Earlier this year, Republican voters thrashed LaRose in the statewide primary election to pick a GOP challenger to face Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, of Cleveland, who is seeking a fourth consecutive Senate term. Ohio Republicans instead fielded Greater Cleveland GOP entrepreneur Bernie Moreno to challenge Democrat Brown.
In 2023, LaRose told anyone who’d listen that making it harder for Ohio’s voters to amend their state constitution was a great idea. Voters ignored LaRose, killing the anti-voter measure that would have required super-majorities to amend the Ohio Constitution. Later in 2023, Ohioans guaranteed the rights of women in Ohio to make their own decisions about pregnancy, a voter-initiated measure that LaRose also opposed.
In that connection, here’s what cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias later reported: “LaRose confirmed something that abortion-rights supporters [had] suspected all along: Abortion opponents helped [LaRose] craft the ballot language in a way meant to benefit their campaign to defeat the measure.”
If the term “ballot language” rings any bells, maybe it’s because LaRose, and two other Republicans on the Ohio Ballot Board (including suburban Toledo state Sen. Theresa Gavarone) slanted ballot language on the voter-proposed constitutional amendment slated for November’s statewide ballot. That ballot issue is aimed at ending the partisan rigging, by Republicans, of Ohio’s General Assembly and congressional districts.
Last weekend, in another election-related issue, Judge Michael H. Watson, of U.S. District Court for Southern Ohio, an appointee of George W. Bush, forbade Ohio to implement a new state law Republicans passed May 31 and GOP Gov. Mike DeWine signed June 2. (In the 1990s, Watson was chief legal counsel to then-Ohio Gov. George V. Voinovich, a Cleveland Republican.
The measure Watson spiked aimed to forbid foreign citizens, including those who hold “green cards” (federally defined as a “Permanent Resident Card [allowing someone] to live and work permanently in the United States”) to contribute to statewide ballot-issue campaigns in Ohio.
Some Republicans have convinced themselves that Ohioans refused to sign away their constitutional rights in last year’s ballot issues not because voters think for themselves, but because they were misled by foreign money.
Anyone spot the contradiction? Ohioans are wise enough to elect LaRose secretary of state but too dim to protect their own rights without foreign guidance. That’s the Statehouse version of heads I win, tails you lose.
LaRose, naturally, was unhappy with the ruling, saying in a Tuesday statement that “we’re especially not going to let foreign billionaires try to buy our constitution. It happened in two constitutional amendments on the ballot last year” – when Ohioans ignored LaRose’s unsolicited advice to hogtie themselves – “and we’re seeing clear evidence that it’s happening again with the [the anti-gerrymandering] amendment on this November’s ballot.”
It would be nice, if only for the sake of appearances, if LaRose were to curb his growing partisanship and concentrate instead on what is an essentially managerial job. As it is, much of Ohio elections’ heavy lifting is done by Ohio’s 88 bipartisan county Boards of Elections.
Again, here’s the paradox: Ohio’s voters are smart enough, surely in LaRose’s eyes, to elect him secretary of state. But somehow those same Ohioans turn into putty thanks to campaign donations from overseas. Which is it, Mr. Secretary?
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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