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

Months and months and months after the Ohio Redistricting Commission has been meeting, the state of Ohio still as we record this program does not have legislative maps for its upcoming primaries nor does it have congressional maps.

We've been talking with Karen Kasler from the state house and the state of Ohio program over the past few months.

And Karen, welcome back to "The Journal."

And strangely enough we're gonna talk about redistricting again, something we're getting increasingly familiar with, maybe more familiar than we ever wanted to be.

So, let's talk about as we record this program, which is on a Sunday, or excuse me, on a Monday, where are we at this moment knowing that things are ever changing in this process?

- Well, where we are right now is as you said, there are no legal constitutional maps for either the state house and Senate districts or for the congressional districts.

Last week the Ohio Redistricting Commission did pass maps for the house and Senate, and they are starting to work on a new congressional map.

Now you might remember that the house and Senate maps have been ruled unconstitutionally gerrymandered by the Ohio Supreme court twice now.

So this is the third set of maps and the court is now going to be reviewing them.

And just today the people who filed the lawsuits over the whole maps process have filed their paperwork saying that they object to these maps and so the court is going to be looking at those.

And then the court also has to be looking at whatever comes out of the redistrict commission that goes to the legislature when it comes to the congressional maps.

Because you've got these two tracks going on, the redistricting commission, the seven member group, that's the one that does the state house and Senate maps.

The congressional map has been drawn by the redistricting commission, but needs to be approved by state law makers and then signed into law by governor Mike DeWine.

So both of these things are going on.

And as I've said before I think on this show, we are running into a time crunch.

- [Steve] Right.

- There is a May primary right now and as of right now there are no legal maps to represent districts for the legislative state house and Senate offices or for the congressional offices.

And it's really important with the congressional offices because we're losing a seat, we're going from 16 members of Congress to 15.

So all this is happening, it's dragging on and on, we're really arguably past the deadlines to have a full May primary at this point.

- Yeah.

And I noticed that the secretary of state, at least over the last, the weekend or in the last few days has told the boards of election to go ahead and operate as if the current maps, and I'm not sure if he's referring to the old maps or the most recent iteration of the maps that have come out of that commission, act as if those are the maps we're going to have still knowing though that this Ohio Supreme Court has not blessed those maps and said, "Yes, these meet the constitutional tests."

So as you said there's a lot of things going on here.

What does it seem like now as you sit there in Columbus today?

And you know, obviously knowing that it could change an hour from now.

- And it was a wild week last week when you consider all the things that happened here.

I mean, yes, maps were passed, but there were also, there was a whole contempt of court hearing that was set for the members.

The elected officials on the redistricting commission were to be summoned before the Ohio Supreme Court to explain why they shouldn't be held in contempt for not passing house and Senate maps on February 17th.

That hearing's been put off, but that was something pretty extraordinary.

And you had the attorney general and the secretary of state both saying they didn't see how there was any possibility to go ahead with a full February, a full March.

I'm sorry- - May 3rd- - Mary 3rd primary.

- Yeah.

- And so just in the last, over the weekend, secretary of state Franklin LaRose has told the 88 county boards of elections to get ready to put those state legislative offices on the May 3rd primary ballot, even though those maps have not been approved by the Ohio Supreme Court.

So that's a little bit of limbo here.

What we do know that could be on the May 3rd primary is the state offices that secretary of state Franklin LaRose has certified.

So we're talking about governors, secretary of state, treasurer, attorney general, also the three justices, the chief justice, and two associate justices that are running and the U.S. Supreme Court.

All those are at least for right now set from May 3rd.

But then of course you've got these legislative offices and the congressional offices.

And once again there's these deadlines that are set in the law, they're set by federal law in some cases with regard to residency and how ballots are supposed to be distributed overseas, to people in the military all those deadlines are hard and fast.

And so that's why the May primary has become really something that's only halfway done in a sense.

And so Attorney General, Dave Yost, secretary of state Frank LaRose advised the redistricting commission last week that we're gonna have to split the primary and have two separate primaries or move the primary entirely or do something else.

And the legislative leaders have said there's not a real appetite to move the primary, but at this point it really is becoming a question of there's just no way to operate that full primary for all those offices when those maps are not available, so the candidates don't know where they would run, they don't know what district they represent.

- Yeah.

