Voters torch the move by Frank LaRose and Matt Huffman to derail democracy in Ohio: Today in Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio — The voters have spoken. And they’ve declared unequivocally that, when it comes to making changes to Ohio’s constitution, majority rules.

We’re talking about Issue 1, which went down in flames in Tuesday’s election, on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with impact editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up here: https://joinsubtext.com/chrisquinn.

Here’s what we’re asking about today:

Our Statehouse Bureau Chief, Rick Rouan, in the house for this special, post-election day episode. Or I should say a special post-special election day episode. Rick, let’s start with the big numbers. How badly did Issue 1 fail?

Let’s talk Cuyahoga County. In long ago elections, if Cuyahoga County voters showed up, they had a huge impact on the election. In both early voting and in person at the polls, did they show up, and how lopsided was the vote?

Other urban counties had lopsided numbers, too. Let’s talk Franklin, Montgomery, Lucas. Mahoning and Montgomery counties.

I kept hearing from conservatives that they were dead set against this thing. They said it was bad policy to weaken the power of voters. When the numbers started rolling in in rural Ohio, which is largely seen as conservative I was surprised by the number of no votes. What patterns do you see in your first glimpse of the rural vote?

As we’ve often discussed, this thing has been about abortion as much as it has been about all but destroying the voters’ ability to change the constitution. What are you reading into the lopsided nature of this vote across the state when it comes to the abortion amendment on the November ballot?

Voters said pretty clearly that they care about public policy. A few years ago, voters thought they fixed gerrymandering with an overwhelming reform, only to see Mike DeWine, Frank LaRose, Matt Huffman and the rest defy the constitution. Former Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor is working on a new reform. Does Tuesday’s vote seem to say that whatever she proposed will pass? (with 50 percent of the vote, I might add.)

Let’s talk political careers. Secretary of State Frank LaRose has spent more than a month traveling the state trying to persuade voters to emasculate themselves. He failed miserably. Senate President Matt Huffman was an architect of this scheme. He failed miserably. Mike DeWine, Jon Husted, Dave Yost, Treasurer Bob Sprague and House Speaker Jason Stephens all backed it. This has to crush LaRose and possibly Huffman. Does it hurt the others?

Let’s stick with LaRose for a minute. Some have speculated he backed this thing to gain foavor with campaign funders, regardless of how it came out. But with the blowout loss, will he get the money from funders, or will they see him as a loser?

What does everyone think? Does this energize the voters in Ohio? They clearly recognized this effort as a sinister power grab. Will they keep paying attention as we head to November and into next year’s Senate race?

We do have some non Issue 1 news to talk about. We learned of the death yesterday of someone who had been on the ballot like clockwork in Cuyahoga County for decades. Who was Gerry Fuerst?

Sean McDonnell compared slot machine better to sports betting in Ohio. Where do gamblers spend more?

We talked last week about the incredibly confusing, and generally pretty stupid now tolling plan fo the Ohio Turnpike. We wondered how they come up with something so wacky. Maybe it’s because their house is not in order. WHat did an audit find about how the turnpike is spending money?

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Read the automated transcript below. Because it’s a computer-generated transcript, it contains many errors and misspellings.

[00:00:00] Chris: Frank LaRose, Matt Huffman, we’re looking at you today. You tried to bamboozle Ohioans into giving up the power of their vote and it didn’t work. The voters said majority rules. That’s what we’re talking about on today in Ohio. The news podcast. Discussion from cleveland.com and the plane dealer. I’m Chris Quinn.

I’m here with Lisa Garvin. Courtney Alfi and as a special treat for this issue one discussion, our State House and politics editor Rick Ruwan. I should note Rick has handled editing of all of our balanced and thorough news reporting and analysis, so he is not to be held accountable for the opinions others might express on this podcast.

He is a straight ahead news editor. Let’s get to it. Like I said, we have Rick in the house for this special post-election day episode, I should say special post, special election day episode. Rick, let’s start with the big numbers. How badly did [00:01:00] issue one fail?

[00:01:02] Rick: Well, I think it’s. Pretty safe to say that this crashed and burned, um, issue one went down 57 to 43.

