‘Like A Virgin,’ Dems have one thing in common
Democrats last ran the state Senate 37 years ago, under the late Harry Meshel, of Youngstown, as Senate president.
That was in December 1984. Madonna’s “Like A Virgin” was at the top of the charts and Walter Mondale was still trying to figure out what had hit him the month before. Buckeye State Republicans have run the Ohio Senate ever since.
And GOP rule of the Senate, under President Matt Huffman, of Lima, isn’t about to change, based on campaign finance reports that each Senate caucus has filed.
The reports offer data on how much the caucuses have banked pending next year’s reports.
Take for instance mid-year data filed last summer – latest available – by the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. Its cash balance was $2,415,365.
In contrast, Ohio Senate Democrats reported a cash balance of $148,071. That is, for every $1 Senate Republicans’ caucus committee had banked, Senate Democrats had 6 cents.
Sure, individual senators have their own campaign committees, but the caucus committees, such as the Republican Senate Campaign Committee, are crucial to funding caucus victories.
When a caucus rules the state Senate or the Ohio House in Columbus, it’s tough to dislodge, and not just because of gerrymandering.
Whoever holds a majority has builtin leverage, because only the majority gets to decide which bills pass, and which don’t, meaning an investment in — oops, a donation to a General Assembly minority caucus is arguably a waste in purely economic terms.
The Senate Republicans’ campaign fund drew some predictable donors, such as American Electric Power’s Committee for Responsible Government ($20,000).
Irony is lost on some people. Complete coincidence, neither the Senate nor the House has repealed the part of scandal-wracked House Bill 6 that makes Ohio electricity consumers subsidize two cash-burning … uh … coal-burning … power plants in which AEP holds a stake.
Senate Republicans’ midsummer report also reveals a few other coincidences.
On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme
Court (4-3 Republican) will hear oral arguments over the constitutionality – or not – of new Ohio congressional districts which the state Senate and Ohio House gerrymandered last month.
How state legislators draw congressional districts can make it harder or easier for a U.S. House member to keep his or her seat.
Ohio will have 15 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, beginning in January 2023 and the map the General Assembly drew (Substitute Senate Bill 258, passed Nov. 18, and signed by Republican Gov. Mike Dewine) likely will give the GOP an edge in 12 of those 15 seats, that is, 80% of them, which is interesting given that Ohio twice backed Barack Obama and Bill Clinton for president, and three times has backed Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat.
Surely, it was just to reward good government, but campaign committees representing some Ohio Republicans in Congress donated more than $100,000 of the total contributions the Republican
Senate Campaign Committee reported in July.
Among them: The campaign for Rep. Jim Jordan, of Urbana, made two donations totaling $40,496; the campaign for Rep. Brad Wenstrup, of Cincinnati, made donations totaling $12,000; the campaign for Rep. Warren Davidson, of Troy, made a donation of $19,939; the campaign for Rep. Bill Johnson of Marietta, donated $10,000, as did the campaign of Rep. Bob Latta, of Bowling Green; and the campaigns of Reps. Troy Balderson, of Zanesville, Bob Gibbs, of Lakeville, and Dave Joyce, of suburban Cleveland, gave $5,000 each, for a total of $15,000.
Only a cynic would suggest there’s any connection between those donations and the Gop-friendly congressional map state Senate Republicans helped draw.
Meanwhile: Voters should brace themselves for 2022. It will be anything but dull, thanks to a hotly contested U.S. Senate primary among Republicans and a separate quest by some righter-thanthou Republicans to nominate someone other than incumbent Mike Dewine for governor. That’s extremely unlikely.
It’s unclear if Ohio Republicans have ever denied a GOP governor re-nomination. But as a savvy Democrat recently noted in private, Democrats did deny renomination in 1938 to Gov. Martin L. Davey, of Kent, who’d feuded with Franklin D. Roosevelt and unions. Democrats instead nominated Cincinnatian Charles Sawyer for governor; he lost to GOP nominee John W. Bricker.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com