For now, though, red state, blue state, bellwether — whatever: For the next two years, leading up to the 2024 presidential and Senate elections, Ohio is demonstrably and safely Republican.
When the General Assembly opens its 2023-24 session Tuesday, Republicans will hold 26 of the Senate’s 33 seats and 67 of the House’s 99. Those totals, in each chamber, are the widest GOP margins since Ohio began to elect legislators from single-member districts in 1966.
Among other consequences, those tallies mean Senate and House GOP caucuses have enough votes to override vetoes — and enough to declare a bill an emergency measure, which prevents voters from forcing a statewide up-or-down vote on that bill.
The expected GOP leaders of the two General Assembly chambers: Senate President Matt Huffman, of Lima, and House Speaker-designate Derek Merrin, of suburban Toledo.
Meanwhile, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, will be sworn in for a second term on Jan. 9 in a Statehouse ceremony, along with his running mate, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted. DeWine drew 62% of the statewide vote in November to win re-election.
And today [Jan. 1], Butler County Republican Sharon L. Kennedy, since 2012 an (associate) justice of the Supreme Court, begins a six-year term as the court’s chief justice. That makes Kennedy, once a Hamilton police officer, head of Ohio’s court system.
And soon joining the Supreme Court, by courtesy of a DeWine appointment, will be Hamilton County Prosecuting Attorney Joseph T. Deters, a Cincinnati Republican, to the remaining two years of Kennedy’s term as (associate) justice.
Deters and DeWine are reputedly close, and in 2019 DeWine appointed the prosecutor’s brother, Dennis P. Deters to the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio and reappointed him in 2021. Once Joseph Deters is sworn in as a Supreme Court justice, the high court will be (as it has been) 4-3 Republican.
DeWine can’t run for re-election in 2026 because of Ohio’s two-consecutive-terms limit, and Thursday will be his 76th birthday. It’s difficult to imagine DeWine running for another office again. Husted, DeWine’s running mate in 2018 and 2022, is an obvious possibility for the governorship, but four years is a long way off.
Meanwhile, in theory anyway, the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which Huffman dominates, is seemingly obliged to draw new General Assembly districts before 2024′s election. And that will almost certainly be litigated before the state Supreme Court, whose new chief, Kennedy, is arguably the most conservative justice to sit on the court in decades.
Unlike the chief justice Kennedy who succeeded, fellow Republican Maureen O’Connor, who’s retired, Kennedy supported the pro-GOP districts the Redistricting Commission drew last year, as did the court’s other 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.
About the Author