(tense music) - A Baldwin Wallace University poll says the US Senate race in Ohio is tied, with less than two weeks to go to Election Day.

The 13th District congressional race in Northeast Ohio is drawing big spending from outside groups trying to influence the outcome.

And the steering committee for a proposed new Cuyahoga County jail is a contentious mess, as key members step down.

"Ideas" is next.

(dramatic music) Hello, and welcome to "Ideas."

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for joining us.

A Baldwin Wallace University poll shows the United States Senate race in Ohio is essentially tied, with less than two weeks to go to Election Day.

The poll finds ticket splitters, those who vote for candidates from both parties on the same ballot, may be the deciding factor.

The race for the 13th Congressional District in Ohio is getting millions dumped into it by outside groups.

You know that by the negative attack ads.

The steering committee that was formed to get a new Cuyahoga County jail built is in turmoil after two key members resigned and blamed the stalled process on their colleagues.

The Cleveland Division of Police will be under a federal consent decree for at least two more years, but the person overseeing its implementation has resigned.

We'll talk about that and the rest of the week's news on the reporters' roundtable.

Joining me this week from Ideastream Public Media, reporter Conor Morris, who focuses on education; from The Buckeye Flame, editor Ken Schneck; and in Columbus, Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Just 11 days until Election Day, and the US Senate race in Ohio is drawing national attention.

A new Baldwin Wallace University poll puts J.D.

Vance and Tim Ryan in a dead heat when the poll's margin of error is factored in.

Karen, one of the storylines is ticket splitting.

So this used to be common, and now that you hear the way politics goes, and sides that are being chosen, may be less common, which is, you'd get a ballot and you'd say, "Yeah, I like this person," happens to be a Republican, "I like that person," happens to be a Democrat.

Or perhaps, "I don't like this person or that person, so I'll vote for the other one."

But you'd split your ticket.

It wouldn't be a full R or a full D ticket.

This, though, this poll says we might see some ticket splitters.

- Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of polls, not just this one, but other polls that are suggesting that there's a huge gap in the race for governor between Mike DeWine and Nan Whaley.

But yet there's a much closer race going on between J.D.

Vance and Tim Ryan.

And so that really suggests that there might be people who are out there considering splitting their tickets.

When I talked to Kyle Kondik, who's from Ohio, who works for Sabato's Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia, which is an election forecasting newsletter and site, he said ticket splitting has become less common, for what you were just kind of saying there, that as people become more entrenched in R or D, they are less likely to split their tickets.

But this is obviously a race where it seems to be happening.

Of course, we don't know until Election Day, but when we look at the polls, and if those appear to suggest that this race is gonna be closer between Vance and Ryan than it is between DeWine and Whaley, that really means that people are splitting their tickets.

- And what the research shows, and what the poll shows, is that people will vote for both Ryan and DeWine.

- Right.

And I think that Ryan has been campaigning on that.

I mean, the fact that he's going to be on a Fox News debate coming up on Tuesday really indicates that he is going for the same voters and chasing the same voters that J.D.

Vance is.

And when you watch his ads, you can really see that he is trying to go after those moderate voters, those Trump voters, those people who are not necessarily identified as Democratic voters.

And whether that strategy works or not, it's certainly keeping him close.

Because it's not working, obviously Nan Whaley isn't chasing those voters, and there's a huge gap in that race.

So it's a strategy that is working apparently in other states as well.

You're seeing other states that look like they're gonna be flippable for Democrats, or keepable for Democrats, where Trump might have won in 2020.

This is the whole idea of whether you can get people to split that ticket and how do you do that when people are so entrenched in political ideology?

- It's interesting, 'cause you come across people, especially now as we're getting to the election, the heart of the election season, sometimes for folks it's really just a five-day season, that's when they start paying attention.

Got a text thread with some friends, and one of them was offering who he thought he might vote for, and he said that he's gonna be a ticket splitter.

He said, "I believe the senator seat for Ohio is a national vote."

And he said, "I think the governor seat is an Ohio vote," and he's giving DeWine credit for basically, you know, Ohio seems to be going in the right direction.

He said he doesn't seem to be extreme.

