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

Ohioans went to the polls in early March in the presidential primary, and there were some interesting results.

What does that mean for Ohio moving forward as we look at the general election in November?

Well, we're joined by our expert panel of David Jackson, Professor at the Bowling Green Department of Political Science.

Also Associate Professor, Nicole Kalaf-Hughes from that same department, and the host of "The State of Ohio," in Columbus to give us that version of what's going on in Columbus, Karen Kasler, thank you all for being here again today.

Karen, before we get into what happened in March, the story just broke within the last 48 hours, as we were getting ready to record this, that now there's a question about whether or not Joe Biden will be on the ballot in November because of the date of the Democratic National Convention, so talk about that and some of the past history where that has happened before in the state, where the dates don't match up with that 90-day deadline to basically file your candidacy to be on the November ballot.

- Well, the 90-day deadline was changed from I think a 70-75 day deadline in 2010.

And since 2010, when that 90-day deadline became the law, there have been two times that there have been problems with the national nominating conventions, there was a problem in 2012 and there was a problem in 2020.

And both of those times, both of the nominated conventions were affected, they were gonna be held after the deadline to be certified for the Ohio ballot.

So state lawmakers made temporary changes to the law, moving the deadline to 60 days so that those nominated conventions could still be held and the candidates could still make the ballot.

This is the first time this has happened to only one party because the Republican convention will be held before the deadline, the Democratic convention will be held after it.

And so now state lawmakers, according to Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, have to make a fix to this, or the Democratic National Convention has to be moved, which seems very unlikely because that's been in the plans for many, many months, it's set for late August in Chicago and so it's unlikely, of course, that that would be moved.

There are some possibilities here that also include maybe a mini-convention where candidates, I mean, we know who the candidates are gonna be, of course, we know President Biden will be the Democratic nominee.

Can there be some sort of a mini-convention held?

Can there be some other things that are done?

The real question is, will state lawmakers make this fix by early May when they have to for it to go forward as it is without some other fix involved?

- Yeah, and of course, as you mentioned, in previous iterations of this, both parties were ahead at state.

In this case, it's the party that's out of power that is going to be, at least in the state of Ohio, the legislature is controlled by the Republicans, it's a Democratic candidate, so this has all sorts of wonderful possibilities as things go forward.

If they don't change the date, if the Democrats don't change their date, obviously, somewhere in some court somewhere, that's the Ohio Supreme Court, probably eventually the US Supreme Court, maybe that's where we end up, I don't know, you know, Dr. Hughes, talk about that a little bit, because it's sort of like these elections anymore, there's always a yes, but, or what if, or how did this happen sort of thing, so talk about that a little bit.

- So I don't love to make predictions because I'm often wrong when I try to forecast things, but I'm gonna choose to be a little bit optimistic.

I think the optics nationally for the state of Ohio, should the lawmakers choose to do nothing, would be so bad, particularly given the number of lawmakers that opposed Colorado's efforts to keep Trump off the ballot there and requiring the Supreme Court to actually weigh in and say, "You can't do that."

I think the optics of Ohio trying to keep a major party nominee off the ballot for the party that's not in power would be so bad.

I would hope that they wouldn't do that.

I think you'd end up with an uproar both within the state of Ohio and then nationally.

I'm going to also guess that this is not a mistake that the Democrats are gonna make again, but it is in terms of convention scheduling, but the convention can't get moved because of the logistics of moving an event that large, regardless of what it is, whether it's the Democratic National Convention or any other large event that involves that many people and that level of hotel room, space, convention space, events, is just not practical.

But I don't know, my colleague, I see him looking at me, so he may have another opinion about my optimism.

- [Steve] He may be a little more cynical than you are, maybe, we'll just end, and we could be wrong about that prediction too, but go ahead.

- [David] That was just courtesy, which I appreciate my colleague hoping for that to happen in Columbus as well.

And I will cautiously share her optimism, if for no other reason than the fact that each party does have, one would hope, a long-term interest in maintaining the appearance of the credibility of elections and the absence of shenanigans.

- [Steve] Now, from, go ahead- - [Karen] I will say too that the 90-day deadline issue was really interesting because it was buried in a law that set up the method of paying voter-approved bonuses for Ohio veterans of the Persian Gulf, Afghanistan, and Iraq Wars.

