Today, Ohio is in a unique position where it is bound by its state constitution to redraw its 15 congressional district boundaries before the 2026 midterm election because the state’s current congressional plan was passed without requisite Democratic support in 2021.
The Ohio Constitution gave the legislature until the end of September to pass a bipartisan plan. However, public redistricting discussion didn’t commence until Sept. 23. Two subsequent committee hearings on the matter saw members of the legislature’s Republican supermajority deride Democrats’ plan — which would have split Ohio’s 15 congressional districts into eight Republican-leaning districts and seven Democratic-leaning districts — as textbook gerrymandering.
Republicans didn’t introduce a plan of their own, and Senate President Rob McColley, R-Napoleon, told this news outlet this week that GOP leaders still haven’t drafted a map.
“We don’t have a map right now. We would like to have a bipartisan agreement on a map; sometimes that takes time and discussion to get to that point,” McColley said after Wednesday’s Senate session. “It really comes down to what we can get an agreement for.”
While McColley says he wants a bipartisan map, he’s also noted several times now that his party doesn’t necessarily need to come to the table, at this stage.
Ohio’s redistricting process was overhauled by a voter-approved constitutional amendment that was meant to incentivize bipartisanship by enacting bipartisan-approved maps for an entire decade and only allowing partisan-approved maps to be approved as a temporary last resort.
However, the reform didn’t do much to wrangle power away from the legislature’s controlling party. As a result, Republicans today have the power to wait out the clock and approve a congressional map on a partisan basis.
McColley reiterated Wednesday that Democrats have even less bargaining power now than they did in 2021 when the state was trying to come up with a 10-year map.
“As I’ve stated before, with this now being in the realm of a six-year map, an awful lot of the ability for the minority party to have a bigger influence over this is primarily centered on a 10-year map,” McColley said. “So, we’ll see where we end up. I’d like to have a bipartisan agreement, but we’ll see.”
Frustration over the matter is growing for Democrats in the Statehouse.
“Phase one, September: No Republican map. Two weeks into October: No Republican map. Voters in 2018 established a clear process for us to follow. They want to see legislators produce maps; propose them, debate them, negotiate them and come to something that feels fair and representative,” House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn told reporters Wednesday. “We have done that, as Democrats. We introduced a map we think is fair; Republicans have not.”
Isaacsohn alluded to a growing concern of his that Ohio Republicans are looking to use redistricting as an opportunity to widen the party’s congressional advantage, turning Ohio’s current 10 Republican, five Democrat delegation into, potentially, a 13 Republican, two Democrat delegation.
“You can see this all over the country, it’s a national strategy coming from D.C. because (Republicans) know that they have unpopular policies that will hurt them at the ballot box with voters next November,” he said.
The Ohio Redistricting Commission is made up of the governor, the auditor, the secretary of state, two individuals appointed by Republican statehouse leaders and two other individuals appointed by Democratic leaders.
The commission’s first meeting will be held on Tuesday, Oct. 21 at 9 a.m.
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Avery Kreemer can be reached at 614-981-1422, on X, via email, or you can drop him a comment/tip with the survey below.
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