That’s after early voting totals, which tend to favor Democrats who opposed issue one had it down 70 to 30. That cap always narrows when election day votes are counted, but it just wasn’t enough for the Republican back to initiative to mount any sort of credible comeback on election day. So it filled by 14 and a state Trump won by eight.

Twice. That’s a 22 point swing. I thought this was, uh, a pretty interesting number. If, if you add up all of the yes votes in all 88 Ohio counties, you get about 1.32 million votes. If you take the no votes, only in the 22 counties where it failed, you get 1.33 million votes. So you didn’t even need the no votes in the counties where it passed to defeat the rebuke Republicans by statewide Ohio voters.

Pretty much covered ad nauseum that, uh, [00:02:00] they’ve absolutely dominated the statewide race in Ohio for years now. In this case though, it just appears they were outta step with what voters wanted.

[00:02:08] Chris: I should point out Rick sends a little muddy ‘cause we’re having microphone problems, but we wanted his expertise anyway.

Look, the, we’ve said from the start that Ohioans have a basic sense of fair play, and there were a couple of things about. This that really violated that. One was the hypocrisy of scheduling an August special election for this, not a year after they had outlawed August special elections. I mean, it just stuck in everybody’s crawl.

What are you doing? And the thought was, you’re doing this. One to get ahead of November and two to slip it by when people aren’t voting. The second part of the fair play was they were trying to stop having majority rule. They were setting up a system where 40% of Ohio would be the determining factor despite the wishes of the 60%, and that seemed to rub a whole lot of people the wrong way.

That [00:03:00] whole idea of majority rules seem to come up from voters quite a bit, right?

[00:03:04] Rick: Yeah, that seemed to me to be the, uh, the central, uh, campaign message from, from the, the no side. And something that, uh, apparently resonated with voters, you know, when this was originally put on the ballot. Um, just kind of looking at it, um, as, you know, a, uh, sort of esoteric changing of the Constitution to make it harder to change the Constitution.

That’s the sort of thing. Hard to, uh, communicate to, to voters and explain to them, you know, how this thing’s going to work. But, uh, the no side really leaned into, uh, the, the unfairness aspect, uh, of this around majority rule. And, uh, I mean, clearly on, uh, the election day and an early voting, uh, something clicked with,

[00:03:51] Chris: with the voters, I think this also shows that.

There were a lot of centrists in Ohio, whether they’re Republican or Democrat, that there were a lot of [00:04:00] conservatives that did not buy into what they were doing here, that this was just unfair. Plus, it would’ve cemented incredible power in the gerrymandered legislature. They only move voters have right now to overcome bad policy in Columbus.

Is these, these amendments. So you, the initiated statutes don’t work because the legislature can overturn them the next day. The constitutional amendment does. We should point out, we. Pass the Constitutional Amendment 10 gerrymandering. And people like Matt Huffman and Frank LaRose just decided to ignore it.

It despite the Supreme Court repeatedly telling them they’re violating the Constitution. Uh, but, but it does seem like majority rule matters. There was a great deal of celebrating. I. Lisa, let’s talk about Cuyahoga County. And a long ago elections. Cuyahoga County voters, if they showed up, had a huge impact on the election in both early voting and in-person at the polls, did Cuyahoga show up and how lopsided was the vote?[00:05:00]

[00:05:00] Lisa: They certainly did turn out, but it was only 38% of registered voters who cast ballots yesterday, which kind of surprised me. There were 331,187 ballots, cast the no votes. Were way in the majority, 76.4% of the vote was no. And only 23.5% of the vote was yes in Cuyahoga County. And this, you know, mirrors other urban counties who had other, you know, quite lopsided uh, uh, results as well.

[00:05:30] Chris: The, I I’m surprised that you’re thinking that the turnout wasn’t that high because their original predictions for turnout were about 18%. I think the election chief in Cuyahoga County was originally predicting 18%, and we more than doubled that.

[00:05:44] Lisa: You are right. That’s true. And you know, I, I guess I was expecting a higher turnout, but yeah.