So it was kind of buried in the middle of this, and a 90-day deadline pushes it all the way back to early August.

And for a lot of the conventions, that's really early, I mean, 2016, both the conventions were held in July, and they were back-to-back.

But a lot of times, the conventions have been pushed out to August and September.

So that 90-day deadline is really early for people who are planning these conventions to think about, and obviously, Ohio is just one of 50 states that they have to think about in terms of ballot access.

- Well, heck, I mean, this is a state that requires you to register to vote 30 days before the election when a state just north of us allows same-day voter registration so, you know, maybe it's time for Ohio to figure out if the duration of time that's necessary for some of these things isn't set a little higher than it needs to be.

- Yeah, now, if you look at this too, the state of Ohio, you know, as we talked about many times, for a long time, was that bellwether, it was a predictor of who won.

Hasn't been the case most recently.

Is there, and polling in Ohio, I mean, the assumption would be right now that Donald Trump would win Ohio.

So it's, on one hand, you can look and say, well, Joe Biden is not gonna win Ohio anyhow, so he's not on the ballot, who cares?

But then there's the, all of the investment that makes somebody still campaign here, even if you, in the case of Donald Trump, still having to spend money in Ohio to make sure that nothing happens the opposite way.

- [Nicole] Well, and I think with, you know, that might be true at the presidential level, though I'm not convinced that it is.

But that essentially negates everything else that's down-ballot that relies on people who show up to wanna register their presidential preference and then also vote for everything else that is there, when they may not be as motivated to turn out for all of the other elections that are going to be on there.

- And I think we saw a little bit of that when we were coming down at the end of the segment, a little bit of that maybe with the primary, because both of the presidential nominees were locked in.

That may have affected turnout, I don't know, we haven't seen a lot of information there, but yeah, that would have, but I think, as you said, Dr. Hughes, that a situation where Ohio says, "Oh, by the way, there's only one major candidate on our ballot."

Well, we'd get a lot of attention, that's for sure, we'd be in the news a lot, and maybe that's part of the game, I don't know.

When we come back, let's talk a little more about the primary, and we can kind of dig into what happened in some of what would be like the US Senate race because obviously, there were some things going on there that turned out the way certain people wanted, the way maybe other people didn't.

And then the 9th Congressional, where you've got the longest-serving female in the congressional history now facing a different district than she did two cycles ago, so back in just a moment with Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and the host of "The State of Ohio," Karen Kasler, here on The Journal.

You're with us on The Journal, our guests are Dr. David Jackson, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes, and Karen Kasler, host of "The State of Ohio," which you can see every Sunday at noon here on WBGU-PBS.

Shameless promotion there, but it's a good show, so make sure you watch it.

When I came out of the last segment, I sort of dismissed the fact that Ohio was going to be competitive at the presidential level.

Obviously, people would argue about that.

But beyond that point, there is more to that than just the presidential race, which makes Ohio an incredibly key state, and Dr. Jackson, talk about that, because there's more to it than just who wins Ohio at the presidential side.

- Well, yeah, if you look at the last few elections in Ohio statewide, I mean, we had, in 2016, Donald Trump with, you know, what, an eight-point win, 2020, about the same.

Tim Ryan lost by maybe seven or eight points, you can't really look at the governor's race because he had a very popular incumbent with a very underfunded, under-known challenger in that case.

But the fact is that, you know, there is a significant amount of evidence that suggests that, you know, statewide, you know, Ohio has been leaning Republican.

And that being the case, there's some evidence to suggest that it's not because the public is leaning Republican overall, but that the people who are actually registered to vote and who actually show up are.

And that may sound like putting too fine a point on it but it's really not because, you know, there's the pool of all eligible voters, there's then the pool who are actually registered to vote, and then there's the pool who actually show up.

The ones who actually show up are the ones who decide elections, and so we can talk about ways in which Ohio may not be as distinct from our neighbor to the north, Michigan, on that question.

But at the immediate question, in Ohio, of course, in 2024, there is a Senate election, and the cliche already has become, you know, the control of the Senate goes through Ohio, which, you know, I think is, you know, probably accurate, so that probably means that the Biden campaign, although they won't be focusing on Ohio, they'll be focusing on the states that they won last time that were, in some cases, unexpected, Arizona and Georgia, in other cases, the rebuilding of the blue wall, as it was called, until 2016, through Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, and probably not focusing a lot of money on changing the Ohio outcome.

