(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to The Journal, I'm Steve Kendall.

2023, an eventful year for Ohio politics and Ohio citizens.

2024, what will it mean?

What does it hold?

Obviously off to a fast start.

Joining us here in the studio are Dr. David Jackson and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes from Bowling Green State University's Department of Political Science.

And Dr. Kalaf-Hughes, obviously the legislature hit the ground running, the governor did too with House Bill 68, he overrode their passage of it or he vetoed their passage of it.

They proceeded as soon as they could, came back down to Columbus to override that.

So let's talk a little about the dynamics.

Once again, the governor and his own party in the legislature at odds right out of the box before January's even two weeks old.

- Well, I think that's what makes this so interesting is the fact that you have a Republican majority legislature and a Republican governor who historically have been on relatively similar ground.

The governor decides to veto House Bill 68, which was banning gender affirming care for minors.

And he vetoes that bill.

And there had been a lot of discussion about whether or not he would actually do it.

He did veto it.

And I think a lot of the reasons have to do with attracting business and outside people to move to Ohio and bringing business in and bringing new residents in.

They don't, people don't typically move in large numbers to states with these kinds of bills.

And so that's one of the reasons that I think he did veto it.

He did follow that veto up with some executive action, some of which is still pending and one of which was banning gender affirming surgery for minors.

And that was kind of low-hanging fruit because gender affirming surgery does not happen for minors in the state of Ohio.

So it was kind of a moot point anyway.

The legislature followed up with, at least in the House, overriding his veto.

And Governor DeWine was really careful to say, "No, no, no, we're still on the same page.

We still have a lot of common ground."

And now it heads to the Senate and the Senate is expected to follow suit.

So anything can happen within the next week and a half until the Senate reconvenes and looks at overriding the governor's veto.

- Yeah, and the other part of this too, the gender part of it also included the banning of transgender athletes.

And that was tied together.

And a lot of people were concerned that, well, those are, those in some ways are two completely separate issues, yet they were bonded together in that one bill, which creates almost like an issue for people who say, "Well, I'm concerned about that."

Maybe the surgery part of it, the transgender other part, but that situation with athletes is a separate issue.

And yet somehow they were tied together, which makes it interesting for people.

They want one, they have to vote for both.

Or if they don't want either one, they have to say no to both.

- Exactly, and Governor DeWine did make that point in his original veto, is that in looking at transgender athletes, you're talking about, I think the words he used was a minute number.

And there are, I mean, within the last few years, we're talking less than five in Ohio.

So it's not something that really has a direct effect on a large number of people at this point in time.

And so that was one of the reasons that he gave for vetoing the legislation.

But again, we'll see what happens.

- [Steve] Well, and the other thing too was he leaned a lot on, I talk to a lot of people, I talk to medical people, I talk to scientists, really basing a lot of his decision to say I'm going to veto this on science, which we know can be a volatile issue.

It seems now anytime you talk medicine, science and politics, it becomes difficult.

Dr. Jackson, I mean, we've kind of seen this with the governor and the legislature in the past.

They have similar ideas, but then they diverge on what specifics are behind those ideas or when it comes to putting laws into effect, they diverge sometimes.

- Well, it's an interesting situation in that, as my colleague suggested, the vanishingly small number of people who would be affected by this legislation, I think is an interesting element of it in the sense that it then becomes largely symbolic that the legislation that's being pursued will have such an effect on such a small number of people.

It's interesting that the legislature would be so interested in a topic that doesn't affect that many people, but is apparently very important to people in the base of their party, which then goes to the second point, which is due to the drawing of districts in the state of Ohio and due to the way that our politics is functioning, probably Republican legislators have more to fear in terms of losing their seat in a primary than they do in many cases have to fear losing their seat in a general election.

So then you combine that with this highly volatile symbolic issue that means a lot to a lot of people, but doesn't affect many people at all and you end up with legislature that you can also make a claim that has a number of policies that people are not particularly interested in or don't necessarily agree with and so you go after this big issue that means a lot to a lot of people, particularly in the republican base but it doesn't mean that much in terms of number of people that are gonna be affected.

