SUDDES: This is how far Ohio Democrats have fallen

The redrawn districts protect three Democrats, Reps. Joyce Beatty, of Columbus; Shontel Brown, of Warrensville Heights; and Emilia Sykes, of Akron. But the deal likely made U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Toledo Democrat, more vulnerable to defeat and may make it tougher for U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman, a Cincinnati Democrat, to win a third term.

Bryan Hambley, a suburban Cincinnati Democrat energetically running for Democrats’ 2026 nomination for secretary of state (Ohio’s chief elections officer) had the guts to frankly denounce insiders’ deal.

“With Republican politicians holding the cards, they carved up communities to find the voters they need to hold on to power. This is not how democracy works. If you want power, you bring good ideas to the table, you win folks to your side, and voters put you in office. But not right now in Ohio. Here, politicians get to rig the game,” Hambley said.

Last year, Hambley was among voters vigorously campaigning for Issue 1, the proposed reform of Ohio’s redistricting procedures. Issue 1 was defeated in part thanks to misleading wording inserted by Ohio’s Ballot Board, chaired by lame-duck Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose.

Competing with Hambley for Democrats’ 2026 secretary of state nomination is Rep. Allison Russo, of Upper Arlington, earlier, Ohio House minority leader. In 2023, Russo, then on the GOP-run Redistricting Commission, drew fire for voting “yes” on GOP-gerrymandered General Assembly districts.

“When Democratic [Redistricting] commissioners were given a small amount of negotiating power to improve a handful of districts in the Republicans’ latest gerrymandered maps, you bet we seized the opportunity,” Russo wrote in a Columbus Dispatch guest column defending her “yes.”

This is how far Ohio Democrats have fallen – the party of former Govs. John J. Gilligan and Richard F. Celeste; of Sens. Howard M. Metzenbaum and Sherrod Brown; of Scioto County’s Vern Riffe; of the patriarch of Black politics in Ohio, Dayton’s C.J. McClin: Democrats now hope for crumbs that may fall from the Statehouse table – in a state that twice voted for Barack Obama.

The root and branch problem, is the Ohio Democratic Party. That’s no knock on new state chair Kathleen Clyde, of Portage County. But while no insider says it aloud, Ohio party’s No. 1 goal is returning Brown to the Senate. But where is Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York? He and his big-buck funders have as much need for a Brown revival as any Ohioans might. (No surprise: Schumer, 74, didn’t endorse the election of New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, 34, showing yet again how out of touch Washington’s aging warhorses are.)

Then there’s Democrats’ tragic failure to restore a Democratic majority to Ohio’s Supreme Court. The Ohio Constitution’s promises Ohioans “for an injury done [them] in ... land, goods, person, or reputation, shall have remedy by due course of law.” At today’s GOP-run court: If the defendant is an insurer or utility, a plaintiff can forget about winning.

How would Democrats put more bread on kitchen tables and noticeably cut Ohio property taxes? That’s what Ohioans want to hear. Specifically. Concretely. Now. And not in the high-octane double-talk of “consultants” and “spokespeople.”