They can't not participate in Ohio because they can't be too much of a drag on the Brown campaign.

- [Steve] Right.

- And so for that fact alone, we can't anticipate, you know, a great deal of money being spent certainly by the Republican and Democratic senatorial campaigns, but the Biden campaign can't be non-existent because they can't be dragging Senator Brown's reelection- - They can't just leave him on an island someplace and yeah.

- Yeah, I mean, ask Tim Ryan about what it's like not to be supported by your national party.

- And he came closer than if, because his argument always was, if I'd gotten a little more support, I maybe could have won, but then every candidate believes that too.

And then, of course, you too, now, the House races in Ohio probably not as competitive in a lot of cases, but we do have one locally, the 9th Congressional District.

Marcy Kaptur, been there for quite some time, has fended off opponent after opponent after opponent all these years.

This year, is this her most difficult opponent?

It's the guy who was a state representative from Monclova, Lucas County, very well known compared to some of the other candidates.

Is this gonna be her toughest challenge, you think, in quite some time?

- [Nicole] I think maybe, I think we have to remember too that that district, the district that she's currently in now, was drawn specifically to unseat her.

And so I think the reason that she was so successful last time was the challenger that she was running against.

And so I think, given the drawing of the current district, the fact that the Republicans have targeted her so much because she is a Democratic member of the House, longest-serving female member of the House.

I think that's part of the reason, right, the district was drawn to unseat her.

And her opponent is local, is popular, particularly popular on the right and farther to the right, and so I think it will be challenging.

That being said, I think it would be wrong to underestimate her and everything that she has done for the district in her 42?

- [Steve] Yeah, 42 years, yeah.

- 42 years in Congress, and she is broadly popular with people on both sides of the aisle because she has delivered so much for the district and the various iterations of the district that we've had over time.

I think it will, particularly in Toledo and the eastern parts of the district, it'll come down to who shows up.

And so a lot of it has to do with voter mobilization, getting people registered, getting people to turn out.

Because the numbers, I do think the numbers are there based on what we've roughly seen, that there hasn't been a ton of polling.

But again, it really just depends on who shows up on that day.

- [Steve] Yeah- - [David] And until we clear too, I mean, underestimate Marcy Kaptur at your own peril.

I mean, there's a history of that going back to 1982.

And that being said, it's true that Representative Merrin represented, you know, a State House district and has name recognition in a significant portion of the district, but we're what now, seven months out from the election, and there's gonna be a huge amount of money invested in this race on both the Democratic and the Republican side.

And in terms of finding any surprises in Marcy Kaptur's past, the probability of that is zero, there's nobody who's been vetted, you know, better than a, you know, a 42-year incumbent.

On the other hand, while somewhat well known, Derek Merrin, you know, hasn't faced this level of scrutiny, hasn't faced this level of ferocity, hasn't faced this level of spending.

The way we saw the ugliness that happened in the Senate campaign statewide, every, we saw ugliness in some State House races.

- [Steve] Yeah.

- One prediction I think it's fairly safe to make is that this election is probably going to be the, I don't mean just the 9th Congressional District, I mean the election overall, is gonna be one of the most vicious, ugly, mean-spirited, nasty, personal, bitter, rotten elections we've ever had.

- [Steve] I'm feeling good about this now.

- [Nicole] Yeah, here's the optimism.

- [Steve] Yeah, now- - [David] Which then can hurt turnout because that turns off a lot of people, so a second time, you've gotta have campaigns who balance the amount of attack ads, that are effective because attack ads work, but can also have the secondary effect of decreasing turnout and increasing cynicism.

So in close elections, candidates are gonna have to, and the other organizations supporting them, you know, walk a line to try to balance out, you know, the positive and the negative.

- Yeah.

Now, when we come back, as with the end of the segment, Karen, when I come back, I'd like to ask you about Derek Merrin's role in Columbus and whether that is a positive for him or a negative, because there was a lot of bad publicity that came out of that whole infighting with the Republican Party and, of course, he facing off against Jason Stephens and them funding competing candidates in the Blue 22 and all of that, so when we come back, let's talk about Merrin's profile right now, probably good with some people, maybe not so good with other Republicans, and whether that would have any impact in the 9th Congressional District.

We'll be back in just a moment here on The Journal.