He felt as though Vance was extreme, and so that's why he's making those decisions.

But interesting that, just sort of unsolicited, we're hearing those kinds of feedback.

- Oh, sure.

And there's all sorts of anecdotal stories, people saying, "I'm a Republican, but I like the way that Tim Ryan talks," "I don't like J.D.

Vance, but I'm gonna vote for J.D.

Vance, 'cause I'm a Republican."

I mean, that's the kind of feedback that we're getting anecdotally.

Of course, the real question is, when you go, when you take your ballot you got mailed to your house, or you go into the booth and cast your ballot, you're the only one who knows.

And so what I'll be really looking for is the results here, and also in the Supreme Court races, because this is the first time that those Supreme Court races have an R or a D. Those candidates have that party designation after their names.

And so that's gonna, I'll be interested to see how that affects the vote, if at all, because while Republicans were doing very well in previous years, Democrats had been winning seats on the Ohio Supreme Court.

Whether that will change or not, that's a question I have.

- And Nan Whaley just cannot get that debate, right?

So she just can't get that platform in order to be able to provide voters with a contrast between her and DeWine.

We've talked so much about the importance of debates, and you have to think that right there, that's a prime example of how it is just not helping her.

- We will talk about that in just a second.

I do want to point out that when we talk about some people thinking Vance is more extreme, there are many who believe that Tim Ryan is extreme, because while he may be saying, "Hey, I don't listen to party," et cetera, the fact is, and the commercials drive that point home, he's voted with the Biden administration on every possible vote that he could.

And so they believe that that's a partisan issue.

So you look at that, and it depends on what your point of view is, and how you parse it in this campaign.

You mentioned the Supreme Court, Karen, and the poll that we're talking about, the Baldwin Wallace poll, doesn't paint a pretty picture for the Democrats.

Yes, they're gonna have their letters next to their names for the first time, but it looks as though this court is going to become more solidly right, based on that poll.

- Yeah, Democrats have a huge hill to climb here when it comes to taking control of the court, because the way that the court is structured, there are three races: chief justice and two associate justices.

The two candidates for chief justice are current justices right now.

Sharon Kennedy, the Republican, Jennifer Brunner, the Democrat.

Whoever wins and becomes chief justice, that woman's seat will be filled by Republican governor Mike DeWine, because of the way that the terms cross each other.

Whether he wins or lose, whether DeWine wins or loses, he gets to appoint whoever is leaving the court to go to become chief justice.

So it really is kind of a wash for Republicans, and it almost is a setback for, well, I guess it's a wash for Democrats, it's an improvement for Republicans on that.

Those other two lower justices races, the associate justices races, Pat DeWine and Pat Fischer facing Terri Jamison and Marilyn Zayas, Democrats really have to win those to gain a seat on the court.

And it's complicated, and that's why paying attention is really important.

- Yeah, the poll though, shows both of them trailing six or seven points.

- Yeah, and I think that that's kind of a generic party ballot situation, where this is a year that was predicted to be good for Republicans, because it is considered a referendum year on the party in the White House, which is the Democrats, and Republicans have done very well in these even-year elections, these midterm elections, where it's not a presidential race.

- Let's talk about one other political thing.

Candidates for statewide executive offices have sat down virtually with Cleveland.com's editorial boards.

So to your point, Ken, there hasn't been the debate that we were looking for, but they were together in a Zoom call.

Completely different kind of vibe, you know, answering some questions in a conversation.

But we did see Governor DeWine and Nan Whaley, have an opportunity to compare them side by side.

Karen, I know you were watching that, and again, it's not the kind of production quality, or perhaps the, you know, maybe the energy you might see in a public debate, but at least you got a chance to see them a little bit, side by side.

What did you notice?

- Well, I mean, certainly there were scuffles over issues like abortion, and that was the first question right out of the gate.

And certainly that's an issue that Nan Whaley has been putting forward as a main focus of her campaign.

And DeWine has been really not wanting to take questions on that.

And I guess what was really frustrating to me was not having the opportunity to see them together, face to face, in a produced debate where the audio quality was good, where you could hear the questions clearly, all that.

