(bright music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

State of Ohio, activity down in Columbus, DC, activity down there.

We're gonna get the latest on what's going on in our state government and down in Washington, DC from our two guests, Karen Kasler, host of "The State of Ohio" and Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, associate professor at Bowling State University, Department of Political Science.

Wanna welcome you both to the show today.

We always talk about the fact that we talk a lot about redistricting, but redistricting is the main thing going on in Columbus besides property tax relief.

So Karen, kind of bring us up to speed on where we are as we talk on Monday with a deadline of Friday on what's going on with the state's redistricting project.

- Well, Ohio had to do redistricting this time around because the map that was agreed upon last time, and this is for the congressional, the 15th district congressional map, that was not bipartisan.

So the map had to be redrawn.

And so we've been knowing that this process was gonna happen four months now.

It started in September where there was a panel of lawmakers who were supposed to try to come up with a map that would pass by a significant majority in the House and Senate, including half of all Democrats.

That panel did not produce a map.

In fact, Democrats introduced a map that in most years would yield eight Republicans, seven Democrats.

That was not really vetted fully and Republicans didn't produce a map at all.

We're now in the second phase of the process where the Ohio Redistricting Commission has met to try to come up with a bipartisan map, a map that has to get the votes of the two Democrats on that panel.

They have a deadline of Friday, October 31st to get that map forward.

It looks like that's not gonna happen either because we have not, again, seen a map that Republicans would have produced that would be able to get that super majority Republican support.

So it looks like it could be headed back to the legislature and there they only need a simple majority to pass the map.

They don't need a single Democratic vote to pass the map.

And that seems to be where we are right now.

- Yeah, and is there any significance, I know when you were talking with folks on your show, one of the Republican members said basically, well, there are three districts that we're probably looking at, and he said, "I don't think I'm telling anybody anything that no one is aware of."

But it was ironic, the three districts that they seem to think are the ones they really wanna work on just happened to be the ones occupied by Democrats.

So is there some significance to that?

I mean, is there an effort to really just make that map look to the point where maybe it would be 15 Republicans and no Democrats representing Ohio?

- Well, I don't think... Ohio has three urban areas, so that seems really unlikely.

- [Steve] Not gonna happen.

Okay - Right.

- But I think the map that currently is in existence, which has yielded in the last two election cycles, 10 Republicans and five Democrats, I don't know that it was really drawn to do that.

It's just the way that it's happened.

And so you've got the three districts that they're talking about specifically are the area around the Toledo District.

That's Marcy Kaptur's district right now.

She's the Democratic member of Congress in that seat.

Then also Democratic member Emilia Sykes district around the Akron area.

And Greg Landsman, the Democratic member from Cincinnati in that area.

And so those are the seats that I think they had initially drawn as to be very competitive, and Democrats have won them in the last two cycles.

So it's not a huge surprise that they're looking at those.

The question is listening to Republicans, what Democrats will do in terms of striking a deal?

Now again, Republicans don't need Democrats to strike a deal, but will they actually try to get Democrats to strike a deal, is the question I think it's on a lot of minds right now.

And I have to, you know, with this deadline of Friday coming up, I just don't know if there's going to be any movement on that.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And Nicole, when we look at this and it's a national thing besides a state thing, is there any incentive for either side, even in this redistricting thing, to move together to the center on this?

Because obviously the Republicans seem to have no incentive to do it.

The Democrats may have just cut the best deal they can.

Nicole, is that what kind of they hope to achieve with this?

- [Nicole] It's really gonna depend on the state that we're talking about.

So Ohio is in a little bit of a unique spot relative to some of the other states.

The other states that are currently redrawing their districts are not required to.

Some states did this because they were specifically asked by the President to find more Republican seats.

Other states like California are doing it in response to the other states redrawing their districts.

And so that's kind of a separate can of worms relative to what Ohio is doing, and Ohio is actually required to.

What makes Ohio a little bit interesting is this really goes against what voters passed less than 10 years ago, which was trying for more bipartisanship, and so by Republicans in the legislature kind of slow walking these, or just not introducing maps and punting essentially until they can get to that November timeframe before they're even willing to introduce anything goes against what the voters wanted.

