What’ll it be, Ohio? Continuity or change?
Thomas Suddes
We’ll know next week how Ohio’s Democratic voters like their coffee: decaf (Richard Cordray) or hightest (Dennis Kucinich).
Likewise, we’ll learn if Ohio Republicans bought Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor’s claim that Attorney General Mike DeWine isn’t really conservative. (If DeWine isn’t, Ohio’s libraries need new dictionaries.)
At this writing, it appears that Ohio Democrats prefer decaf (Cordray) and that Cedarville’s DeWine will clinch the GOP nomination for governor. If Democrats do opt for Cordray over Kucinich, and DeWine is the Republican nominee, then Ohio will, once again, have opted for continuity, not change, at the Statehouse.
Those words, “continuity and change,” come from the title of a 1962 study by the late Thomas A. Flinn, who later joined Cleveland State University’s faculty. Flinn’s “Continuity and Change in Ohio Politics” remains on point, even allowing for such political shakeups over the last 55 years as Donald Trump’s Ohio win. (Trump carried 51.4 percent of Ohio’s vote.)
Something Flinn addressed is especially pertinent to this year’s Democratic gubernatorial primary. Some insightful analysts have suggested the Cordray-Kucinich contest is a kind of proxy for 2016’s Democratic faction-fight over whether to nominate New York Democrat Hillary Clinton or Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders for president — with Kucinich a stand-in for Sanders, Cordray a stand-in for Clinton and with tickedoff pro-Sanders Democrats helping Kucinich outrun Cordray. Possible? Yes. Likelihood? At best, iffy.
One question Flinn asked: Why don’t the party preferences of Ohioans necessarily hinge on bread-and-butter issues — on a voter’s wallet or purse — in contrast to voter behavior in some other states?
His answer: “Party followings in Ohio cannot now be defined only by reference to class and status; the definition must include also traditional loyalties which have little to do with the usual economic and social variables.”
Flinn expanded on that in a footnote: “Observers … are sometimes impressed by the caution with which [Ohio] politicians treat economic and social issues, a style which seems to contrast with that seen in other states which are similar to Ohio in some respects.” Or, as a Statehouse bystander might say today: Even in a hard-times Ohio county, a Second Amendment controversy may have more voting-booth clout than, say, the General Assembly’s mean-spirited swipes at Ohio’s food-stamp and Medicaid clients, who live not only in the state’s cities but also its small towns and countryside.
That “caution” Flinn cited? It’s as characteristic of Ohio politics now as it was in the 1960s. This is a gradualist state. Today’s Ohio Republicans waste a lot of money on litmus paper.
True, “caution,” even about human-services programs, depends on political strength. For instance, Ohio participates in the federal/state Medicaid program because in 1965 a Republican-run General Assembly passed (with just three “no” votes) and Republican Gov. James A. Rhodes signed legislation to do that. And Ohio expanded Medicaid in October 2013 under Republican Gov. John Kasich, albeit through Ohio’s mini-legislature, the Controlling Board. When Rhodes won re-election in 1966, he carried every county except Pike (Waverly). When Kasich won re-election in 2014, be carried every county except Athens and Monroe (Woodsfield). So much for “philosophy.”
For all the right-wing blather about who is or isn’t true-blue, Ohio’s last genuine hard-shell conservative was Sen. John W. Bricker, a Columbus Republican unseated in 1958 because of that year’s right-to-work (for less) fiasco.
On the other side of the ledger, Lakewood Democrat Richard F. Celeste (governor from 1983 through 1990) was, rhetorically, a classic liberal. To his credit, Celeste genuinely diversified the face of state government. But Statehouse Democrats have been on the defensive for 35 years because of steep tax increases Celeste won from the last (1983-84) General Assembly in which Democrats ran both houses.
Campaign ’18 will really get going after Tuesday’s primary and not just the contest for governor. The knife-fight for the Ohio House speakership may get even bloodier. But if the past is any guide, the pattern that Flinn traced in Ohio politics will remain no matter what happens in November.
This will be the Statehouse script: Something for you, something for us, a job for him, a deal for her — and promises of a future Ohio that never quite seems to arrive.