It's, just so unchartered territory here that candidates believe they're living in or where they're supposed to be, whatever district they're run in yet the fact is that could change because those maps are still very much in play.

And it's interesting too because this is unprecedented in terms of having split primaries or split elections like this.

And I know that, you know, boards of elections are just wondering, you know, they're the ones who are at the point of the spear on this, they're the ones who are gonna have to deal with this when it gets right down on whatever day we might be voting.

(chuckles) - Yeah.

And secretary of state Franklin LaRose, who I should point out is a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission and has voted for every set of maps that has been ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court- - Yeah.

- He's not sided with the Democrats or in the last round state auditor, Keith Faber, who's also a Republican sided with the Democrats against the maps as they were passed saying that he had some real concerns about them.

But LaRose has been saying that there are real costs to an election.

- Sure.

- Not just financial costs which we're talking in the tens of millions of dollars to run two separate elections, but also in the cost to the boards of elections and the workers, they have to find poll workers, they have to prepare ballots.

They have to do all of this work and then they have to do it again.

But also there's a cost of voters because the confusion that voters are likely already feeling at this point is real.

And it potentially could turn people away from maybe going out and supporting a candidate in the primary, 'cause they dunno when the primary is, or they don't know who their candidates are.

And so there's a real question about how this, all this wrangling over these maps has a real effect on the people who are gonna be elected to represent the entire state of Ohio in the 99 members of the house and 33 members of the Senate, but also the 15 members of Congress.

So there are real impacts here beyond just this- - [Steve] Yeah.

- The long lasting saga over who draws what map and what it looks like.

- Yeah and that's a very good point because we already have in some cases difficulty getting people to come out to vote.

If you throw more confusion- - [Karen] Especially in primaries.

- Yeah, oh yeah, those are always generally lower turnout.

Yeah, so you throw this into the mix, now things are really muddy for people.

And I guess the other question is which we can come back to in just a moment 'cause we're gonna run outta time here in the first segment is how is the state going to go about informing people about the fact that, "Oh, wait a minute, there's gonna be more, that there potentially could be more than one primary, you're gonna be voting on this one day and then something else another day."

And people could show up saying, "Oh I thought I was voting on the congressional primary, oh no, you're voting on the state legislative primary or the state office primary," is that kind of thing.

So we come back, let's, we'll talk a little bit more about this whole unique Ohio situation or at least we believe it's unique, maybe it's going on other places.

Back with Karen Kasler in just a moment here on "The Journal."

We're back with Karen Kasler here on "The Journal" and we're of course, once again talking about redistricting, the ongoing saga of the state's efforts to get state legislative maps and congressional maps done in a timeframe that allows primaries to take place, hopefully within the schedule of what's typically or legally right now currently the law.

You mentioned earlier when we were talking about the fact that at one point the state Supreme court has, they've weighed in several times, they've found, the most of the, all of the maps so far unconstitutional, different iterations.

But then they also went to the point of saying, "Look, guys, we're gonna cite you for contempt if you don't come up, produce another map."

Because there was some reluctance it seemed him for the commission to say, "Okay, how many more maps are we gonna have to draw?"

And the court said, "Look, you've got deadlines, you have to perform this legal function as indicated by the amendments that were in 2015 and 2018."

So talk a little bit about the contempt aspect of this because that's something you don't see very often happen in the political arena where courts weigh in against political figures in a situation like this.

- Yeah, everybody here is an elected official and that's really kind of extraordinary.

And so what happened was when the Ohio Redistricting Commission did not pass maps by the court's deadline in February 17th, the two Democrats on the commission had proposed maps, The Republicans on the commission rejected them and then the Republicans did the not propose their own maps.

So the meeting adjourned on the court's deadline with no maps.

So the court said, "We wanna know why you should not be held in contempt of court for ignoring our deadline."

And so each of the, there were four separate filing, actually I think there were five separate filings (chuckling) by all the people involved in this.

You had the commission itself, that, it filed a response saying why the commission shouldn't be held in contempt.

Then the Democrats had their filing, the legislative leaders, speaker Bob Cupp and Senate president Matt Huffman had their filing, governor Mike DeWine had his filing, secretary of state Frank LaRose and auditor Keith Faber had their filing- - Had their filling.

- And they all had different reasons.