And so there's a real question of whether Democrats negotiate with that or whether Democrats kind of wait, see what shakes out, and then push for a referendum to kind of get rid of those districts and try again.

That's also a very, very risky strategy that would be a really big uphill battle, but they're very limited as to what they can do in the legislature right now anyway, so we've got kind of a lot of competing priorities across the country.

And because every state does this differently and typically not in between census counts because there's no new information for most of these states.

Ohio just has to do it.

- [Steve] Right.

- We've got a lot of uncertainty, I think more uncertainty than normal leading into a midterm election year.

- Now, and you mentioned the fact that we're going back, you know, 8, 10 years to those constitutional amendments.

I guess that would seem like a lifetime ago given how fast things have changed in the last 8 or 10 years.

I hate to say it.

That almost doesn't seem to matter right now that the intent of those, the constitutional amendments aren't really falling into place, aren't being followed the way I think maybe the people voted for thought they would.

And that's the ironic part that we have rules, but they're sort of just being, the intents being interpreted in a wholly, totally different way maybe than people thought they would be.

- I think it's really a difference between kind of like the letter of the law and the spirit of the law.

And they're not necessarily violating the letter of the law, but certainly the spirit of it.

And I think it gets to longer term questions about political legitimacy.

If you know that your state is so gerrymandered, people are going to start questioning the legitimacy of the process, the motivations behind the process, and people are going to be cut out of kind of the representational equation.

Ohio is a majority Republican state, but not an 80% or 90% majority Republican state.

And so it's... And it's not something that people are necessarily hiding.

The goal is to draw more Republican districts in the state of Ohio.

Everyone has been very transparent about that.

So I think it can bring up political legitimacy concerns and a lot of that is uncertain because we'll really have to see kind of what shakes out as this progresses.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Okay.

When we come back, we'll talk a little bit more about redistricting and some of the other things that are going on in Columbus and in DC.

Back in just a moment with Karen Kasler and Dr.

Nicole Kalaf-Hughes here on "The Journal."

Thanks for staying with us on "The journal."

Our guests are Karen Kasler and Dr.

Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

Karen, we have a senate race in the state in 2026.

Governor's race 2026.

The players right now, are those the people we think, this is like the final roster for these races that, is anybody else even remotely have a chance to get in after this point barring some bizarre thing happening to one of the other current players?

- [Karen] Well, down ticket, certainly Democrats have some holes to fill because as of right now, I don't think there's anybody in the auditor's race, and the treasurer's race.

The treasurer's race on the Republican side is really interesting because you've got several candidates all vying for that, including former State Representative Jay Edwards and current State Senator Kristina Roegner.

So there's an interesting thing going on there, a battle for an office that really doesn't get a whole lot of attention.

But then of course on the Republican side, a lot of the office holders have just been kind of doing a musical chairs kind of a thing where, you know, the Secretary of State is running for auditor and, you know, that kind of thing.

So when it comes to the governor's race, I mean, you have Amy Acton, Democrat, who's been in the race the longest.

She's very clearly campaigning.

She's been doing a lot of appearances all around the state, not only at party events, but also at things like the Circleville Pumpkin Show.

And then on the other side is Vivek Ramaswamy, the Republican candidate.

He's also been doing the same kind of thing, a lot of party dinners, which he's been streaming live.

So you can see some of what he's been saying to his, the party faithful.

But also doing some other things.

Over the weekend, he was tweeting out that he was in the Columbus Zoo.

So I think these are the candidates right now.

I mean, there's an independent candidate, Heather Hill, who had been in the Republican race who moved over to an independent candidate level, so to speak.

And then of course, Tim Ryan, people have talked about him for a while.

I don't know where he stands on this.

He keeps pushing off whether he's going to jump into the race or not.

He's also said some things publicly about how he feels that he's the best candidate to beat Vivek, which kind of, you know, throws some shade at Amy Acton in the race right now, but we're still waiting to see what he does if he does anything.

- [Steve] Yeah.

And Nicole, we're finally within almost a year of the election versus talking about it as we began in January.

Are any of the rules still in effect in terms of how we used to look at the way these races paced out, that if you weren't in sometime in the year the race began, you were out?

But we started talking about these races back like the day after the election in 2024, it seemed.