Uh, board of Elections Director, Anthony Perotti, just a couple of days ago actually revised his, uh, you know, predictions. He was predicting 30%. So we went over his

[00:05:58] Chris: prediction. Look, [00:06:00] I wanna take a moment to, to talk about what we did in, in our Newsroom when this first was proposed. We knew the goal was to slip it by, and so we used every platform we have to, to publicize it over and over.

Our reporter, Andrew Tobias, wrote. Countless stories, examining it. We carried countless letters to the editor, opinion pieces, the podcast, and I heard from no end of our audience members yesterday, thanks and appreciation because we did publicize it. They saw the big turnout and they said, you guys, you guys get a lot of credit for this.

And if you look at the counties around northeast Ohio, you do, you do see signs that they were. Quite, quite active. Courtney, other urban counties had lopsided numbers too. As Lisa said. Let’s talk Franklin Montgomery, Lucas Mahoning, and I think one other, uh, how did they do, and if you take them out of the equation, would this still have passed?

Yeah, so

[00:06:58] Courtney: we saw [00:07:00] turnout in a lot of the large counties with, with the big cities. Similar to Cuyahoga County. Franklin was at the same number. Cuyahoga was about 38% of voters. Hamilton was just above that at 39, summit County kinda led the pack for the big city counties. They turned out at 41%. But as we kind of go down the list, it’s interesting to see that as the cities get smaller, the vote totals start to reflect that.

So Cuyahoga County was at the top of the pack with. 76, uh, against Franklin came in with 75% against in Hamilton and Lucas Counties, Toledo and, and Cincinnati. Areas that no vote was, was two thirds, 67%. Then we go to Akron’s County of Summit, 66% Montgomery County, where Dayton is located 61% against. And Mahoning had the smaller, smallest margin of, of the big city counties at, at 58%.

No, but. Like you said, the turnout in all [00:08:00] those places was. Decent and, and, and I think more than we were expecting. So that just piled on and, and added numbers to the no votes that, that were just too much to overcome.

[00:08:14] Chris: Yeah. I, it, I, I think, we’ll, we’ll find out that this is the record turnout. In all sorts of places, and probably for the whole state for an August election.

And as we pointed out in some of our reporting, never before had you had an issue of this moment on the August ballot, or at least not in many, many decades. Uh, and so it’s, it, I guess in some ways it’s surprising that everybody turned out in these counties, and in some ways it’s not because this was a, an assault on democracy that they wanted to push back on.

I do think that if you add up. Basically Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton, and one other of the urban counties, if you took their margins out, this thing might’ve, I think, would’ve lost, um, the, the, the giant margins you [00:09:00] had in those cities. I was adding it up this morning. Were. The difference maker in this, although as Rick points out, you didn’t need any of the no votes in the other, the rural counties to pass it because it was so heavy, uh, in the Yes.

Counties. Yeah. You know,

[00:09:16] Rick: um, one thing to, to point out on those margins that you’re talking about, Chris, um, Uh, the, I, I’m bringing it up right now, Cleveland or Cuyahoga County, uh, almost 53% against that was a, uh, minus 34 Trump counties. So Overperforming, uh, what Biden did by 19% there. And, and as you go down the list on the large counties, um, this, uh, did very poorly relative to, uh, even what Trump looked like in these urban areas where.

He didn’t come close to winning, uh, in 2020.

[00:09:53] Chris: Wait, let me, let me follow you. So you’re saying the margin for the no vote in these counties was [00:10:00] greater than the Biden percentage over Trump? Yeah, exactly.

[00:10:04] Rick: So Cuyahoga County, it, uh, failed by 53 points. Uh, Trump lost Cuyahoga County by 34 points and Franklin County, uh, this failed by 50 points.

Trump lost Franklin County by, uh, about 31 points. And, and as you go through the, Large urban counties. Um, the, the trend is much the same.

[00:10:27] Chris: That gets back to what I said about there are conservative voters that just did not like this. I kept hearing from them and they kept saying, I think this is going to go down because my conservative friends are all voting against it.

They don’t like what they’re doing down in Columbus. That, that’s part of the problem, is down in Columbus. This super majority has given them this false sense that the, the state is incredibly lopsided in their favor and. It’s not Rick. I kept hearing con conservatives that they were dead set against this thing.