I mean the reasons ranged from we ran out of time to we don't think that this is possible, to, hey, on the Democrats they said, "Hey, we tried and we apologized for the commission not doing what the court said."

There were just all sorts of reasons and a little bit of finger pointing here and there.

But the Supreme Court then after seeing these ordered the members of the commission to come for a hearing that was supposed to happen on Tuesday, March 1st.

- Right.

- Well, there was some dispute even among the members of the court on that.

Chief justice Maureen O'Connor had apparently ordered that contempt of court hearing, but then two of her fellow Republican justices, Pat Fischer and Sharon Kennedy had said they disagreed, they didn't think that the chief justice had the authority to order that hearing.

(laughing) So that hearing didn't happen, but it really shows the back and forth that we're going through here and the struggle to try to understand exactly what this constitutional amendment in 2015, that changed this whole process, what it really means and how does it really work in real life.

And so all of this as you said before is uncharted territory, we don't know what's next.

And all of this again has real impact on coworkers, it has real impact on elections officials in general and it has an impact on voters.

I mean, I was just doing, I'm looking down at some math that I did during our break about the turnout that's typical in a primary election, turnout over the last eight primary elections in Ohio has been just under 28% on average, that's pretty low.

- [Steve] It's pretty low.

- It's really low.

- Right.

- Especially since a lot of those people go on to win in the general election.

So the numbers of people who are turning out to elect people who then go on to win in November are really low, and this is probably not gonna help.

- Right, right, now, and just the general confusion over possible multiple dates.

And as I was telling you off, during the break, for poll workers training is essential because the last thing you wanna do is be at a poll and think that possibly the people who are managing the balloting, the computers, all of those things are struggling to make things work.

This just adds another layer to their duress, their, the pressure on them to do this not once but twice and have people feel comfortable that the process is actually working.

- Yeah.

And I know that poll workers have been through the ringer in the last two cycles here.

Because in 2020 you might recall because of the pandemic, the primary wasn't canceled as some people were referred to it, but the primary deadline was extended- - [Steve] Right.

- So that there wouldn't be that in person voting, it was all mail voting.

And of course that was a stress because poll workers were trying to find out the day that they were supposed to work, whether they were supposed to work.

And there was that confusion over what was open and what was closed, we were going into lockdown where we weren't going to be able to do certain things.

And so it was very confusing, a lot of poll workers were really frustrated with not getting the information in a timely fashion.

They were up at, you know, four o'clock in the morning ready to go and then they were told at the last minute, "No, you don't need to be here."

And so now we're doing this again, where some poll workers are already getting their notification that, "Hey, you are scheduled to work on May 3rd."

But what if they move the primary?

Then that's going to change that.

So I think we're asking an awful lot of the tens of thousands of poll workers in the state to kind of roll with the punches here when this is not necessarily, it's not a highly paid work and it's a long day and most people who do this do this because they really believe in the process.

And poll workers have also, from my understanding, dealt with an awful lot of vitriol from people who, like you said, are not trusting the process, who don't wanna wear masks, who are really pushing back on these people who are at the front line, so to speak.

- [Steve] Right.

- And it's really unfortunate for them.

- Yeah.

And you look at the fact and you mentioned that although poll workers aren't heavily compensated, you mentioned too though that the state officials said, you know, "Running these elections is not an inexpensive process so the fact that we're gonna go through this twice, the logistics of all of that, the acquiring of facilities, you know, instead of just one in May now there's gonna be possibly two."

That means those folks because typically you're talking churches, schools, public buildings, whatever, they have to make arrangements for more than one day now to have those facilities available, make sure everything that they normally do for one voting day is now place for a second one, and that's extra cost.

It's, yeah- - Absolutely.

- It's just, it's an interesting thing.

And I guess when we come back let's talk about the fact that with these amendments, the ones in 2015 and the one in 2018, this changed how we did this process.

And I know that when I was watching your program this past Sunday, you mentioned the fact that without those amendments, the apportionment board would've done this and we sort of just would've been done with this.

Wouldn't have meant it was a good outcome, it just meant there would've been an outcome.

So let's talk a little about that when we come back.

Back in just a moment with Karen Kasler host of the state of Ohio here on "The Journal."

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

Our guest is Karen Kasler, host of the state of Ohio and our go-to person when it comes to things going on in Columbus because she is there on the ground with the state government.

