The trial to overturn the Ohio gerrymandering map continued this week in Cincinnati. The suit has been brought by Democratic organizations, the League of Women Voters of Ohio, and various citizens from gerrymandered districts and asserts that the gerrymander is “an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander that violates the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and Article I of the United States Constitution.”
Here in Cincinnati, our local paper, The Cincinnati Enquirer, has no local coverage of this trial with national significance. When I asked Carl Weiser, the political editor of the Enquirer, why there was no coverage, he responded that they’re only posting articles from the Associated Press.
Since the Enquirer has only posted two terrible AP stories about the issue that literally disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in Cincinnati, I thought I’d put together some of the key takeaways from the trial.
Project REDMAP
After Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and Republicans were swept from office across the nation after the 2008 collapse, Republicans created a plan to swing the House of Representatives back in their favor.
The plan was to win certain state legislatures so that they could redraw districts after the 2010 census and give themselves a permanent majority in the House.
Project REDMAP spent $30 million in 19 states to win control of the state legislatures. States where they spent the most money included: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Texas, Wisconsin, Colorado, North Carolina, and New York.
According to REDMAP’s website, the goal was:
Controlling the redistricting process in these states would have the greatest impact on determining how both state legislative and congressional district boundaries would be drawn. Drawing new district lines in states with the most redistricting activity presented the opportunity to solidify conservative policymaking at the state level and maintain a Republican stronghold in the U.S. House of Representatives for the next decade.
After winning legislatures in states like Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, Republicans redrew the maps in these states so that despite Democratic candidates winning more than 1.1 million more votes than their Republican opponents, Republicans won a 33-seat House majority in 2012.
These four states, under the redrawn maps, gave Republicans 39 representatives to 17 representatives for the Democratic Party.
What happened in Ohio
According to the lawsuit, the goal of the Ohio map was to:
design a map that would, through packing and cracking across each individual district, establish a 12-4 Republican to Democratic seat ratio throughout the decade for Ohio’s U.S. congressional delegation. The 12-4 map was drawn in secret in a hotel room, nicknamed “the bunker” by the map drawers, to which only Republicans had access. Versions of the map had to be approved by national Republicans, despite there being no official role in Ohio’s redistricting statutes for the national Republican Party.
The map splits all three of Ohio’s major cities—Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati—as well as 23 Ohio counties into different districts.
The idea is to pack all of the Democrats of the state into as few districts as possible so that they’ll win by huge margins in these four districts, but then Republicans can easily win the other twelve districts.
Here is what packing looks like in the four Democratic districts (3, 9, 11, 13):
District |
2012 Democratic VOTES (%) |
2014 DEMOCRATIC VOTES (%) |
2016 DEMOCRATIC VOTES (%) |
3 |
68.29% |
64.05% |
68.57% |
9 |
73.04% |
67.74% |
68.89% |
11 |
(uncontested) |
79.45% |
80.25% |
13 |
72.77% |
68.49% |
67.73% |
|
This gave Republicans a virtual lock on the other 12 congressional districts. Despite receiving 51-59 percent of the overall vote in Ohio from 2012-2016, Republicans are guaranteed 75 percent of the representation.
The packing of districts was determined by drawing districts using only one criteria: Where are Democratic voters located.
This produced districts like Ohio District 9, the so-called “mistake on the lake.”
Or District 11, which includes another part of Cleveland plus part of Akron.
The emails tell the story
Literally, the redistricted congressional maps were created in a closed-door room that only four Republicans had access to. This email from GOP staffer Heather Mann requests a secure room for redistricting.
Even the Doubletree Inn asked about the secrecy:
Shown here is an email from Ray DiRossi, a GOP staffer designed to work on the maps, to Matt Schuler, chief of staff to the GOP leader in the Senate, and Vaughn Flasher of Capitol Strategies, a political consulting firm.
They nickname the offsite hotel room “the bunker.”
In this email, Senator Gayle Manning, a Republican from North Ridgeville, is invited to “the bunker.” Note the uses of private email accounts by both DiRossi and Schuler.
House leader John Boehner gets to choose his own voters
In this email, Ohio Senate President Tom Niehaus, tells DiRossi and Tom Whatman, executive director of Team Boehner, that he’s "committed to ending up with a map that Speaker Boehner fully supports."
Before 2011, OH-1 consisted of the city of Cincinnati and some areas to the West. It was a competitive district that was won by Democrats in 2008 before swinging to Republicans in 2010.
After the redistricting, OH-1 was drawn to be Republican by including a large chunk of Warren County.
Note again all the private email addresses in use.
Changes made to accommodate Ohio Republican Party donors
This email is probably my favorite. In this one, Tom Whatman, of Team Boehner, asks the strategists to make a major change so Jim Renacci’s district (OH-16) could include the Timken headquarters.
According to the Canton Rep, Timken executives, their spouses, Timken board members and the Timken Co. Good Government Fund contributed at least $124,000 to Renacci.
The Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting (OCAR) had fair maps
One of the more interesting things to me out of the trial was learning that the Ohio legislature had plenty of fair maps. OCAR actually had run a competition where private citizens drew fair maps based on criteria like shared interest, natural boundaries like cities and townships, and competitiveness.
The map Ohio enacted was worse than the last place entry in the OCAR competition.
What this means is that the only criteria used in drawing the Ohio map was “Republican.”
The reason for the lawsuit
Ohio has made strides in addressing gerrymandering. In 2018, 75 percent of the state passed Issue 1, a ballot initiative designed to limit gerrymandering by either party.
However, though it’s a step forward, if the committee process breaks down, a map can be implemented by a simple majority vote in the Ohio legislature without any minority votes. Also, maps from the new process won’t be available until at least 2022.
And these changes only occurred because of a threat to put a stronger issue on the ballot through the petition process.
What we’ve learned is that the only thing that makes our Republican legislature act is the fear of something worse. When we speak up loudly, and only when we speak up loudly, will anything change.
Here’s hoping the courts toss Ohio’s maps like they did in Maryland.
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy (ebook now available).