They said it was bad policy to weaken the power of voters. Let’s talk about [00:11:00] the rural votes. Even though the rural counties, there were many rural counties that voted yes. The margins there were not anywhere near what they were for the Trump vote, right?

[00:11:12] Rick: Yeah, that’s right. Um, so we’ll have some better analysis on this later today, but when I checked this morning, the results showed that issue one had passed in 66 counties and failed in 22 counties.

So that suggests that, you know, it still had some support in Ohio’s rural areas, but that’s a pretty ginormous improvement over recent performance for, for Democrats in 2020. Uh, Joe Biden, who, you know, Thought Ohio was in play so, so much that he made an 11th hour stop in Cleveland. Before the election, he only won seven counties.

Um, this thing failed in 22 counties. Um, so clearly the support wasn’t strong enough in the rural areas to overcome the, the big margins put up, uh, in the urban areas. Uh, that 22 county list of where this thing lost is. [00:12:00] Pretty interesting. Um, we know about the three Cs, um, but it also failed in the Mahoning Valley, which is a traditional democratic stronghold where I grew up.

Um, but that has been shifting toward Republicans in, uh, the, the last couple election cycles. It also failed in Green County. Um, that’s a Dayton area, county that’s home to our Republican governor, Mike DeWine. I thought that was sort of notable. Um, and the, the five biggest. Counties where this thing lost, uh, were all, uh, sorry.

The five biggest Trump counties where this thing lost were all Trump plus 23. Uh, so Ashtabula, Medina, Ottawa, Clark, and Gga, um, and all of those counties, Trump won the election by 23 points. It lost issue, one loss by four, eight and a half two, and. 4.4, and then in one case it was just one vote. Um, uh, separated issue, ones pass and failure there.

So that’s a shift from as little as one point to as much as

32

[00:12:58] Chris: points. What I think [00:13:00] is instructive about this, I was talking to a long time Democratic organizer not long ago when he said that the Democratic Party has gotten away from having organization on the ground that. They might not win the rural counties, but if they have an organization on the ground, they can reduce the margins of loss so that ultimately they can win the state.

And that hasn’t happened for years. Nan Well, he certainly didn’t do that and, and Tim Ryan didn’t do that, but, In this case you did have lots of people on the ground. It was the people gathering signatures for the abortion amendment. Every one of ‘em we talked to said part of their spiel was, make sure you vote no on issue one, or the abortion amendment’s not gonna matter.

So you had people all over the state explaining that. And if the Democrats get back to that kind of, County by county community organizing. Maybe they can get back to making inroads like they haven’t made for many years now. You’re listening to today in Ohio, [00:14:00] it’s a mostly issue. One special episode. Lisa, as we’ve often discussed, issue one has been about abortion as much as it has been about destroying the voter’s ability to change the constitution.

What are you reading into the lopsided nature of this vote across the state when it comes to the abortion amendment that’s on the November ballot?

[00:14:18] Lisa: I think it means that urban counties, the turnout in November will be critical, even though some rural counties voted no on issue one and greater numbers, we really can’t count on that for the abortion Rights Amendment, and maybe not marijuana either.

A recent poll by Suffolk University and U SS A today that was done in the first two weeks of July, found that 58% of voters support reproductive freedom in Ohio. That includes a third of Ohio Republicans in. 85% of independent women voters, only 32% opposed. Uh, abortion rights being enshrined in the constitution.

10% are undecided, so there’s 10% that could go either [00:15:00] way, that undecided vote. But I was very interested by 85% of independent women voters voted no. So I think that that’s going to be a target for the campaign going

[00:15:09] Chris: forward. The national media has made this seem like it’s only about abortion. And, and look, it, it has a giant abortion part here.

If this would’ve passed, the abortion amendment very likely would’ve failed, uh, because 60% would’ve been an impossible threshold. Uh, but, but it’s about more than that. I, I just, I wonder if we can expect this same kind of vigor in November. If people were so energized to vote for this, will they come out?