One of the things that's interesting about this whole process is we would not be here if not for the constitutional amendments in 2015 and 2018.

As you said when you were talking with, I believe Steven Steinglass on your show on Sunday, we would've had the, I think it was called the state apportionment board if I am I correct about that, they would've drawn these maps and it would've been done.

Now again, people would, people never liked those maps either.

(laughing) But this process, I mean they were never, well not everybody liked those maps, let's put it that way.

Not everybody loved those map apps.

But, that process was different than this one obviously and some people would say it's more straightforward, but the reality is we're here because citizens put these amendments in place because they weren't happy with the previous way these legislative and congressional districts were drawn.

So we're here because of that, but if it wasn't for that, we wouldn't be here right now.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Arguably, I mean, when you go back to 2011, when the last maps were drawn, they were drawn by the five member apportionment board for the legislative offices and then the congressional offices were drawn by the general assembly.

- Assembly, yeah.

- And you might remember some of the stories about the smoke filled hotel rooms where these maps were being drawn and the lack of transparency in the process, the frustration on the part of voting rights advocates to try to find out what was happening and how they could change the process so we didn't get this map here.

This is the current map that has the snake on the lake and all those kinds of things- - Right, ninth district, yeah.

- And, yeah, and those maps were challenged in court and they prevailed.

One of the people who voted to throw out those maps was chief justice Maureen O'Connor who now finds herself with the three other Democrats who have been since elected to the Supreme court.

But in 2011 there was no prohibition in the Ohio constitution on partisan gerrymandering.

- [Steve] Right.

- There became that provision because of the 2015 constitutional amendment that voters approved overwhelmingly, it was 71% of voters approved that.

And so that sets us up where we are right now so that there is that protection and there are these guidelines that have been set up.

And so now this larger board, the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which is seven members compared to five and supposedly has more partisan or more minority party buy-in, we haven't seen that yet, but that was the goal to have minority party participate more, it was supposed to be less partisan.

That's not been the experience here because the Republicans on that panel, five Republicans, two Democrats, they've really dominated this process and to produced maps that, like you said, the Ohio Supreme court has rejected, the two legislative maps and the one congressional map, the court has rejected them both as being partisan gerrymanders.

- Yeah, and you're right.

And it's just interesting because I think most people would've assumed that there was a nonpartisan part of even the apportionment process back in the day.

But without that, as you said, without that there was no guarantee of that until that amendment in 2015.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

And you mentioned Steve Steinglass, he's a, the foremost expert on the Ohio constitution.

And specifically said that this is something that is, these are not unprecedented but they're certainly unique.

Other states are going through this process right now and are, they don't have the amendment and so it's a difficult process for them.

One other thing I wanna add, that's really unique here, and there are so many unique things here.

(laughing) - [Steven] Yes.

- Is that you have a situation on the Ohio Supreme Court with a member of the court who is related to a member of the Ohio Redistricting Commission- - [Steve] Right.

- Justice Pat DeWine is the son of governor Mike DeWine- - Governor Mike DeWine.

- And DeWine has, Justice DeWine not recused himself and taken himself out of the litigation of these cases, to the frustration of many people who feel that since his father's on the commission he shouldn't be deciding these cases, he's ruled to uphold all these maps with the minority- - Right.

- Now, when it came to the arguments for contempt of court, he said if those actually happened he would remove himself because his father would potentially face individual consequences.

So he took himself out of any contempt of court proceedings, but still remains on the court when it comes to deciding if legislative and congressional maps are legal and constitutional.

- Yeah.

So it's just another little twist, another nuance here that we haven't seen before.

We wanna move on in just a moment to this, the Senate races, because those obviously there are primaries in both of those for the U.S. Senate.

Does this process though for the people who are participating, the members of the commission, does this reflect well on them at all from, 'cause these are elected officials, all of them, and to have the Supreme court say, "Well, we're thinking about citing of your contemp, the process is dragging on and on and on, you can't come to agreement," does this paint anybody in a good light who are sitting on this commission right now?

- Well, and I asked Steve Steinglass last week for our TV show the "State of Ohio" about that.

And he said, you know, there really isn't a whole lot of penalty for contempt because this is civil contempt.

The goal of civil contempt is to get- - [Steve] Compel you to, yeah.

- Yeah to comply with an order.

- [Steven] Right.