And is this path available for anybody else to get in at this point, Nicole?

- I mean, anyone can try.

I think what's really interesting about this race specifically is the fact that you had an endorsement from the Ohio Republican Party so early on, I think it was January, but if it wasn't January, it felt like January.

It was very, very early.

And having that removed other, what would be considered traditional or quality Republican candidates from the race, and people actually dropped out because they didn't get that official endorsement.

And it's gonna not motivate people to join, to sign up because the party has already chosen to endorse someone.

And so when it comes to things like a primary election, you're not gonna have the competitive candidates across the board, in this case I'm talking about the Republican party, that you would traditionally get because that party endorsement came so early.

That's really rare, particularly because the person that they chose to endorse has not won an election.

They don't have a track record of electoral success.

And the party did Passover people with a track record of electoral success and previous experience in statewide office.

So that's really unusual on the Republican side.

On the Democratic side, Amy Acton has served in a statewide position.

She was appointed by a Republican governor.

So you do see a level of bipartisanship there.

But again, she has also not served in statewide office.

So you do have candidates that are on the less traditional side of things for both of the major parties.

But I think the really interesting part here is in a state that should have a really competitive Republican primary, like Ohio isn't going to, because the party moved just so much earlier than we would ever normally expect.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- [Karen] And I would say too, that it wasn't just the party's endorsement, which was actually in May, believe it or not.

- [Nicole] Oh.

Okay.

- [Karen] It was an endorsement of Donald Trump, the day that Vivek Ramaswamy launched his campaign that I think sealed it for a lot of candidates.

And Vivek did a lot of work behind the scenes to get Republican office holders, state representatives and senators, others to line up behind him, which is what pushed Dave Yost, attorney general, out of the race.

And this is a state that in many years in the past, you know, you kind of waited your turn and then you would run for a particular office and it looked like it was "Dave Yost's turn," in quotes.

But Ramaswami came in very, very quickly and built up this groundswell, but made Yost decide that he was gonna get out of the race because he really couldn't compete with not only all of the support that Ramaswamy had, with the money that he has.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah.

And I guess when you look at that too, and as you were talking earlier about the fact that, you know, people move through these state offices with, as you just described, the goal eventually is to get yourself a name.

If you're a representative, get a statewide office then maybe you get a shot at governor, maybe you go onto the US Senate with statewide recognition.

But yeah, people have been skipped over, which is kind of interesting, but they've had to say, it is what it is.

The fact that Dave Yost, who is a big name in Ohio, said, "You know what?

Nevermind, I'm gonna look for something else."

Kind of tells the story right there of how immediate and how impactful that endorsement was from both the party and from the sitting US President Donald Trump.

Nicole, when we look at this in turn, you mentioned the fact that primaries were usually the way these things iron themselves out.

Are we starting to see that those might be a thing of the past, hypothetically, that maybe there won't be nearly the primary going on for some of these offices that we've seen in the past?

- I think it's probably too early to say that.

But I think we're gonna have to kind of wait and see.

I don't know that other states have seen this really early movement like we have here.

So I don't think we're seeing it quite on a national scale.

But if we look back at US political history, we had kind of a very brief flirtation with primaries in the early 1900s with the progressive movement, not in every state, but it was kind of seen as kind of a way to prove your merits as a politician.

Then those fell out of favor for a really long time until the late sixties, early seventies.

And so we did, US politics for the most part in the 20th century without primaries, and it was only kind of towards the latter half that they came back.

I don't think we're quite ready to get rid of them yet nationwide.

And some states have very different systems where you have like top two primary systems that happen regardless of party.

So like in some states, it's whoever gets the most votes.

And so you could advance two Republicans, you could advance two Democrats, you could advance one of each, you could advance a third party candidate.

So some states have different systems that don't necessarily lend themselves to the perfect endorsement.

But we'll see.

If this works out well in Ohio, it could go to similar states.

But I think, and I could be wrong, that this is very much a product of the current era.

I also don't know that, we have to see how it plays out.

If it works out well for the people who are involved, then maybe we'll see this repeat.

If this doesn't, if say maybe Dave Yost would've been a more competitive candidate in a general election, then I think you'll see this kind of pushback because these were really early endorsements.