And then even though there's, you know, one party rule, still within one party rule, there are divisions within that party.

And so, there is still a moderate wing, as small as it may be, represented to a degree by Governor DeWine, who does care about issues like science, does care about issues like what experts have to say, does care about what medical professionals have to say, and tries to sort of walk a line.

And of course, Governor DeWine may not have to worry about the Republican base much anymore either, the way that politicians who are, shall we say, earlier in their career may have to worry about it.

- [Steve] Because he, basically being governor, appears to be his last elected office.

He's not going to, I mean, we don't believe he would run for any other office beyond that in the future.

So in a way, which works both ways, so in a way, the legislators say, "Well, we don't have to pay any attention to you anyhow.

"You're gonna be gone shortly anyway.

"And yeah, it plays better for our base "if we oppose you than to go along with your ideas."

- [David] Yeah, a lot of people were thinking on, when the election happened and the veto-proof majorities were created and suggested, "Hmm, this is great for the Republican Party "in terms of having absolute control."

But one of the thoughts that was out there was, "Well, this can't be great news "from the governor's perspective "because it may reduce his influence "and reduce his ability to have a say "in what happens in policies that his party is promoting."

- [Steve] Well, and at the same time too, we've got just a moment, we'll probably have to revisit that when we come back, but obviously his lieutenant governor wants to step into possibly the governorship or some other office.

That would seem to be the direction that Jon Husted would be leaning to be like the next governor of the state of Ohio and then look beyond that at some point.

So he's walking an even finer line because he's gonna be around for a while.

He wants to still be elected to something beyond what he currently is as lieutenant governor.

So that puts him kind of an interesting position as well.

He has to keep everybody happy, which we know is impossible these days.

So, yeah.

Well, when we come back, we can talk more about that and then also some of the other things.

Obviously, you mentioned redistricting.

That remains a topic that seemingly is evergreen in the state of Ohio.

Back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes here on The Journal.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

We're joined in the studio by Dr. David Jackson and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes from Bowling Green State University.

And joining us from Columbus, the host of The State of Ohio, which you can see every Sunday at noon here on WBGU-PBS, Karen Kasler.

And Karen, we talked in the first segment about House Bill 68, the governor, the legislature, the House, now the Senate.

You've spent a lot of time in the last, your last two shows talking about this.

So kind of give us your view, the people you've talked to and House Bill 68, where we are now in Columbus with that and what you think will probably happen at this point.

- Well, it's pretty clear that the veto is gonna be overwritten by the Senate.

The question is when.

Senate session is scheduled for January 24th.

They could come back a little bit earlier, but I think the House coming back as early as they did was the message.

That was the sending of the message that the veto is gonna be overwritten.

And the law doesn't need to take effect until April, if indeed it is overwritten in the Senate.

But it's pretty clear that the votes are there.

They've always been there.

And this is moving forward and pretty quickly.

I think the references that I heard earlier from the discussion that just happened about that this is a Republican party talking point.

It's an issue that affects so few people, but it really hits a lot of what Republicans wanna talk about.

That's been a big part of this.

This is an election year and all of this is coming together to really make this happen, so to speak.

- Yeah, and it was obvious too, when you were interviewing some of the people, I guess you had that they were adamant that they were going to hold the legislature to that veto override.

They obviously had been lobbying considerably with them to make sure that nothing happens that they don't expect in the Senate.

And I think that's an issue because those are the people that lobbied to get House Bill 68 really rolling to begin with.

And they have not let go, even with the governor's veto.

- Yeah, and House Bill 68 is obviously two bills in that it's the ban on gender transition treatment for minors and also the ban on trans athletes and girls sports.

It's two bills in one, but both of these have been talked about for quite a while here at the State House.

So it's not like this is new.

They've been trying, Republicans in the legislature have been trying to push those forward for a while.

And part of the reason is because they do have the backing of this group, Citizens for Christian, Center for Christian Virtue, I'm sorry.

It's changed names.

It was Citizens for Community Values.

Now it's Center for Christian Virtue.

And this is a very influential right-leaning, well, very right-leaning, conservative organization, conservative Christian evangelicals.