Thanks for staying with us on the Journal, we're talking post-primary analysis, but also looking ahead now to the November election.

In that last segment, Karen, we were talking about the 9th Congressional District.

Obviously, Derek Merrin is the Republican nominee now.

He's got a lot of name recognition, but is all of that name recognition good among the Republicans that are out there or not?

Because there's been a lot of infighting in Columbus between him and Jason Stephens, and Matt Huffman siding basically with Derek Merrin.

But is that a potential problem for him, that some Republicans might not come home to him because of what they would see as shenanigans in Columbus?

- Well, certainly, there's the argument that all publicity is good publicity, but in this case, Derek Merrin became better known, I guess, because he was indeed the Republican House caucus choice for speaker in late 2022.

But then when the floor vote happened in early 2023, Jason Stephens had brought together all 32 of Ohio's House Democrats, as well as 22 Republicans, and he ended up beating Derek Merrin.

Merrin still calls himself the leader of the Republican caucus among House members and has still maintained that he is in charge of the Republican caucus 'cause he got the most Republican votes.

Of course, there was a battle over who controls the money from the Ohio House Republican caucus campaign account, and Merrin's folks lost that at least temporarily.

But I think what really is important here when it comes to the actual vote is if, as we said earlier in the show, if, for some reason, President Biden is not on the ballot, that could really affect other issues and other races down ticket, and I think Marcy Kaptur's race could be one of those big ones, because if Biden isn't there to bring out Democratic voters, that could really have an impact on turnout in the 9th Congressional District and potentially in other districts where it is close.

I mean, the districts were drawn so that there would be 13 Republicans and two Democrats, essentially, that's the way that it appeared that the Ohio redistricting commission maps would go.

And indeed, five Democrats and 10 Republicans won, so there's gonna be a battle for some of those seats.

- Yeah, and we've talked about the Senate being up for grabs, but there, of course, and there's a discussion too that the House will be, because it's relatively narrow now, well, very narrow now.

So yeah, every House race is probably just as important maybe as some of the Senate races.

When you rotate that through, so Ohio, even though you can debate whether or not the presidential race is gonna be as close or will be close, it's all of those down-ballot things, and so that would go back to the very first thing we talked about.

What if Joe Biden, for some reason, despite the bad optics for Ohio, they go, "No, you've gotta file the 90-day mark, and if you haven't, guess what?

You're not on the ballot."

Yeah, there's no way you could write in for president and get any kind of ballot, I don't know how that works in Ohio, but I would think that would be your only alternative then, would be to run as a, if you can run as a write-in candidate for president in Ohio, I don't know if you even can, but it does beg the issue depending on, because we've seen this legislature take some interesting stands sometimes, would this be one they'd wanna take?

I don't know, I don't know.

When you look at the Senate race, obviously, Bernie Moreno, Trump endorsement.

I hear from, you read various things, that that's the candidate that Sherrod Brown wanted to run against of the three that were there because the other two have much better name recognition.

Is that, for either one of you, is that gonna be an issue?

Is that a big advantage that maybe Bernie Moreno isn't as well known as the other two?

- Well, yeah, I mean, you hear these things about, you know, the Brown campaign wanting Bernie Moreno to get the nomination, and you hear rumors about having spent money to cause that to happen.

These are the sorts of things that happen in politics, so there's nothing really, you know, shocking or surprising about that, that campaigns make a series of strategic choices from beginning to end, that they use an imperfect amount of information available to make their best guess about how things are gonna work out and what's gonna happen, you know, from those choices.

The one thing I would caution about that is that there is some data, and some of the data is pretty dramatic in terms of the outcome, that shows you have to be careful what you wish for on one party's side, hoping for a victory from the other party's side.

And we can go back to the 1960s in California when Governor Pat Brown, a Democratic incumbent, I understand, was pretty excited about this Hollywood actor getting the Republican Party's nomination for governor.

And they thought, "Well, we're on easy street now."

- [Steve] Turned out to be somebody who was pretty good at that particular job.

- [David] Yeah, and among, you know, we all know what history showed after that, so I guess you got to be careful what you wish for.

- Yeah, yeah, and you're right, they make strategic decisions- - But they have to make the choices they make, I mean, it's like, when the election is over, it's like watching poker on television because you can see everybody's hand.

