price?”, TheHill.com, April 8, 2020. 

The Rev. Marvin A. McMickle, pastor emeritus of Antioch Baptist Church in Cleveland, retired in 2019 as president of Colgate Rochester Crozer Divinity School in Rochester, New York, where he had served since 2011.

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