That's a real chance for both candidates to address the public directly and answer questions directly.

And I really hope we get back to that.

I've said this before, that in 2014, you know, we didn't do that, because then-governor John Kasich would not debate his Democratic challenger Ed FitzGerald.

But then in 2018 when the seat was open, we did get debates, we got debates between Mike DeWine and Richard Cordray.

Hopefully we'll get back to that at some point, because I think that that's a great forum for people who are really undecided, who really want to understand the candidates, it gives them an opportunity.

By the way, a Fox News debate on Tuesday between Tim Ryan and J.D.

Vance, I will be very interested to see what the questions are like on that, and see how that goes.

- I'm sure you will be.

And by the way, John Kasich won in a landslide, so that- - He did.

- That reinforces the idea of not having a debate.

- Well, but there were a lot of other issues besides not having a debate in that race.

I mean, Ed FitzGerald is considered by a lot of people to be a really bad candidate that year.

- Let's talk about a little bit too... Did you wanna jump in with something there, Ken?

I saw you.

Okay.

- No, totally, totally good.

- Just nodding your head, and saying, "Karen's really smart."

- I nod when Karen talks, it's just what I do.

(Karen laughs) The other thing is Secretary of State Frank LaRose and his challenger Chelsea Clark met with Cleveland.com.

Here was something interesting that came from that, Karen.

LaRose said that we should be raising to a supermajority, or 60% voter approval, any attempt to amend the Ohio constitution.

And some might question his timing, as Issues 1 and 2, which have been pushed by his party, are on the ballot now, which wouldn't be subject to that.

But in the future, abortion protections, legalized recreational marijuana, those are things that people have talked about, mustering a constitutional amendment ballot measure.

And he's saying, well now we should have a higher threshold.

- Yeah, and there have been a lot of ideas that have been floated over the last couple years to ensure that when there are votes on constitutional amendments, which are permanent, essentially, unless there's another vote to overturn them, that the vote would be bigger than just a low-turnout election.

The Buckeye, or I'm sorry, the Ohio Roundtable, which is a conservative group, has said that these should potentially be held just in even-numbered years, we have higher turnout.

But the idea of a supermajority, I mean, already right now it takes more than 443,000 signatures to get a constitutional amendment before voters.

That's if you are a group trying to do that, or an individual.

State lawmakers can do that by voting three-fifths majority, they can put a ballot issue on the ballot, which is how we got Issue 1 and 2 this year.

So already it's a really big hurdle, but then to have to convince 60% of the population that your idea is a good one, that's an even bigger hurdle.

Quite often constitutional amendments do pass by large margins, or fail by large margins.

But that's a really big hurdle.

And so I think that there'd be serious opposition to that idea.

(dramatic music) - Beyond the governor and United States Senate, the race getting enormous outside attention in Ohio is the 13th District congressional match between Democrat Emilia Sykes and Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert.

Outside groups are pouring big money into the race, with the control of the United States House of Representatives in the balance.

Karen, an estimated 10 million bucks has been spent in this race by outside groups.

It dwarfs the amount of money the candidates themselves have spent.

- And I'm not surprised by that at all.

I mean, there are only three seats in Ohio that are even considered remotely competitive, it looks like.

And that would be that one, which is an open seat.

It was open because we had to redraw the districts to go from 16 members of Congress to 15.

But also that would've been kind of Tim Ryan's district, and he's running obviously for US Senate.

The other two seats that are possibly up for grabs maybe are Steve Chabot, the Republican congressman from Cincinnati, he has a challenger, Democratic challenger Greg Landsman.

That race is considered leaning toward the Republicans.

And also in the Toledo area, you've got longtime Democratic Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur facing Trump-endorsed Republican newcomer, J.R. Majewski.

That race is tipping toward Kaptur.

So this is a race that's tipping toward Sykes, but there are so few competitive races in the United States for Congress that it's natural that if there is an opportunity to flip one, the parties are gonna be very interested in trying to do that.

- I wonder when we're gonna get to the point where it's just like, "This candidate is a murderer," you know, "This one will kill everyone you love."

