Don’t trust plan by lawmakers
Does anyone believe that the Ohio Senate’s redistricting proposal will be a legitimate attempt to end gerrymandering of Ohio’s congressional districts? (“Congressional redistricting plan may come soon,” Dispatch article, Thursday.)
If anyone honestly believes that, I would like to hear from him or her. I would ask the following questions:
Do you know how the current redistricting plan came to be? It may come as a surprise that Ohio’s congressional districts have not always been gerrymandered. Knowing the origins of the current district plan is critical to determining whether to trust the folks working out the new scheme.
Second, do you honestly believe that any politician would agree to a plan that hurts his or her party’s electoral chances? If the answer to this question is yes, then the conversation need not continue. Such naiveté is not acceptable in a voting-age adult. Senate President Larry Obhof was recently quoted as saying, “I think it’s important to have bipartisan buy-in” of the asyet-unreleased redistricting plan. If you think about this statement for a moment, it is revealing. It is axiomatic that congressional districts should be fairly drawn. No “buy-in” should be required, and a statement to this effect — as if it were subject to debate — reveals an egregious misunderstanding of that axiom.
The last question: Is it simply coincidence that this legislation is being considered now, when a redistricting ballot issue prepared by the Fair Districts = Fair Elections coalition is likely to appear on the November ballot? When it gets on the November ballot, an ad campaign against it will begin. It will be supported and funded by the same people currently seeking to pass Obhof’s legislation with the bipartisan “buy-in.” The “Vote No” campaign will claim that voters should reject the initiative to redraw congressional districts because the folks who drafted the initiative have a particular partisan interest in the plan. Hmm.
I have no idea what Obhof’s proposal will look like, and only a general idea what the ballot initiative will look like. But I don’t need to know the details to conclude that any initiative drawn up by the coalition will be better than the proposal backed by the good Senate president and his minions. Columbus welcome introduction to some of the lesser-known candidates.
I was disappointed in Democrat Richard Cordray’s failure to respond, but perhaps even worse were Republican’s Mike DeWine’s platitudes, circumlocutions, and doubletalk (“Tax questions draw indirect answers,” Dispatch, last Monday). These two approaches to the newspaper’s attempt to discover their stand on important issues illustrate the truth of the old adage that it is better to be silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Columbus