Lawmakers only pretend to care about kids

The state Senate displayed an Oscar-worthy portrayal of hypocrisy last week, and that's saying something in a Statehouse full of cardboard personalities and junior-varsity phonies.

Purportedly to protect the health of young Ohioans, GOP senators overrode the veto, by Gov. Mike Dewine, a fellow Republican, of Substitute House Bill 68.

The House, also Gop-run, has already overridden Dewine's veto of HB 68, a bill that will forbid physicians to provide certain gender-transition services to Ohio minors who are questioning their gender identity.

Ohio lawmakers endangering the lives of kids

On the other hand, in a move that clearly would endanger the health of all Ohioans, not just the state's younger residents, the Senate joined the House in overriding Dewine's veto of another measure that deals indirectly but pertinently with younger Ohioans.

That proposal, slipped by the state Senate into the 2023-24 state budget bill, forbids the regulation, by local governments, of tobacco products.

That was an evident reaction to the Columbus City Council's passage of an ordinance banning the sale in the city of flavored tobacco products.

In his veto message, Dewine wrote that federal data show “approximately 480,000 Americans die from cigarette smoke each year ... Worse yet, the marketing of flavored tobacco products often targets children ... Local government bans are essential because they reduce access to flavored tobacco and nicotine alternative products and interrupt the cycle of addiction,” Dewine wrote.

A job save?

Cleveland.com reported that, Rep. Jon Cross, a Findlay Republican, told the House that the veto override was about saving jobs. For whom? Morgue attendants?

So, there you have it: The same legislature that claims to be protecting young transgender Ohioans from medical “experimentation” couldn't care less about protecting the health of young Ohioans' lungs.

Is Ohio's primary irrelevant?

National bystanders say former President Donald Trump's victory in Tuesday's New Hampshire presidential likely signals his probable capture of the GOP'S 2024 presidential nomination.

The question then becomes whether the New Hampshire result makes the nation’s remaining presidential primaries, such as Ohio’s March 19 primary, irrelevant.

New Hampshire’s voters may well have sewed up the GOP nomination for Trump; and Ohio Republicans were always going to support Trump’s renomination. Still, Ohio’s March 19 election – as to state offices – remains important, at least among the state’s Republicans.

First off, there’s the GOP donnybrook over a three-way contest for the nomination to challenge the re-election of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat. The three Republicans vying for the GOP nod to challenge Brown are state Sen. Matt Dolan, of Chagrin Falls; Ohio Secretary of State Frank Larose, of Upper Arlington; and Greater Cleveland entrepreneur Bernie Moreno, of Westlake. Trump has endorsed Moreno.

Guerrilla war in the General Assembly

Meanwhile, also central to Ohio politicking in Columbus are primary election contests for seats in the General Assembly, especially Republican seats in the Ohio House of Representatives.

Republican Speaker Jason Stephens, of Lawrence County’s Kitts Hill, leads the House’s Republicans, But a guerrilla war – at least low-intensity skirmishing – has wracked the Ohio House’s GOP caucus because Stephens was elected in a GOP split.

With 50 votes required to win, Stephens became speaker with the votes of just 22 of the House’s 67 Republicans but all 32 of the House’s Democrats. The Republican who was seen, pre-election, as likely 2023-24 speaker was Rep. Derek Merrin, of suburban Toledo, who drew 43 House Republican votes. (Two Republicans were absent.) Merrin is now running for the U.S. House in the Toledo area.

Bad blood has spilled over from the Stephens coup, with two complicating factors: The push by retiring Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, to win a House seat and sooner or later pry the House gavel from Stephens (which would require Huffman allies to be nominated in March), and second, quests by Flat Earth Republicans to deny renomination to House Republicans denounced as quasi-liberals.

Fear of such right-wing challenges to GOP members helped muster a unanimous vote by House Republicans to override Dewine’s veto of House Bill 68. That’s what ambition and fear do to occasionally respectable people.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com