- But he said that this is, essentially, if there is a finding of contempt, it's almost like governmental malpractice and nobody wants that.

No elected official wants that as part of their record or on their legacy.

- Right.

- And so I think that that has motivated some of what we've been seeing over the last couple of days, certainly it motivated passing those statehouse and Senate maps last week.

- Right.

- But yeah, I think that there's a real question about the seriousness that, the court doesn't do contempt, very often.

And that's a, it's a pretty serious, it's a, least a statement of seriousness though the penalties won't be jail or fines or anything like that most likely, there's still a very serious element to that.

- Right, right.

- And we, I guess we can, we'll see if we revisit redistrict again the next time we talk, we probably will be.

- [Karen] I bet we do.

(laughing) - Hopefully there will be maps we'll be talking about that time, the actual maps that are in place.

Part of this though, too, there are primaries for both the Republican and Democrats for the US Senate race to replace Rob Portman ultimately.

So let's talk a little about what's going on on the Republican side and then on the Democratic side in terms of those races with the candidates who are trying to succeed Rob Portman ultimately.

- Yeah.

You've got some really contested primaries, in the Democratic race it's really the governor's primary.

That's the one- - Right, Right.

- On the Democratic side that's really getting contested.

But on the, when you come to the US Senate, that's really been happening.

All the actions for the most part has been happening on the Republican side.

Now democratic candidate, Tim Ryan does have a challenger in Morgan Harper and she's been really pushing her candidacy.

She's done, I don't know that we call them debates, but certainly forums, questioned forums with of all people, Republican Senate candidate, Josh Mandel.

- Right.

- These two individuals, Harper and Mandel could not be further apart- - Further apart.

(laughing) - Yeah.

But it's been an event for both of them to kind of show people who they are and get out there and get some attention.

But on that Republican side you've got five candidates now who are really the highest profile candidates.

Bernie Moreno dropped out the day after he filed his paperwork, but you still have Josh Mandel, Jane Timken the former head of the Ohio Republican party.

Josh Mandel, of course, the former state treasurer, Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland business man.

You've got Matt Dolan, he's a sitting state Senator.

And then you've got J.D.

Vance- - Right.

- The author of Hillbilly Elegy and a venture capitalist.

So all of these folks are competing.

And over the last couple of days, a couple of them spoke at CPAC, the big annual conference for conservatives.

Some of them have made some comments about the invasion of Ukraine that haven't gone over very well that seem to be supportive of the Russians.

(chuckling) Which is really concerning to people who are supportive of the Ukrainians and the nation that got invaded.

And so all this is happening as the Ohio Republican Party has declined to endorse any of these folks.

They endorsed governor Mike DeWine in his reelection campaign though he has two Republican challengers.

- Right.

- But on the Senate race they have not endorsed and it looks like they're just gonna let them fight it out.

- Yeah.

And right now, and of course, Josh Mandel is familiar name to Ohio and he's held office before and has run for numerous offices as well.

- For Senate, at least, I think this is the third time he run for Senate, so - - Third time.

- Right, right.

So, yeah.

And, if I, of course, I don't know if there's been any polling on this, but it would seem if the conventional wisdom is, he's the leader at the moment, whether that means anything or not, but we won't know until we have a primary if we, (laughing) depending when we have that.

- Yeah.

I mean the polling has really been sporadic.

- [Steve] Right.

- And a lot of it's been internal polls that have been released out there.

But I will tell you that the polling is showing that the TV ads that you're probably seeing, if you're watching commercial television, they are having an impact.

Mike Gibbons has been running- - Yes.

- Ads almost constantly, that has really boosted his poll numbers.

Josh Mendel has just started his ad campaign.

Jane Timken's been out there for a while, J.D.

Vance has been out there.

So the more ads, and of course, Matt Dolan has run some too.

The more ads you see though, they do have an impact.

- Okay.

Well Karen we're gonna have to leave it there, we're running out time this time around.

Thank you again for coming on talking about redistricting and those races which eventually we assume sometime we're gonna get to vote on some of 'em in the primary once we get actual maps.

So, Karen Kasler, thanks again for being here, host of the state of Ohio.

You can check us out on wbgu.org and of course every Thursday night at 8:00 p.m. on "The Journal" on WBGU PBS.

We will see you again next time, goodnight and good luck.

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