And so we'll see how much statewide appeal both candidates have.

- [Steve] Yeah, okay.

Good.

When we come back more with Karen Kasler and Dr.

Nicole Kalaf-Hughes here on "The Journal."

Back in just a moment.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

Our guests are Karen Kasler, the host of "The State of Ohio," and Dr.

Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, the Bowling Green State University, Department of Political Science.

Karen, the other big topic among the things that are going in Columbus is property taxes.

And whether you call it reform, change, whatever it is that's become the big story besides the races we've talked about before.

What's going on with property tax reform?

What's been put in place, what's still churning below the surface in committees and in both sides of the legislature?

- Well, there were two property tax bills that the house passed in the last week that specifically related to the districts that are at what's called the 20 mil floor which is, it's a complicated formula that basically, we'll just leave it at that, because then we can do a whole show on what the 20 mil floor is.

- [Steve] With lots of diagrams and charts.

(chuckles) - Yeah, and then also that bill would provide a tax credit for the homeowners who've paid significant increases over the last two years.

And the state actually is kicking in $306 million to cover that credit.

So the schools don't lose that money.

And that money's coming out of the fund that would've expanded the sales tax holiday next year.

So we may get a sales tax holiday that won't go for two weeks next year.

So that was the first bill that passed.

The second bill that passed was a bill that deals with the 1% of property tax value that districts can and others can levy taxes on without a voter approval, which is called Inside Millage.

- [Steve] Right.

- Now that's a big change because the first bill, as it was introduced, was intended to eliminate all inside millage, which school districts said would cost 20,000 teacher jobs and would just be devastating.

So this was a negotiation here that happened.

The bottom line, according to the Legislative Service Commission, which is the researchers who do the work to look at bills for state lawmakers.

They say that the average homeowner will benefit about $148 because of these two bills.

Now, when you've got a lot of homeowners who said they've seen thousands of dollars in increases, is that going to be enough for them to feel like the legislature's doing something And it sure feels like it probably won't be.

- [Steve] Won't be.

- And republicans and Democrats have both said that more needs to be done.

The question is what more is going to happen and will the state kick in money to make sure that schools don't lose when property tax relief is off?

- [Steve] Hmm.

Yeah.

And every jurisdiction, whether it's a school, a library, a township, a county, a city, whatever, they rely heavily on property taxes.

And I know that... And I know.

of course, floating around in the background is that citizens' initiative to say, let's eliminate property taxes, zero 'em out, Ohio can't levy a property tax.

So that's looming in the background as well.

But the removal of the even inside millage, as you said, creates issues for jurisdictions because in some cases they have no other way to go about getting money, or they have to look at income tax, that's not exactly, that's sort of like a four letter word in a way.

Oh, we're gonna raise your income tax.

That won't play with the voters either, probably.

- Yeah, and I mean, all of this is complicated.

You do have to remember that when you change one thing about property taxes, it affects something else.

- [Steve] Right.

- And so it affects schools, it affects libraries, and departments, all sorts of local departments and zoos and all sorts of things that are funded with local tax dollars.

Law enforcement, I mean, police and fire for crying out loud.

So all these things are part of this discussion.

And you know, there's some big picture issues here too, like affordability of housing and tax abatements.

The communities have offered to try to build more housing in an area and maybe not an area that is affordable.

You know, all of these things come into play.

And so this is a conversation that has started a long time ago, and of course, this abolishment of the property tax, this amendment that volunteers are still circulating petitions for, that's really pushing, I think, this forward and reminding really lawmakers who've been hearing from constituents for a while about this, that there is this potential threat that's kind of looming in the background.

- Yeah, because again, without... And I think the raw number, the rough number is two of three, every two of three, every tax dollars the state collects come from property tax, ballpark.

So if that just went away, the state would really have to, you couldn't just fund it out of the, let's not extend the sales tax during the beginning.

That's not gonna get it done.

Yeah.

- It's $16.7 billion in property taxes that are collected statewide.

And that's obviously a lot of money.

And local government, state government, you can't make up that unless you start doing things like a huge property taxing or a huge sales tax increase.

- [Steve] Right.

- Which nobody wants to see.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Yeah.