In November. It’s a big question. Oh, I think

[00:15:41] Lisa: they will, I think, and, and let’s, you know, gird our loins for the onslaught of TV ads between now and November.

[00:15:49] Chris: Well, but that’s the thing is I, I, I get back to what I said earlier, is anybody gonna change their mind? I, I mean, we’ve been debating this issue about abortion for most of our lives, and [00:16:00] I don’t know anybody that is on the fence, right?

I mean, it’s pretty simple. So the ads will be loaded with all sorts of lies like we saw on issue one, but. It hasn’t worked any in any other state. That tactic has not worked so. All that money that’ll be spent on the ads is probably just wasted, right?

[00:16:20] Lisa: Yes. Maybe. I mean, yes, you’re right. I think everybody’s made up their mind, but you know, there is that 10% individ undecided in the poll, so I.

Okay.

[00:16:31] Chris: All right. We’ll see. Courtney Voters said pretty clearly in their vote that they care about public policy. This was about how to change the constitution. A few years ago, voters thought they fixed gerrymandering with an overwhelming reform vote, only to see Mike DeWine, Frank LaRose, Matt Huffman, and the rest defy the constitution.

Former Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor is working on a new reform that would remove. Every elected official from the process, does Tuesday’s vote seem to [00:17:00] say that whatever she proposes will pass?

[00:17:02] Courtney: I mean, it, it sure kind of points in that direction, right? I mean, you look at the gerrymandering reform that we pushed through, what is it, almost a decade ago now, and, and how Columbus and the Redistricting commission just ignored it.

If there is an attempt by Ohio voters to come back and say, no, no, no, you have to do what we say here. You, you can’t gerrymander the way the maps fell, fell last, go around. I’ve gotta think voters are gonna stand by it. I, I don’t know why or how Ohioan, it’s just in that short span of time, would reject the very thing they supported not too many years ago.

This is sitting heavy. This is looming large in our state, and I think if folks are. You know, sharp enough and, and interested and care enough to go out and vote and protect their vote as we saw that they did yesterday. Why wouldn’t that translate into a future issue? I, I think it’s really interesting is this went along, [00:18:00] you know, at the beginning a lot of the messaging and just chatter on social media from regular folks, it was really looking at that abortion.

Focus and how this would affect November’s vote. But as this campaign go, went along, I wonder if you guys had the same experience. I saw more and more people chirping up and realizing what this could mean for gerrymandering and, and talking about how that’s just a big motivator here. I, I’ve gotta think it’s going in that direction.

[00:18:29] Chris: I’ll be interested to see if people like Frank LaRose and Matt Hoffman launch a campaign against the next round of gerrymandering reform. I mean, this is going to be something coming from an esteemed former Chief Justice, but it would undermine. What these guys have done, and I wonder if they launch one of these lying campaigns with dark money that just makes stuff up about how Red Shine will take over the state.

Rick, let’s talk about the political career. Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who spent more than a month traveling the state to try to persuade voters [00:19:00] to emasculate themselves. He failed Senate President Matt Huffman was an architect of this scheme. He failed. But Mike DeWine, John Husted, Daves treasurer, Bob Sprague and House Speaker Jason Stevens all supported this and clearly the people of Ohio did not.

This has to crush LaRose, right? And possibly Huffman, does it hurt the others?

[00:19:23] Rick: Well, we’ll see how long voters’ memories are. I, I don’t know that I agree that it crushes LaRose or Huffman. I mean, early polling has shown that LaRose would be in a pretty good position in a hypothetical matchup against she brown if he gets out of.

The US Senate primary next year. Uh, one of his opponents in the G O P primary, um, Bernie Moreno already has started, uh, tying issue one around Larose’s neck in the weeks leading up to the vote. Um, but we’re gonna see whether that really matters. Uh, As for Huffman, if he runs for the Ohio House after he’s term limited, he’s gonna have a safe district and he’s widely expected to make [00:20:00] a run for, for speaker.

So, um, it, it’s hard for me to see this, you know, being the, the end of, of Matt Huffman’s political

[00:20:07] Chris: career. And lemme let me stop you on Matt. Huffman note, ‘cause he did say last night he wants to bring this back. Mm-hmm. Which is, which is amazing. ‘cause if you think about what happened with HB five years ago where, where John Kasick was trying to crush unions, the voters came back, killed that, and John Kasick said, I learned my lesson.

