Cleveland Plain Dealer...
Drawing the line on Democrat griping
By Brent Larkin
Saturday, October 22, 2011 

You’ve gotta hand it to Ohio’s Democratic leaders: Their relentless attacks on the state’s new congressional boundaries have succeeded in exposing some world-class hypocrites. 

Themselves. 

Last year, Democrats had a chance to take politics out of drawing new congressional boundaries and replace it with a plan that reeked of fairness. 

Republican members of the legislature supported it. Most daily newspapers and good government groups strongly urged its adoption. And any Ohioan with a modicum of common sense instinctively knew the idea was a good one. 

The Democrats killed it. Single-handedly. 

Now, just two years later, they’re whining about the process they perpetuated. Their cries of foul play are nauseating. 

This is not to say the new boundaries -- lines drawn entirely by Republican legislators and signed off on by Republican Gov. John Kasich -- represent an exercise in good government. To the contrary, the Republican gerrymandering was done with three things in mind: Retain existing Republicans, elect new Republicans, isolate and defeat Democrats. 

New congressional boundaries usually are drawn by the legislature every 10 years. But in 2009, Republican Jon Husted, then a state senator, unveiled a proposal to dramatically improve the way geographic boundaries are determined for state and federal lawmakers. 

The plan would have amended the Ohio Constitution to create a seven-member panel to redraw those boundaries every 10 years. Republican and Democratic members of the Ohio House and Senate would have shared equally in the appointment of four members. Those four would have appointed the other three members. The support of five members would have been required for approval. 

Husted’s proposal would have taken effect for this year’s drawing of new boundaries. It required voter approval, which would have been a near-certainty. 

The Ohio Senate voted to put the plan on last November’s ballot, but it died in the Democrat-controlled House. The Democrats balked for three reasons: 

• Labor leaders opposed it. 

• Placing it on the ballot would have been a political win for Husted, who was then a candidate for secretary of state. 

• Finally, for them to be shut out of the redistricting process would have required that Democrats lose both the governor’s race and control of the House -- a prospect they viewed as highly unlikely. 

They were very wrong. Republicans swept every statewide office and retook the House by a comfortable margin. 

Because Democrats passed on an opportunity to do right by the taxpayers, they’re now being punished by the party in power. The new legislative maps pretty much guarantee that Democrats won’t win back the Ohio House next year and that Democrats will probably win just four of the state’s 16 seats in Congress. 

“I’m really not trying to crow, because I honestly want to work with them [Democrats] to solve this problem in the future,” Husted said last week. “But what they’re trying to do now is overturn the results of the last election. The Democrats thought they were going to win last year. It’s that simple.” 

Instead, they got crushed. So, having handed Republicans the pencil, Ohio Democratic Chairman Chris Redfern now is demanding that they share it. 

Unless Republicans agree to draw new congressional boundaries, Redfern is threatening to gather signatures aimed at asking voters to reject the GOP map. 

Redfern did not return a call, but spent much of last week in threat mode. 

Redfern is not without some leverage. If this fight ends up in federal court, there’s no absolute guarantee the Republicans will prevail. But the notion advanced by some Democrats that Ohio is a 50-50 state, which warrants that the 16 new congressional districts be evenly divided, is utter nonsense. 

Ohio remains a swing state. But it is no longer a balanced one. Of the 43 state and federal elections in Ohio since 1990 -- excluding Ohio Supreme Court races, which Republicans almost always win -- Republicans have won 70 percent. 

Because Ohio Democrats are concentrated in large cities, it would be extraordinarily difficult to draw a map that would produce a congressional delegation with more than five Democratic members. 

Moving the congressional primary to June won’t resolve the dispute, but it buys Republicans time. If necessary, they’ll pass a new plan that tinkers with the map, making it is less vulnerable to a legal challenge. 

Meanwhile, it would be nice if at least one top Democrat had the courage to publicly acknowledge what many willingly admit in private: 

That this is a mess of their own making. 

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