COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Republican Ohio legislative leaders have proposed new state House and Senate maps that if passed, likely would award them a disproportionately large share of Ohio seats, allowing them to maintain their veto-proof majority at the Statehouse despite new rules meant to discourage partisan gerrymandering.
Hours after Senate President Matt Huffman unveiled the plan on Thursday, Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission voted 5-2, with Democrats voting against, to formally introduce it.
The vote puts the maps on a path for passage next Wednesday in time for a legal deadline. The major question is whether the plan could change enough by then to gain Democratic support, which will allow the maps to last for 10 years, instead of just four years without it. Republicans said Thursday they want to seek 10-year maps, and publicly offered to work with Democrats to work to amend the plan.
If the maps don’t change significantly before they’re passed, they almost certainly will invite legal challenges from Democrats or voting-rights groups.
Ohio’s new redistricting system was passed overwhelmingly by Ohio voters in 2015 as a way to fight political gerrymandering. The new sections of the constitution include language directing the commission to seek bipartisan compromise, avoid drawing maps that unfairly benefit either party, and to proportionately award legislative seats that align with the results of recent elections.
Any lawsuit would end up before the Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a narrow 4-3 majority - although Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, is viewed as politically independent on the issue.
The maps released Thursday do not include U.S. congressional districts. That work will be taken up separately.
As it stands, the Ohio House and Senate maps won’t get Democratic support. The Republican plan would create districts likely to award Republicans 67 of 99 House seats and 25 of 33 Senate seats -- or around 66% in each chamber -- according to Dave’s Redistricting, a popular redistricting website that models likely outcomes based off the results of recent statewide elections.
This would be far in excess of the Republicans’ recent historical share of the vote in the state. Over the past 10 years, Republicans have won 54% of the votes in the 16 federal and non-judicial state races contested statewide over the last decade.
Under the maps used for the most recent elections, and created before the voter-approved gerrymandering reform, Republicans now control 64 House seats and 25 Senate seats. The GOP’s proposed House and Senate maps both would be less competitive and less politically representative than the current maps, according to the Dave’s Redistricting model, although the current districts were more competitive when they were first drawn in 2010, before Ohio’s increased political drift to the right.
House Speaker Bob Cupp and Senate President Matt Huffman, two commission Republicans from Lima, on Thursday took the implausible stance that they had no idea how the maps would break down politically. That’s despite two other Republicans on the commission, State Auditor Keith Faber and Secretary of State Frank LaRose, acknowledging the maps’ Republican slant, citing the analysis performed by Dave’s Redistricting.
Sen. Vernon Sykes, the lead Democrat on the commission, called Cupp and Huffman’s claims “disingenuous.” House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes, another Democrat, suggested Republicans are staking out a negotiating position by proposing an extreme map.
“This is a constitutional mandate that voters have told us not one, but twice, that they want to do something different,” she said. “And the status quo, where we see the legislative process of offering something really shocking and pulling it back marginally, that is just not going to work in this scenario.”
Further, the Republican legislative leaders also argued that language in the Ohio Constitution directing the maps to not be politically slanted was a goal, not a requirement. So in other words, they argued they aren’t forbidden from drawing heavily Republican maps if they comply with other rules limiting how cities and counties can be split.
“There are a lot of other factors in the constitution, the dividing of counties and cities, where Democrats live and where Republicans live. So it’s not just a nice tight little picture,” Huffman told reporters.
The legal deadline to approve new maps is Wednesday, Sept. 15. Cupp on Thursday announced three public hearings before then -- at 4 p.m. on Sunday in Dayton, at 4 p.m. on Monday in Cleveland and at 10 a.m. on Tuesday in Columbus. The commission will meet at 10 a.m. on Wednesday in Columbus to consider approving the map.
The commission’s Republican members are: Gov. Mike DeWine, LaRose, Faber, Cupp and Huffman. Its Democratic members are the two Sykeses, who are father and daughter and represent Akron.
In testimony to the Ohio Redistricting Commission on Thursday morning, Ray DiRossi, a Senate GOP staffer, said the maps comply with Ohio’s new geographic requirements, which limit how counties and cities can be split, and also require map makers to draw districts that are geographically compact. He did not address how many districts Republicans would be likely to win, saying staff weren’t sure when Sen. Sykes asked.
“We are conducting an analysis of the election data contemplated by the constitution. That analysis is ongoing. It is not completed by today,” DiRossi said.
DiRossi also said they didn’t analyze the number of racial minorities in each district, despite a 1986 U.S. Supreme Court decision that restricts how minority voters can be split among districts.
The new redistricting rules, enshrined in the state constitution, direct the redistricting commission to avoid drawing maps “primarily to favor or disfavor a political party,” and for the proportionate breakdown of districts to “correspond closely to the statewide preferences of the voters, based on statewide state and federal partisan general election results during the last ten years.”
The actual language reads the commission “shall attempt” to do so. Huffman, a Lima Republican, said he thinks the language might mean it’s not a requirement, as long as commission members say they attempted to comply.