Because I know when I talked with someone a few weeks ago, you know, off record kind of said, we have to raise the sales tax in the county that the gentleman resided in something like to 20% sales tax to make up the difference if all of the in place property tax levies that were already levied went away and you couldn't put any more in.

Yeah, your sales tax would be 20%.

And that's not... People would go crazy if they walked into a store and said, what do you, I'm paying 20% sales tax now.

So there, as we know, there's no perfect answer for this, but it does show you the volatility of, as you said, you touch one thing, you touch a lot of things, maybe some you didn't even know you were touching when you did it.

So that's interesting.

The other thing that's going on at the national level is, again, an indication of how we can't talk with each other and work with each other.

And that's the federal shutdown.

And Nicole, kind of give us the overview of that and whether either side has an incentive to solve that issue as well.

- [Nicole] So as probably everyone knows the government has shut down, they have not been able to kind of pass a continuing resolution that would allow the government to keep operating and to kind of keep the funding going.

We are now, I think, in the second longest government shutdown ever, with the first being during Trump's previous term.

It has not really shown any signs of stopping.

Essentially we've had very little efforts of both parties in Congress coming together.

And there's a lot of different reasons for that.

One of the things that people often say is like, well, members of Congress don't care or they're not in touch with the people.

And it's a little bit more complicated.

Congress works through consensus building and collaboration, and a lot of that comes in the form of what we often think of as pork barrel projects.

You do something for my district, you vote for that.

I will do something for your district, and I will vote for this.

And so that's how members of Congress build consensus.

That's how you get legislation passed.

When members of Congress either can't do that or when members of Congress transfer power to the executive branch, either because they're not allowing pork barrel projects or because the executive branch just takes it and they let, and Congress lets them, there is no ability to kind of build this consensus because they don't actually have anything to share and compromise on.

What we have seen is, we've seen Congress turn a ton of power over to the executive branch.

The executive branch spend money in a way that Congress has not allocated, and the executive branch choose not to spend money that Congress has allocated for specific projects.

And when you have an executive branch that is doing not necessarily what Congress wants or agreed on, then there's no incentive for Congress to get together and work.

Because even if both parties come together and they come up with an agreement and they come up with great compromise and the government stays open.

If they don't know that that's actually going to be carried out and that there's some outside actor, in this case, it's the executive branch, right, that's gonna say, well, I know you agreed on that, but I'm gonna do this other thing.

You can't build consensus under that.

And it essentially becomes an intractable collective action problem.

And that's where we are.

You have Republicans who have been told not to negotiate, choosing not to negotiate, and you have very skeptical Democrats who are also not negotiating a ton because they know that there is no incentive for the executive branch to essentially carry through on what they've agreed on.

And so we're kind of stuck here right now.

Eventually something may break free, and there may be some sort of consensus as this kind of November 1st deadline for a lot of benefits is approaching.

We'll see how that shakes out because it's about to, people are about to run out of food assistance and that kind of stuff starting November 1st, but there's no incentive for members of Congress to cooperate here because there's no guarantee that whatever they agree on and whatever legislation they build to keep the government open will actually be carried out.

And that that's a real problem for our government right now.

- Yeah, and Karen, real quick, is there any effort, because obviously SNAP benefits, things like that, is there any discussion in Columbus about the state stepping in to maybe cover what the federal government would've covered if we didn't have the shutdown in place?

Anything like that going out at all in Columbus?

- Well, the rainy day fund that the state holds is at a record almost $4 billion.

And so Democrats have specifically said that that could be used to help because they say, "Hey, it's raining."

We've heard that many, many times over the last couple years, like during the opioid overdose crisis and at previous recession and all that stuff.

So that bill has not had any hearings yet.

Governor DeWine has said he is got some concerns about that.

So we'll see what happens.

But it could be, if this drags on a very, very difficult set of circumstances for one and a half million Ohioans who get those benefits and we'll not receive them starting on Saturday.

- [Steve] Yeah.

Wow.

So, we'll have to keep an eye on that as we move forward too.

Thank you both for being here today.

Appreciate you weighing in on all these national and state issues that we're gonna be dealing with.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

You can watch us every Thursday night at 8:00 PM on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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