It has a presence here on Capitol Square.

And this is one of the bills or two of the bills that really this group has been pushing for a very long time.

After the vote, the sponsor of the bill, Representative Gary Click from Vickery in Western Ohio, he's also a pastor, had a press conference and invited somebody from CCV to speak about why this was an important piece of legislation, which is interesting because they are a lobbying group and they're very influential.

And so that puts the other groups that are opposed to this, such as Equality Ohio, which is the state's largest LGBTQ organization, really at odds and trying to get their message across because CCV really does have a very strong voice.

- And I know when you were showing clips on your program as that discussion in the house took place, and you mentioned Representative Click who said, "No one over here has mean intentions, bad intentions.

"We all have good intentions.

"We're gonna disagree on what this bill is, "but none of us are doing this out of meanness "or heartlessness or whatever."

And yet on the other side, another representative, "Well, basically what you're going to do "is you're going to kill Ohio children."

And you said, "Well, no, that's not our intention.

"That's not why this is like this."

So it is an issue that is obviously still very hot down there.

But as you said, it's very obvious that the votes are there to completely override the governor's veto and it will become law in some form, depending on what happens after that once the veto is overridden.

Is there anything else besides that?

I mean, obviously that's gotten all the attention.

What's bubbling under the surface beyond that once they get this taken care of?

What's next on the legislative agenda down there?

- Well, the capital budget is the big thing.

That is the budget that funds infrastructure projects in communities, at colleges and universities, hospitals.

I mean, it's a big, big chunk of spending.

And there's not a lot of time to get that done.

I'm hearing lawmakers talk about wanting to get that done in March.

They don't have a whole lot of sessions scheduled between now and March.

And of course, they wanna be able to break so they can go home and campaign because the entire House, half Senate, is up for reelection this year.

So that's a big thing.

And that's a thing that they can take home and say, this is what I did for my district.

I brought this particular project.

I got money for this expansion that we wanna do at the hospital or the community center, at the school, whatever.

So this is a big deal.

And I think that's the next thing on the agenda.

But of course, the politics involved in House Bill 68, which Governor Mike DeWine, of course, vetoed, but then Lieutenant Governor John Houston said he supported the ideas in House Bill 68.

Of course, he's next up to run for governor.

So that only stands to reason.

But all those politics are kind of overshadowing everything that's happening right now.

- Yeah, and I guess that's the thing that's interesting because obviously the state has a lot of issues it needs to address.

Not that this is an important one to obviously a significant part of the population, but it does speak to the fact that that has driven the legislature for the last several months, really.

In fact, if you go back to August, and I know you touched on the two issue ones that came up, and that was a situation, too, and we've talked about that, too, Dr. Jackson, who was our issue one, became such a driving force.

And basically, the legislature focused on that almost to the extent of not paying attention to anything else.

And yet, here we are and dealing with that.

And Karen referenced the fact that everybody's up for election this year.

Do we envision any kind of change, really, in the makeup of the legislature in terms of the balance of power, anything like that, or not, based on the way things currently sit in the state?

- [Nicole] I mean, the way things currently sit, probably not.

I think we're gonna see a lot of the same.

I think where any changes would come would be if Ohio gets a redistricting amendment on the ballot, which I know people are trying to do, and if that passes, and we do end up with something more akin to what Michigan has, or some other states that have more citizen-driven redistricting commissions, that's when I think you're going to see changes in what the composition of the legislature looks like, and have the legislature look a little bit more like the citizens of Ohio.

But until that point, I think our gerrymandered districts are pretty much, even with small rearrangements, going to produce a pretty similar legislature in terms of composition.

- Yeah, and we do have U.S. House, we have congressional seats that'll come up in this year as well, which are problematic, too, because obviously they're operating on maps that at least one state Supreme Court justice said were unconstitutional, well, more than one.

She, since, has retired, so now those maps are in place for the time being.

But we come back, we can talk, I think, a little about redistricting, 'cause I know that, Karen, you touched on that, too, with some of your guests, and there was, I thought, an interesting response from one of 'em that said, basically, redistricting is too significant a topic to leave in the hands of anybody but elected officials, which I thought was kind of an interesting approach to it, seeing how that's how we got to where we are, sort of.

