Republicans’ unstated but certain aim will be to redraw current districts in a bid to capture two-now-Democratic districts for the GOP, boosting the number of Ohio Republicans in the House to 12. The 435-member House is now composed of 219 Republicans and 213 Democrats, with three vacancies.
Because of courthouse falderal, the General Assembly – which generally redraws districts every ten years, after each Census – must instead redraw Ohio’s congressional districts before next year’s election.
Two factors should – should – make that a piece of cake. Factor One is that dividing Ohio’s 11,799,448 residents into 15 districts, each with 786,630 Ohioans, isn’t nuclear physics; it’s blackboard math.
Factor Two is that, unlike Ohio’s rules for drawing General Assembly districts, rules for drawing congressional districts in Ohio are comparatively simple, assuming fair representation of Black Ohioans.
(According to Ohio’s Development Department, “Ohio’s Black community is comprised of more than 1.7 million people that claim at least partial African heritage ... 14.5 percent of the state’s total population.”)
Ohio’s 15-member U.S. House of Representatives delegation includes three Black members, who are all Democrats: Reps. Joyce Beatty, of Columbus; Shontel Brown, of Warrensville Heights; and Emilia Sykes, of Akron.
Besides Beatty, Brown and Sykes, there is a fourth Ohio woman in Congress: Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat, first elected in November 1982.
Statehouse Republicans have all but announced that they’ll aim to gerrymander – in the GOP’s favor –Kaptur and Sykes’s districts.
At the last congressional election, in November 2024, Kaptur, facing GOP nominee Derek Merrin, then a state representative from suburban Toledo, won by only about 2,400 votes. Meanwhile, in Democrat Sykes bested her Republican challenger, Kevin Coughlin, of Bath, by only about 8,500 votes.
Sykes was Ohio House Democratic leader from 2019 to 2021. Coughlin previously served in Ohio’s House and Senate, and as clerk of Stow Municipal Court.
Because of the “nationalization” of congressional politics, both the U.S. Senate and U.S. House have become partisan bullrings. Example: U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, an Urbana Republican.
Time was, though, when Ohioans elected U.S. House members of real distinction, such as William M. McCulloch, of Piqua; Charles Mosher and Donald Pease, both of Oberlin; David L. Hobson, of Springfield; John F. Seiberling, of Akron; Stephanie Tubbs Jones and Louis Stokes, both of Cleveland; and Charles W. Whalen Jr. and Tony P. Hall, both of Dayton.
Despite GOP targeting, there’s this: No woman has served longer in Congress than Kaptur. And boosting Emilia Sykes’s name-recognition in Northeast Ohio: Her parents are former state representative and state Sen. Vernon Sykes, a University of Akron Ph.D., and former state Rep. Barbara Sykes, Ohio Democrats’ 1994 nominee for state treasurer and 2006 nominee for state auditor, who’s now a member of the Akron Board of Education. (Earlier this year, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Vernon Sykes to the Ohio Civil Rights Commission.)
Those factors don’t necessarily make Kaptur and Emilia Sykes any less vulnerable to a GOP gerrymander; but they do suggest that Kaptur and Sykes are hardly pushovers for the wannabe Machiavellis among Ohio Statehouse Republicans.
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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