I’m not touching that. And for his next, whatever it was, seven years, he didn’t, the voters clearly spoke. Yesterday that they don’t want to do this, and here’s the Senate president saying, I’m gonna try and ramm it through again. My question is, how radioactive is this? If you’re Jerry Serino and you’re looking at the numbers in Lake and Joa County where this thing got crushed and these are his, his voters, are you really gonna stand behind another move?

Will legislators get behind Huffman and try to do this again? Or are they gonna be more like John Kassig thinking, okay, I’m not going against the [00:21:00] will of the voters.

[00:21:01] Rick: You know, I, I don’t know, uh, how lawmakers are, are going to look at that, but it, but I do think that, uh, something that we, we just finished talking about is really significant in, in this question.

And it’s the redistricting reform. I think any citizen initiated redistricting reform would be at the top of the list of, uh, the sorts of things that Republicans are, are. Saying that they still have concerns about related to other potential amendments. You know, holding the pen to draw the maps has absolutely cemented Republican dominance in Ohio’s legislature.

And any attempt to limit that, I would think would be met with some pretty fierce opposition. Um, it’s, you know, in some ways kind of an existential threat to, uh, to, you know, some of the power that they’ve, uh, been wielding in

[00:21:48] Chris: Columbus. Do you think that w if Dave Yost runs for governor as he appears to be doing, his opponents will use his support of issue one against [00:22:00] him?

Because clearly most of Ohio does not support issue one. I. Uh, sure.

[00:22:05] Rick: I, I, I could see it coming up, but I, I wouldn’t say Dave Yost, uh, was the, the most out there, uh, face, uh, of this thing. Um, certainly, you know, endorsed, but, um, not, not something that, uh, you saw, uh, appear in, in a bunch of ads or, or anything like that.

And, um, think about House Bill six. Um, that was something that Democrats tried to use, um, after Larry Householder’s arrest. To very little effect. It didn’t really resonate with, with voters. Um, it, it was sort of hard to, to tie around, um, republicans next at that time. Um, maybe that’s a little bit of an analog here, uh, to, to look at how issue one might affect individual, uh, candidates who are running in the

[00:22:50] Chris: future, although maybe there’s a cumulative effect, right?

Of, yeah. Of scandal. Scandal. Scandal. Let’s stick with, I. Oh, oh, go ahead, Lisa.

[00:22:57] Lisa: No, I was just wondering if this maybe [00:23:00] widens a rift in the Republican party in Ohio, because I mean, Huffman actually blamed opposition by Republicans, like former Governor John Kasick and former governor Bob Taft. So he’s saying, well, it’s other Republicans.

It didn’t fall in line that are to blame for

[00:23:16] Chris: this fall in line. Yeah, I don’t know. I, I mean, I, I would look, these numbers are dramatic in counties where you would generally expect. The, the conservative vote, they didn’t get it. And the people who represent those districts, the smart ones would have to look at that and go, huh, maybe I need to be careful.

You’d think anyway, but maybe not. Maybe they all fall in line. Let’s stick with LaRose for a minute. Some have speculated he backed this thing to gain favor with campaign funders for his, the money he needs for a Senate race and really didn’t care. Had came out with the blowout loss though. Will he still get that money, Rick?

[00:23:56] Rick: So LA’s Campaign for Senate has always hinged on his fundraising [00:24:00] ability. He, he doesn’t have the personal wealth of a Matt Dolan or a Bernie Moreno who he’s running against in the Republican primary. So he is gonna have to rely on campaign contributions. Um, losses don’t always. Tank political careers though.

Uh, and, and importantly, you know, Frank Larose’s name wasn’t on the, the ballot. Here he is associated with a, a ballot issue. Um, Mike DeWine is a good example. If you run a lot, you’re probably gonna lose at some point. Right. And DeWine lost to, to Sheriff Brown, but came back after that to be Attorney General and now two term governor.