So, back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and Karen Kasler from the state of Ohio, here on The Journal.

You're with us on The Journal, our guests are Karen Kasler from the state of Ohio and from the Department of Political Science at Bowling Green State University, Dr. David Jackson and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

Dr. Kalaf-Hughes, we've touched on redistricting throughout the show a little bit, but kind of bring us up to speed on what the current lay of the land is and what the potential is for that terrain to change, if at all, between now and the next several elections.

- So, between now and the next several elections, things could really change, or they could stay exactly the same.

So, there's a lot of uncertainty here.

If you think back to 2020, very briefly, right, we did the census, every time we do the census, we redraw the lines, we draw our state legislative districts and our congressional districts, and Ohio, a couple of years prior, passed two constitutional amendments that were supposed to limit gerrymandering, and with the idea that it would give a little bit more bipartisanship to the process.

However, there wasn't a real enforcement mechanism, and what happened is they were drawn with partisan gerrymanders in mind, and the court actually said no, bounced 'em back to the legislature a number of times, and the legislature just said, essentially, we're gonna do this anyway, we've run out of time, and those are the districts that we have.

Technically, we are supposed to redraw them in four years, because we didn't have that bipartisan agreement that was specified by those constitutional amendments earlier, and there's been some attention paid to that, but less so, because I think, and Karen can probably weigh in on this a little bit more, that I think there's a sense of realization that this isn't going to become unpartisan gerrymandering, essentially.

You're not going to all of a sudden end up with a beautiful bipartisan legislature that reflects the citizens of Ohio.

So, I think what now people have changed their attention to a little bit, particularly people who do not want a partisan legislature in this way, is getting another constitutional amendment on the ballot that would actually remove redistricting from the hands of elected officials, and put it into the hands of the citizens, and a lot of other states have done that, because there's been a trend moving away from this idea of having legislators essentially pick their constituents.

When legislators draw the lines, they are essentially picking who they want, and if you put this in the hands of either a computer program, or the citizens, or some other sort of group of individuals, you end up with a better chance of a less gerrymandered legislature, or congressional districts, 'cause remember, we're not just talking about the state legislature, we're also talking about our congressional seats.

- Right, now Karen, I know that you've talked with the folks, and one of the conversations that we had with the gentleman from the Center for Christian Virtue, you raised the issue about reform with regard to legislative districts, to redistricting, and tell us about that conversation, because I thought it was interesting, because we heard a lot of the same sort of things that have been sort of dispensed with, or have been found not to be true, and yet the argument from his side was still the same about it's better to leave it in the hands of elected officials than other people.

So talk a little about that conversation you had with them in that interview.

- Well certainly that's what Republicans, especially in the legislature, are saying, they get the right through the Constitution to draw those maps, and it's not a slam dunk that voters would approve an independent commission, they voted twice on an independent commission, and have rejected it both times, in 2005 and 2012, and so it's not necessarily going to happen if it does go to the ballot, it sure seems likely that the group involved with this, citizens not politicians, is going to get the needed signatures to go to the ballot.

But when it comes to the arguments about amending the Constitution and making changes like redistricting, we keep hearing from Republicans that more amendments are coming forward than ever before, and it's all of these groups and issues that go against what Ohioans really want.

Well that's just not true.

There have been 51 groups that have tried to amend Ohio's Constitution, only six of them have been successful in getting to the ballot, three of them were successful on the ballot, and two of those three were supported by Republicans.

So it's completely not true that all of these progressive issues are suddenly coming forward because Ohioans did not choose to make it harder to amend the Constitution.

These are the kind of arguments I think we're gonna hear as this issue and also some other issues, minimum wage, there's a voting rights amendment that could come forward as well, and in the meantime, we do have these maps, these congressional maps that because Democrats, I'm sorry, legislative maps, because Democrats voted for them on the Ohio Redistricting Commission, they're in place for 10 years, and I think that that was a gamble that some Democrats, the Democrats wanted to make because they were afraid they were gonna get worse and they really hope that this amendment comes forward and voters approve an independent commission.

