The Statehouse slap-fight over whether Democrat Joe Biden’s name will or won’t appear on Ohio’s presidential ballot was likely about something else altogether — the probable appearance on November’s ballot of voter-initiated proposals to:
- forbid gerrymandering of the General Assembly via a “Citizens Not Politicians:" ballot issue; and,
- via a “Raise the Wage Ohio” ballot issue, raise the state’s minimum wage – now $10.45 per hour for non-tipped workers and $5.25 for tipped workers – to $15 per hour for all workers.
(If voters OK’d the minimum-wage issue, according to the Greater Cleveland think-tank Policy Matters Ohio, “Three in five of the people whose pay [would] go up are women. Raising the wage will reduce gender pay inequity.”)
Gumming up statewide ballot-issues
Taken at face value, GOP maneuvering over Biden and Ohio’s ballot is just more of today’s standard-issue Statehouse bickering.
True, in the abstract, denying Biden a place on Ohio’s ballot, while depriving Ohioans of a choice in November, would be politically secondary: At this writing, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump would likely carry Ohio Nov. 5.
Instead, the Biden/ballot fight is arguably GOP camouflage for what’s really at stake – gumming up those statewide ballot-issue campaigns in expensive, time-eating rigmarole and holding down Democratic turnout.
It’s increasingly obvious that Ohio voters genuinely shocked Statehouse Republicans last year by passing statewide ballot issues that (a) protect access to abortion; (b) legalized recreational marijuana; and (c) blocked a GOP attempt to make it harder for rank-and-file Ohioans to amend the Ohio Constitution.
Blaming Johnny or Joanie Foreigner
Accordingly, in various way and to different degrees, the GOP has tried to include in the Biden ballot-fix provisions that to some extent would make it harder for voter-proposed issues to reach the statewide ballot.
One move already made: To assign Republican Attorney General David Yost, whom Democrats (to put it mildly) distrust, responsibility for policing foreign campaign donations, something the bipartisan Ohio Elections Commission now does.
The pearl-clutching about foreign campaign donors is because the GOP has to blame somebody for its 2023 ballot fiascos, and who better than Johnny or Joanie Foreigner?
It isn’t like Ohio doesn’t have a history on that front.
In a move the U.S. Supreme Court later killed, the General Assembly, after America went to war with Germany in World War I, made it a crime to teach the German language in Ohio schools, public or private, below the eighth grade. Take that, Kaiser Bill.
What about Sherrod Brown?
Moreover, in the unlikely event General Assembly Republicans did keep Biden off Ohio’s ballot, that might induce some Ohio Democrats to stay home on Election Day, creating two major challenges for their party.
Democratic stay-at-homes could threaten the re-election of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, who is being vigorously challenged by Republican Bernie Moreno, a Westlake entrepreneur. Another challenge could be to Democrats’ retention of Ohio Supreme Court seats Democrats now hold.
Though it’s hardly a sure thing, the Supreme Court can be a backstop against the General Assembly’s partisan antics.
Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael P. Donnelly, a Greater Cleveland Democrat, is being challenged for re-election by Republican Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan.
Another Greater Cleveland Democrat, Supreme Court Justice Melody Stewart, is being challenged by fellow Justice Joseph T. Deters, a Cincinnati Republican who was once Hamilton County’s prosecuting attorney and is politically close to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, whose son is another Supreme Court justice, Cincinnati Republican R. Patrick DeWine.
In the third Ohio Supreme Court contest, for a seat Deters now holds but is leaving to challenge Stewart, Greater Cleveland Democratic Judge Lisa Forbes, of the Ohio Court of Appeals (8th District), is competing with the Republican nominee for Deters’ current Supreme Court seat, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Dan Hawkins.
Given Republicans’ self-interest in GOP-rigged legislative seats, and GOP legislators’ alliance with business lobbies on the minimum-wage ballot issue, the bonus – from General Assembly Republicans’ perspective – of the Biden-on-the-ballot question could be extraneous amendments slipped into the Biden fix to stall or at least complicate the work of the campaigns for the “Citizens Not Politicians” anti-gerrymandering ballot issue and the “Raise the Wage Ohio” issue.
That’s because the General Assembly’s Republican majorities are just fine with the way things are in Ohio.
Aren’t you?
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
