Ohio Republicans’ legislative redistricting proposal could lead to more GOP seats, fewer competitive districts

COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Republicans’ new state legislative redistricting proposal would make it easier for them to expand their supermajorities in both the House and Senate, as well as create fewer competitive districts overall, according to an analysis by cleveland.com/The Plain Dealer.

The redistricting plan, which legislative GOP leaders unveiled earlier this week, also is designed to help keep many incumbents from both parties in office.

The Ohio Redistricting Commission is set to hold its first of three public meetings about the proposed redistricting plan on Friday morning at Deer Creek State Park, located about 30 miles south of Columbus.

Under the plan, Republicans would be favored, at least on paper, to win in 62 of 99 Ohio House districts, as well as 23 of 33 Ohio Senate seats. If passed, that would give a greater advantage to Republicans than the legislative maps they managed to put in place for the 2022 elections, which gave their party an edge in 56 House seats and 18 Senate seats.

Several Republicans last year won in Democratic-leaning districts, resulting in the GOP currently holding 67 House seats and 26 Senate seats. Both are the largest majorities that either party has held since the Ohio legislature went to one-member districts in the 1960s.

Last year’s redistricting plan was repeatedly found by the Ohio Supreme Court to be unconstitutionally gerrymandered in favor of Republicans. The ruling means that the Ohio Redistricting Commission has to again pass new House and Senate district lines ahead of the 2024 election.

The Republican redistricting proposal also would reduce the number of competitive districts in both the House and Senate. The current maps include 19 House districts and eight Senate districts where, measuring from the results of recent statewide elections, the number of voters from one party outnumbers the minority party by 5 percentage points or less. If the GOP’s proposed plan passes as written, only 12 House districts and four Senate districts would have a partisan divide of 5 percentage points or less.

The GOP maps further seek to change several of the swing districts in the current maps from tilting in favor of Democrats to giving Republicans a slight advantage.

Incumbents

The Republican maps would create a number of winners and losers among sitting members of the legislature.

A number of House Republicans would find themselves living in districts that are more GOP-friendly than they are now, including state Reps. Al Cutrona of Mahoning County, Andrea White of the Dayton area, Nick Santucci of Trumbull County, Dave Dobos of Columbus and Josh Williams of suburban Toledo.

The GOP maps would help a couple incumbent House Democrats who won in swing districts last year: state Reps. Richard Dell’Aquila of Seven Hills and Lauren McNally of Youngstown. However, state Rep. Dan Troy, a Lake County Democrat, would be drawn into a district significantly more Republican than the one he represents now.

It’s not yet clear if or how the proposed House map would affect the expected battle between Stephens and term-limited Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, for the House speaker’s gavel in 2025.

The Senate map, meanwhile, would reward some Republican incumbents who won in Democratic-leaning districts by placing them in GOP-friendly ones, including state Sens. Jerry Cirino of Kirtland, Theresa Gavarone of Wood County and Michele Reynolds of suburban Columbus. The latter two have been talked about as potential candidates for statewide office in 2026.

On the other hand, many incumbents in non-competitive districts, especially Republicans in rural areas, would see no change to their districts at all.

Other factors

Republicans on Wednesday emphasized that they strove to meet a number of requirements laid out in the Ohio Constitution, including that the districts be compact, putting limits on splitting counties and cities into different districts, and ensuring that state senators who were elected to four-year terms in 2022 can continue to serve in the Senate until their terms are up in 2026.

McColley said the plan would ensure that several mid-sized cities, including Akron and Toledo, were either entirely or mostly contained within single Senate districts, rather than being divided into multiple districts like they are under the current map. Antonio said she was concerned that Republicans were trying to “pack” urban Democrats into just a few districts so that neighboring districts would be more friendly to Republicans.

She also noted that one proposed House district would cover western Lucas County, then wind all the way over to part of Ottawa County, with the connection only being the Maumee River itself.

One ongoing debate between Democrats and Republicans is related to the the constitution’s requirement that that the number of districts that favor Republicans and Democrats, respectively, should be in proportion to the percentage that each party’s statewide candidates averaged over the past 10 years.

The question is whether the redistricting commission this year should update that decade-long “lookback” to drop the 2012 election (a good year for Democrats in Ohio) and include the 2022 midterms (where Republicans cruised to victory). That would justify Republicans in drawing a higher percentage of districts where their candidates have an advantage.

Antonio and Russo say the 2022 election results shouldn’t be used in the lookback period now, as there’s not yet data from that year that can be used to show the partisan breakdown of each potential legislative district. (The GOP map, when calculating the partisan leanings of its districts, relies on the same 2016-2020 data that the redistricting commission used last year.)

Republicans maintain they don’t need that specific of data to determine the proportion of districts – they only need to use the election results from 2022.

Commission co-chair Keith Faber, Ohio’s Republican state auditor, said Wednesday that instead of trying to hit some “magical mystery ratio,” a disparaging term he repeatedly used, it’s important to try to ensure that communities are represented by someone who shares their interests, especially as Ohioans with the same political bent increasingly cluster together geographically.

“I’m (not) going to draw people inherently into a district where they don’t feel like their representative represents them,” Faber said. “And that is the key when we talk about avoiding gerrymandering.”

After three public hearings, the Ohio Redistricting Commission can vote on whether to pass the map. Russo said it’s likely that the five Republicans on the commission will “go full speed ahead” and not accept requests to amend the maps that were introduced.

“But if they do, it’ll be very minimal and likely only impact within Democratic districts,” she said.

The Democrats told reporters that they don’t see any way they would support the Republican map as written.

“I think there have been some platitudes (by Republicans who say), ‘Oh, yeah, sure, we’d love to get to a bipartisan map,’” Russo said. “But this is not a serious attempt to get to a bipartisan map, without substantial changes to it. And I think that’s intended — again, it’s in (Republicans’) own self-interest, probably, to redraw these (maps) every two years so they can jockey for power amongst themselves.”

The National Democratic Redistricting Committee, led by ex-U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, filed suit against Ohio’s legislative maps last year, as did a handful of left-leaning good-government groups. They’re expected to take similar action against any maps that pass the Ohio Redistricting Commission without the support of Russo or Antonio.

“NDRC and its affiliate organizations are exploring all options, including potential litigation, in response to these maps,” said Brooke Lillard, a spokeswoman for the group, in a statement.

Jeremy Pelzer covers state politics and policy for Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story included several errors about how the proposed map would affect legislative incumbents. Republican state Reps. Dave Dobos and Josh Williams would not be drawn into Democratic-leaning districts under the GOP redistricting plan as written. Democratic state Reps. Beth Liston and Anita Somani would not be in the same House district under the plan, nor would Democratic state Rep. Dan Troy and Republican state Rep. Jamie Callender.