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Ellen Belcher is the Dayton Daily News opinion pages editor. She writes about state government, education, the environment, higher education and all things Dayton.
Martin Gottlieb is an editorial writer and columnist for the Dayton Daily News opinion pages. He focuses on the political process itself and does such national issues as war, the economy, taxes and Social Security, as well as a hodge-podge of local and state issues.Home > Blogs > A Matter of Opinion > Archives > 2010 > June > 14 > Entry
Editorial: Husted isn’t out of ideas or leverage
Sen. Jon Husted gets a lot of credit for not giving up on the idea that voters should get to pick their politicians, not the other way around.
Right now, every 10 years, one or the other major political party draws maps creating legislative districts. The party with the most members on a five-member map-drawing commission tries to concentrate voters in ways to ensure that its side will control the legislature.
If you put enough Democratic voters, for instance, in a district, a Democrat will almost invariably win; ditto for Republicans. This practice at its most egregious has a name: gerrymandering.
The danger of the tradition is that it frees politicians from really competing for their jobs. They don’t have to reach out to voters from the other party, and they don’t have to confront strong challenges to their ideas. They can be politically rigid.
Meanwhile, the party that’s not in control in a district or in the legislature can be lazy. Why bother to contribute if the other side can make all the laws without your input?
In short, letting the politicians choose their voters is a threat to good government and to the success of democracy, which is built on give and take. It fosters political divisiveness, and it marginalizes centrists (who often are more in line with voters than the ideologues on both sides).
Sen. Husted — along with some Democratic reformers — is trying to get the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican-controlled Senate to set up a map-drawing process that encourages competitive districts, ones where neither side can assume victory.
He thought he was getting someplace last week. But he couldn’t get everyone’s questions answered quickly enough, and lawmakers went home for the summer.
There’s a possibility the legislature could come back to vote on a compromise this month or next. Lawmakers have to act quickly, though, because they only have until Aug. 4 to get a proposal on the ballot in November. If there’s no vote this year, nothing will happen for another decade, until the next Census.
(Legislative maps are redrawn to take population shifts into account only after every Census. Unlike some years, this year it’s not clear which party will have the most people on the map-drawing commission. In that situation, both sides have a reason to be for reforms that are designed to give them each a fighting chance in elections.)
Last week, Sen. Husted, who is running for chief elections officer of the state, said, “I’m not giving up on this until they carry me out in a box.”
Asked if he simply had run out of time, he defiantly insisted he was down, but not out even if the map-drawing process isn’t changed through a vote.
“If I’m elected (secretary of state) and I’m the deciding vote (on the map-drawing commission), I have a lot of leverage,” he said.
Sen. Husted is effectively saying that if the Republicans are in control of the commission and he’s on it as secretary of state, he would refuse to vote for new maps if they perpetuate a situation that undermines real elections. This would be bucking his party in a big way.
Some Republicans may actually believe he’s capable of taking what would be an unprecedented stand, especially since he’s making this sort of public statement in advance. Maybe they’d rather deal with this issue now.
Whether he’s making a threat or a promise, Sen. Husted needs to be held to his statement. He’s made reducing partisanship in government — through redistricting — his cause.
One person can’t be expected to single-handedly move mountains. But if a person wants credit for being a reformer and is given an opportunity to do the bold and right thing, there’s only one choice.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Post your comment | Categories: Editorials, Elections, Ellen Belcher, Ohio government, Ohio politics
Comments
By Max
June 14, 2010 6:08 PM | Link to this
If Sen. Husted put equal effort in defeating bad legislation and opposing school funding cuts that he does in the district composure, then he would be regarded as more than an office hatrack. Neither party is in ‘control’ of anything in the Dayton area as if it needs to be said…..
By Dave
June 14, 2010 6:27 PM | Link to this
It’s a real shame he never bothered to try to fix school funding. We might have a system that is constitutional now, if he had bothered.
By calvinJ
June 15, 2010 10:22 AM | Link to this
Amazing: Belcher wants fair elections now to help have people actually represented. No more obama media led victories. No more ridicule of people wanting to representated such as the Taxed Enough Already people? Huh Helen? Huh Martin? ———As for Husted. Political hack. We need to put him out to pasture to get a real job. I’m sure there are some in Arlington where he lives instead of Kettering where he pretends to live. —————Don’t hope for school funding equity from him. It doesn’t benefit him politically. Look at his push to give retirees from the military tax free checks, free of Ohio income tax. Compare to other public retirees who still have to pay Ohio income tax on their checks. So work at the Air Force base for a few years, retire, and Husted thinks tax free is okay. Don’t expect school funding correctness from this Husted guy.
By Miles
June 15, 2010 11:05 AM | Link to this
But Husted was involved in the 2001 gerrymander by the GOP, which resulted in no House seats changing hands until 2008. Why should we trust him?
By Max
June 16, 2010 12:51 PM | Link to this
Miles: Husted can be ‘trusted’ to do one thing; show up a local parades as long as it isn’t raining. He avoids any fight when the outcome is uncertain. The same can be said of Democrats who rubber stamp anything in the headlines; i.e. the Adam Walsh Law which no one of either party even discussed after the Federal Government bribed them with funds IF the AWL was passed ‘quickly.’ Our senators’ and represenatives’ performance is worse that those in D.C. because we expect a remote distancing from those in D.C., not here in Ohio.
By davidss2
June 17, 2010 7:17 PM | Link to this
You mean Husted DRIVES all that way from Upper Arlington to show up for parades here?
By David
June 20, 2010 8:44 AM | Link to this
Husted has been out of ideas since he was 15.