Um, you know, like I said before, I think it’s really important to remember no matter how much of, uh, Those of us who kind of live this every day are aware of Larose’s role in state issue one, it might not be the case for your average voter. Did he take a loss on this? Yes, absolutely. Um, as you pointed out, so did some others, but are primary voters gonna see it that way?

I don’t really know. Um, that’s the kind of calculus I think contributors are probably going to be doing in the near term as they think about whether to back his [00:25:00] campaign.

[00:25:00] Chris: He was the face of this thing though, when and when you look at Reddit where people were talking about it, they were tying him very firmly to it.

So I, I don’t know. I mean, he did tie himself to this in a big, big way. He spent, look, he there, there were complaints that he’s not doing his job, the Secretary of State, because he was out campaigning for this and for the Senate. And people are raising questions about the ethics of that. Does that, what does everybody think?

Does this energize. Voters in Ohio. I mean, they came out in large numbers in August. Something they haven’t done before. They clearly recognize this effort is a bad thing and they, they slammed it, so will they keep paying attention or is this a one-time thing and now they go back to sleep. I think the

[00:25:42] Lisa: reproductive rights movement has the wind under their wings now.

This is just a major thing to campaign on. They can say. This is how many Ohioans didn’t want you to touch the Constitution. So I think they can use that as a springboard for a very aggressive campaign for

[00:25:58] Courtney: November. Yeah, I, I [00:26:00] agree with Lisa, the abortion amendment, reproductive rights, I. Was gonna be a big driver of folks anyways, and, and this just adds a little bit more fuel to that fire, I think.

[00:26:12] Chris: So Rick, we get issue one and then say what, what we’re saying here is correct that November brings a lot of people out. How does that translate into 2024? So

[00:26:24] Rick: I think 2024 could be a different animal entirely. Um, I think that, uh, what everybody is saying is right, that there’s momentum going into, uh, November for the abortion amendment, but the top of the ticket often dictates everything.

And Ohio voters weren’t really excited about Joe Biden in 2020. Uh, if he’s gonna be at the top again and sure. Sounds like that’s gonna be the case, are people who. Care for him in 2020. Suddenly going to turn out for Democrats in 2024. I’m kind of dubious

[00:26:56] Chris: about that. Okay. You’re listening [00:27:00] to today in Ohio.

We’re not gonna get to the other stories we had on our list, but Rick, while you’re here, let’s talk about this one. We talked last week on this podcast about the incredibly confusing and generally pretty stupid tolling plan for the Ohio Turnpike. We wondered how they came up with something so wacky.

Maybe it’s ‘cause their house isn’t in order. What did an audit find about the turnpike and how it is spending money?

[00:27:22] Rick: This really comes down to the turnpike not following competitive bidding rules. Um, the Ohio Inspector General examined professional design contracts from 2019 and 2020 worth 5.3 million to 11 engineering.

Firms it found that the turnpike didn’t publicly solicit competitive bids for a number of contracts over $50,000, which is both the LE legal limit and, uh, turnpike policy. So these rules are in place to protect taxpayers. You bid out projects to get the best deal, but the turnpike staff. According to the igs report, privately asked engineering firms to tell them what type of work they’d like to do, and then sent [00:28:00] recommendations onto the turnpike Commission without any kind of backup information, um, to explain why they were making that suggestion.

So the, the turnpike says it’s worked with the IG to address the issues. It’s gonna be implementing the its recommendations, uh, and uh, should have this.

[00:28:17] Chris: It feels like we probably should do a deep dive on what’s going on at the turnpike. Just doesn’t seem like things are running very efficiently there. Uh, the, to not do competitive bidding is a gigantic red flag.

Why aren’t you doing it? Really? I mean, that’s where we have competitive bidding rules because we wanna drive out any chance of corruption. And when you don’t follow those rules, it just, Raises the alarm bells you’re listening to today in Ohio that does it for the day after special election day issue one fails.

That’s why we wanted to talk about it. It was a big moment for the state. Thanks Rick for joining us this morning from Columbus. Thanks, Lisa. Thanks, Courtney. Thanks to everybody listens to the podcast. We’ll be back tomorrow talking about a normal [00:29:00] slate of news stories.