The players at the table can't see everybody's hand during the game, so they're playing with imperfect information and an absence of information.

And so they make a series of choices that are right or wrong based on the information they have, not perfect information.

- [Steve] Now, going back to something you mentioned earlier too, is it possible too that the Brown campaign believes there might be some things that they could use in Bernie Moreno's previous background, his whatever, his work things, that sort of thing, that, whereas the other two guys have been vetted, as you said, sometimes, you know, Marcy Kaptur, there's nothing you're gonna find on her after 42 years, they'd have found it by now.

Is that maybe part of it too, that Moreno's an outsider, he's going to run as, "I'm an outsider, I'm a businessman."

He hasn't been through the, sort of like the grinder that maybe the other two guys have been.

- Well, the plus side of running an outsider is that they're an outsider, and it all depends on what the electorate's mood is, because in 2016, and again, political science is not in love with the concept of talking about the overall mood of the electorate without the data to back it up, but the common understanding of the 2016 election was that the electorate was in a mood for change, the Democrats nominated a candidate who was not a candidate of change, except for the fact that she would have been the first woman elected president in history.

But they went for the outsider, you know, in 2016.

So what's happening in 2024 in Ohio?

Is it going to be an electorate whose mood is one for the outsider?

Well, then that can help the outsider.

On the other hand, the downside of running an outsider used to be, before Trump descended the escalator in 2015, was that they weren't vetted and they had terrible things sometimes in their past that could be discovered and used against them and that would crush a candidate.

I very famously incorrectly predicted, after the John McCain comments that Donald Trump made way back when, that this would probably be the end of his campaign because the American electorate's not gonna accept, you know, such a nasty set of comments about a war hero.

So, you know, yes, the fact of the matter is an outsider hasn't been vetted, they're going to find out things that they can use against him, but who knows anymore- - Whether it matters or not at this point, yeah.

Yeah, because I can remember, we used to sit and when we were doing the show back in 2015 and 16, that almost weekly, where we did the show, that, well, wouldn't that be the end of the campaign?

- [David] Surely, this is the end.

- [Steve] Yeah, yeah, this has to be it, right?

- I think the Access Hollywood tape should be the thing that's disabused of of the notion that one terrible thing could undo a candidate now.

- [Steve] Yeah, undo a campaign, but back in the day, that was the case.

Shifting back a little bit to Derek Merrin, the Blue 22, as we look forward to the legislature between now and the end of the year, obviously, some of Jason Stephens' supporters were stripped away or will be out of office at the end of this year.

How does that affect what the legislature is gonna do?

Is it really gonna, is it gonna ramp up the problems among the Republicans, or will they just kind of go, okay, we give, we're gonna move on and all be happy together?

Or I mean, what's the feel down there?

Or is it gonna be just the way it's been for the last year and a half?

- Well, I will say, on the Sherrod Brown, Bernie Moreno race, the Ohio Democratic Party and Sherrod Brown's folks are really pushing some of their concerns and their claims about Bernie Moreno.

They're a lot more aggressive than they were in the 2022 race between J.D.

Vance and Tim Ryan.

So I think that really indicates they were ready for Bernie Moreno to be the nominee and that they have their attack plan in place.

Then switching over to the House Speaker situation.

You mentioned earlier that Senate President Matt Huffman is involved in this, and it's definitely the case because Derek Merrin was term limited in the House and Senate President Matt Huffman wants to come back over to the House.

He and Jason Stephens, the current speaker, are both running unopposed for the House this fall.

So they're going to be facing one another potentially for the House speakership.

And Huffman has made more comments that it was a terribly poorly hidden secret that he wanted to be speaker, but now he's starting to make more comments about this.

And with the loss of four Republicans who had supported Stephens for speaker, four of the so-called Blue 22, that kind of opens the door for Huffman potentially to win the Speaker race.

We don't know until we know and certainly, Derek Merrin can back this up because he thought he had the votes before the floor vote and then he didn't.

So it certainly makes though the race for Speaker in January potentially really, really interesting.

- Okay, well, we'll pick it up downstream a little bit because we're out of time now.

But yeah, there's a lot going on in Ohio, even though sometimes, we think there's not a lot going on in Ohio when it comes to politics.

Thank you all for being here again.

You can check us out at WBGU.org, you can watch us every Thursday night at 8 PM on WBGU-PBS.

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

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