Is it GOP math or plain old gerrymandering?
Back in the mid-1970s, political science Professor Lawrence Baum taught his Ohio State students to study the true political leanings of state supreme court justices by examining their rulings on that most partisan of all issues: redistricting.
If that holds true nearly 50 years later, Ohioans are about to learn a lot about the people elected — without party labels in the general election — to the Ohio Supreme Court.
Litigation over Ohio's redistricting process was always a reasonable possibility. That turned into a virtual certainty early Thursday morning when a controversial GOP proposal on redrawing legislative district boundaries won approval on a straight party-line Redistricting Commission vote, 5-2. (Congressional district maps are next.)
The question of whether the new House and Senate maps meet the criteria in a constitutional amendment approved by Ohioans could come before a high court that's divided 4-3 in favor of the GOP. The first issue may be whether Justice Pat Dewine, son of Gov. Mike Dewine, will want to sit in judgment of a plan that his father supported.
But it's Chief Justice Maureen O'connor, a Republican who was lieutenant governor under Gov. Bob Taft and became the first woman to preside over the court, who is widely perceived as the least predictable vote.
O'connor's official bio lists issues she's championed that are not necessarily part of the traditional Republican Party platform: racial justice; ending “debtor's prisons;” pushing for adequate legal representation for the poor; bail reform; and sentencing fairness, including on death penalty cases. She also developed an "eviction toolkit" for judges to help keep renters in their homes during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During a Dispatch interview In July 2019, O'connor called President Donald Trump's ongoing attacks on the federal judiciary “dangerous.” She added that judges of any political persuasion who allow politics to color their role and rulings on the bench do not deserve to hold office.
In July 2020, she voiced support for racial protests in Columbus and elsewhere: "The unrest is a culmination of historically unequal and unlawful treatment of people of color in this country, particularly African Americans, and the decades of grievances that have largely fallen on deaf ears."
In August, she praised a court ruling that many in the GOP had panned: “We just had a United States Supreme Court decision, maybe two years ago, that came out and said discrimination based on sex means discrimination for transgendered and people of diverse identification, self-identifying. To me, that's progress."
Another important factor: She won't face voters for re-election because she is barred from seeking another term due to her age. That also means she doesn't have to worry about getting Republican Party help for another campaign.
Does Republican math on redistricting add up?
One key item for the Supreme Court's consideration: the Ohio GOP'S math.
Here's how they came up with a probable built-in supermajority of House seats:
Ohio voters split 54% to 46% in favor of Republican candidates in recent statewide elections. Using that breakdown would net a presumed GOP margin of 54-45, or 53-46 in the 99-member House, depending on how the numbers are rounded.
But the controversial part is that the Republicans didn't stop there. In a move critics insist is statistically and legally invalid, the GOP also noted that the GOP candidate won 81% of those races over the past decade — regardless of how close they may have been — and Democrats just 19%.
Exactly how the 81% and 54% Republican advantages were smooshed together isn't clear, but the GOP wound up with a legislature in which the party is expected to win 64% of the seats and continued one-party control for perhaps another decade.
What about all the times Democrats tilted districts to favor their side?
Republicans stung by criticism on how they drew Gop-friendly legislative maps say that Democrats have engaged in such dirty work as well.
To be sure, when Democrats held power in Ohio after the decennial census was completed, they did their best to press the party's advantage for the ensuing 10 years — although they certainly lacked the digital sophistication the GOP was able to employ in recent cycles.
The incident that is mentioned most often is a 2008 plan endorsed by thenspeaker Jon Husted — later secretary of state and now lieutenant governor. The proposal, very similar to one rejected by the House in 2006, would have set up a bipartisan, seven-member panel that decides how to draw the lines in an effort to remove gerrymandering from the process.
Husted pushed the new idea into the 2010 election year, when he was a state senator. Democrats rolled out their own version of a revamp.
But that year was in a rare window during the past three decades: Democrats actually controlled state government. So when no redistricting changes could be agreed upon, then-democratic Chairman Chris Redfern got the blame for betting the D's would keep control of both state government and the mapmaking process in November 2010.
It didn't happen. Gov. Ted Strickland lost narrowly to Republican John Kasich. Husted became secretary of state, and fellow GOP candidate Dave Yost prevailed in the state auditor's race as part of a party sweep. The elephant crowd took back control of the House for good measure.
They've held the redistricting pen ever since, although most Republicans backed the 2015 and 2017 state constitutional amendments that created a seven-member board to draw new lines. drowland@dispatch.com @darreldrowland