Voters, not pols, should replace lawmakers who leave
Almost 340,000 Ohioans live in the state Senate’s 1st District, which extends west and north from Findlay. But they won’t get to pick their next state senator.
Instead, 23 Republicans — none of whom lives in the Senate district — will choose former Sen. Cliff Hite’s successor. And those 23 Republicans (20 men, three women) are only slightly more diverse than the Catholic Church’s all-male College of Cardinals.
Hite, a Findlay Republican, abruptly resigned Monday. On Wednesday, former Sen. Hite wrote this in a tweet: “I’m not proud of recent inappropriate conversations that I had with a state employee who did not work for me but worked in a nearby state office. After we met, I sometimes asked her for hugs and talked with her in a way that was not appropriate for a married man, father and grandfather like myself… She deserves more respect than that, and so does my wife. I apologize completely.”
Ohio’s constitution lets the Senate’s 23 remaining Republicans pick Hite’s successor. If that’s democracy, someone needs to rewrite the dictionary. The same would happen in Ohio’s House in case of a vacancy in that chamber. And yes, both Democrat and Republican caucuses take advantage of this nifty (for them) system.
In screening an applicant for Hite’s seat, the key qualification Senate Republicans will look for is whether he (and if history is a guide, it will be “he,” not “she”) can ward off any GOP challengers in May 8’s Republican primary.
The primary, not November 2018’s general election, will be the decider. The 1st District is GOP bedrock, and Hancock County (Findlay) its core: Hancock voted “yes” on Right to Work (for Less) in 1958; for Barry Goldwater for president in 1964; and “yes” on the late Thomas A. Van Meter’s 1983 “Stop Excessive Taxation” ballot issue, to repeal Democratic Gov. Richard F. Celeste’s steep tax increases.
Till the 1960s, Ohio held special elections to fill midterm General Assembly vacancies. Then voters amended the constitution to replace special elections with appointment by the caucus to which the former legislator belonged. (Senate terms are four years; in vacancies before or during a term’s first 20 months, a caucus appoints. Later, district voters fill the term’s second two years at a general election.)
The reason voters opted for appointments may have been low turnouts for General Assembly special elections. One of the last followed 1967’s resignation of then-state Rep. Carl Stokes, a Democrat who resigned to Cleveland’s mayor. (Stokes’ 44th District was composed of what were then Cleveland Wards 10, 28 and 30.)
Six days before Christmas 1967 came a Democratic primary that drew just 3,255 voters in a district with 92,883 residents. Then, in the Jan. 9, 1968, special election, Democrat Phillip M. DeLaine and Republican Paul T. Haggard squared off. DeLaine won, drawing 2,036 votes to Haggard’s 912. Total vote: 2,948. In contrast, when Stokes was re-elected unopposed in November 1966, he drew 21,478 complimentary votes.
Voters authorized caucus appointments in lieu of special elections in 1961 for the state Senate and 1968 (for Ohio’s House). But that era’s Ohio was a different state, and its legislature genuinely part-time. Today, state government is mammoth. Example: Statistically, every fifth Ohioan you’ll see today is covered by Ohio Medicaid. And, ultimately, the legislature manages Medicaid. If you think legislative insiders and their lobbying pals should decide who fills vacancies in the General Assembly, you’re all set. But the Ohio Constitution says “all political power is inherent in the people” — not in the legislature’s closed-door party caucuses.