- Karen, we touched on it briefly earlier in the show, the capital budget in Ohio obviously is a big issue, it seems to be submerged though under all the activity with House Bill 68, so bring us up to speed on what's going on with the capital budget down in Columbus.

- [Karen] Well, and I think the capital budget is always a high priority and because there is so much money and because there are real projects at stake and every year you see these wishlists that come in from communities that wanna expand, you know, the Rock Hall or this hospital or whatever, and it really is an opportunity for legislators to bring this back to their communities.

And so I'm surprised that we're taking so long to get this going 'cause typically the conversations start earlier, but they haven't been here.

I mean, we really had a holiday break and they're getting ready to go on a break again to go campaign, so it's gonna be a very rushed process.

- Yeah, I know Dr. Jackson, you were referencing, talking about the fact that state universities, agencies, all of the agencies state get a part of this capital budget and obviously that means hearings, that means discussions with the legislators.

Talk about one of the things that could affect higher education because obviously that can be a chunk of the budget and obviously the legislators like to kinda keep their fingers on that pie a little bit, in that pie, so talk about what's developing on that front with regard to the higher education portion of the capital budget.

- Well sure, the capital budget is this crucially important thing that as we've already discussed is important for legislators to bring projects back to their district, it's important for reelection.

It isn't necessarily the sort of process, I think, that always draws a huge amount of attention, but this time there could be some fireworks, at least on the higher education side because the chair of the Ohio Senate Workforce and Higher Education Committee, Senator Cirino, has sent a letter to the state university presidents giving them each an hour to explain before the committee what they're asking for and why they're asking for it, which isn't necessarily atypical, but within the instructions about what that presentation should include or must include is how much money and how much staff is committed to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion at each of those universities.

So I think Senator Cirino may be interested because we know he is interested in that topic for the bill, Senate Bill 83, that would severely curtail those sorts of things that he's been trying to get passed and hasn't gotten it through the house yet, but the opportunity, I think, will present itself for those hearings in front of the Workforce and Higher Education Committee to produce an amount of fireworks similar to what happened when the private university presidents testified before Congress and a representative was able to trip a number of them up on what seemed like a fairly easy question about anti-Semitism on campus.

So elected officials and politicians who have ambitions for higher office will never be counted on to miss an opportunity to draw greater attention to themselves, and I think that that could be what will be happening here when the presidents come down to testify.

What should be sort of a normally kind of like tedious and boring thing, like hey, we need some money to fix the science building, and now it's going to be, hey, you should be spending this money that you're wasting on diversity, equity, and inclusion on the science buildings.

That kind of thing could be happening during these hearings, so it could be some fireworks.

- Yeah, and Karen, you've obviously followed capital budgeting for how many years?

Has DEI ever been a big topic for the capital budget hearings?

I mean, this is a new addition to the discussion point, I guess.

- Once again, it's one of these talking points that Republicans have been bringing up around the country, the idea that DEI programs are overspending, that they are keeping certain voices out, that kind of thing.

The Senate Bill 83, of course, is the one that has passed the Senate that Senator Jerry Cirino's been involved in.

He wants to get it passed the House.

For a while last year, we were told the votes weren't there because Speaker Jason Stevens said that he wouldn't bring it forward because there weren't enough votes to pass it.

I think we're about to find out.

There have been some changes made to that bill, but it's still, for a lot of colleges and universities, it's not a good bill, and certainly faculty members and student groups have been very concerned about the effect it would have on faculty.

The faculty strike, the ban on faculty striking element was taken out, but there are still some other things on collective bargaining that are in there.

So there's a lot of union opposition to this overall.

- Okay, well, yeah, we're gonna have to leave it there because we literally are out of time.

We literally are out of time.

But I knew you had to, well, there'll be more on this.

We'll get back together and talk about it.

Thank you, Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Kalaf-Hughes, Karen Kasler, host of "The State of Ohio."

Appreciate you being here today.

You can check us out at wbgu.org, and you, of course, can watch us every Thursday night at 8 p.m. on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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