“I use the word aspirational, because the Constitution says “shall attempt,” and I guess I don’t know how to put the word attempt into adverb form,” Huffman told reporters. He also keyed in on the word “results” in the constitutional language describing voter preferences.
“Percentages aren’t referred to in the Constitution,” he said. “It uses the word ‘results.’”
Sen. Sykes said Republican legislative leaders have drawn district maps to benefit themselves.
“I don’t blame the Speaker of the House or the Senate president for doing the best they can to craft districts to help their caucus,” he said. “But to say they don’t even know ... and didn’t consider it at all, I think it’s disingenuous.”
Ohio’s new redistricting system is designed to promote bipartisan cooperation, by requiring approval from the redistricting commission’s two Democrats in order for maps to be in effect for 10 years. Otherwise, Republicans can pass them on their own, but the maps only would be in effect for four years.
As drawn, the maps make it highly unlikely the commission’s Democrats will approve them. The maps contrasts sharply with the plan floated by Senate Democrats last week. That map would create districts likely to award 55% of legislative seats to Republicans and 45% to Democrats - or close to what the recent historical statewide votes have been. That’s more in line with recent statewide vote totals, but the Democratic map also would create districts that largely would be uncompetitive, a major flaw if the goal, as voter-rights groups have said, is encourage a more balanced political system.
Faber said he’d “really, really” like for the maps to get bipartisan support. Based on the Senate Democrats’ plan, he said he thinks the two sides aren’t that far apart.
“You’re talking about a couple districts here or there, but it seems there are ample areas for compromise,” Faber said.
LaRose said he would vote for the maps as a starting point for negotiations.
“I am willing to allow this map to go forward as a work in progress. But I think it needs substantial work,” he said.
DeWine didn’t comment during Thursday’s hearing, and he declined to comment on the maps when asked about them during a break.
A top lawyer with the ACLU of Ohio in a statement said the maps were unconstitutional. The ACLU of Ohio is a likely source of any future legal challenges to any maps the commission passes.
“We agree with Secretary LaRose that the map needs ‘substantial work’– and substantial is an understatement,” said Freda Levenson, the ACLU of Ohio’s legal director. “In defiance of the state constitution, the map fails to take the Voting Rights Act into account and fails to adhere to the partisan proportionality requirement. Instead, the map goes to great lengths to protect Republican incumbents at the expense of the fairness and proportionality that Ohioans demanded in 2015.”
Outside the confines of the commission, Democrats blasted the Republican maps as gerrymandered.
“The so-called ‘maps’ proposed by the Ohio GOP are a betrayal of Ohio voters and the issues that they care about,” Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters said in a statement. “These maps are not only unacceptable, they’re offensive to Ohioans who voted overwhelmingly twice for fair representation.”
Huffman said the maps could be changed between now and Wednesday. He said he hopes Republican and Democratic staff can sit down and come up with an amendment that can be passed before final approval.
“Do I think there are reasonable changes that can be made to the map that was submitted today? You know, the answer to that is yes,” he said. “...We’ll just see what the suggestions that we get over the next couple of days are.”
Breaking the Republican plan down further, 20 House seats would be competitive to varying degrees, or projected to be within 10%, according to the Dave’s Redistricting model, which takes into account the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and the 2018 statewide elections. Twenty-two seats would be safely Democratic, while 56 seats would be safely Republican.
In the proposed Senate map, three seats would be a toss-up, projected to be 3% or closer, with five more seats projected as competitive, or within 10%. Eighteen seats would be safely Republican, and seven seats would be safely Democratic.
On an individual level, a couple Republican senators in Northeast Ohio could face political trouble from the new maps. District 27, represented by conservative Republican Sen. Kristina Roegner, of Hudson, would shift from a +14 Republican district to a toss-up, thanks to the addition of extra Cleveland and Akron suburbs. District 32, represented by Sen. Sandy O’Brien, of Ashtabula, would shift from +8 Republican to +4 Republican, but also would combine Trumbull and Mahoning counties, drawing her out of her district entirely.
Here are how the legislative maps design House districts for Northeast Ohio. These maps were drawn from Dave’s Redistricting, as compiled by Ohio Senate Democrats:
A close-up of Northeast Ohio House districts contained in a proposed Senate Republicans plan.
And here are the proposed Ohio Senate districts for Northeast Ohio
A close-up of Ohio Senate districts in Northeast Ohio contained in a proposed state legislative map from the Ohio Senate GOP.
Republicans previously blew a Sept. 1 legal deadline to share a map with the public, which they said was due to the months-long delayed completion of the U.S. Census. Mapmakers use the census data as the foundations for their districts. Despite a constitutional requirement, they failed to even introduce a map, which would have formally started the process to negotiate with Democrats over district boundaries.
An earlier version of this story gave an incorrect time for Sunday’s redistricting commission meeting in Dayton. It has been corrected.
Originally Posted by Seran
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