- Candidates can lie in political ads, and that's a really important thing to remember, that what you see in ads may not be true.

And quite often, you know, they'll show on the ad that "Here's the source for this," or whatever, but they're allowed to lie.

I mean, there was a Supreme Court case from Ohio, a US Supreme Court case that established that.

And so be very, very careful of what you see in ads.

- And I know that you're saying it in jest, but some of these ads really are saying that, particularly the ads around what Emilia Sykes would do around immigration, or some of these candidates would do around immigration, that they're for these open borders, and so your family members will be murdered.

And so they're only a hair shy of just flat out calling them murderers.

- I think there was one in that particular ad where it talked about Emilia Sykes being someone who would embolden domestic violence abusers, when she is the person that had forwarded legislation to prevent domestic violence.

I mean, literally the opposite of what that says.

But it's in broad terms, because this person believes in that, it's going to make people less safer.

And that's what you get when you have sort of this outside depiction, it seems.

- Right, and when you have a system where these fear tactics work.

(dramatic music) - Cuyahoga County Executive Armond Budish and County Council President Pernel Jones Jr. have resigned from the Justice Center Executive Steering Committee.

The plans for a new jail, which the Steering Committee was working on, have been placed on hold until after the election of the next county executive.

Conor Morris, the future of the Steering Committee now is in doubt, and it appears it may be quite a long time before the jail and court project is even back on track.

- Sure.

And with the new county executive that gets into office here pretty soon, you know, it's gonna be, if it's gonna be a restart of the whole process, I mean, it started in 2019, it's been four years, $5 million or so invested, you know, into the whole planning process.

So it's gonna take a while, especially if they're just gonna start completely from whole cloth, the process, you know, get a new planning committee and everything, or steering committee, excuse me.

So it's probably gonna take a while, and that's the big issue that Council and Budish and Jones have, is that inflation's only gonna get worse, prices are only gonna increase for materials and everything else.

So, you know, what is, you know, a $750 million project or so now, is probably gonna be even more, you know, once they get finished with the whole new planning process.

So it's up to the next executive to see, kind of, are they gonna take some bits and pieces from what's already been done so far?

I'm sure they will, of course.

You know, an assessment of the site that they've already done, they say, you know, for example, the two county executive candidates, they say, you know, "It's a toxic site, we're not gonna use it," you know, as well as the Steering Committee members who voted against, you know, going forward with the site, so.

- You mentioned the cost, and it had gone from something like a few hundred million to 700 million, and now we hear from Mike Gallagher, a council member, who said the cost will go up by, he says, $3 million a month.

It'll top a billion dollars by the time the County makes a decision.

- Yeah.

He was pretty incendiary during the council meeting, where they decided that they were gonna drop the planning until the next executive can kind of get into office.

You know, he was, it was almost threatening at times to the folks that he believes have stalled the process.

You know, he called the Steering Committee ineffective, he accused the members of having too many special interests.

He also lobbed a bomb over at Chris Quinn over at Cleveland.com too, as well, and the paper's editorial board, basically said they're helping to derail the process, so.

Yeah, it was a 30, I was watching the meeting, it was a 30-minute monologue too, as well, on Gallagher's part.

- He went hard after that.

And Ken, 400 million to 750 million in two years, I mean, we talk about inflation.

- [Ken] That's a lot.

- That's a lot.

- That's a lot.

And I encourage people to go back to the reporters' roundtable from a few weeks ago for the nuanced dialogue between Marlene Harris-Taylor and Andrew Meyer.

They just went back and forth for five minutes, and just said, "The jail.

The jail."

Because that's really where this has been going on for just so long.

And so the idea that this might top $1 billion by the time the County makes a decision, we're looking at $3 million a month until they make this decision.

And it doesn't look like it's coming anytime soon.

- This is a steering committee, so they have their hands on the wheel, but they're not supposed to be the deciders.

The Steering Committee is supposed to advise the County Council, and then votes can be taken in that regard.

But when we see the resignation letter from Budish and Jones, they said, talking about the three that they targeted, "You apparently have a much different view, threatening to sue to 'enforce' the recommendations of the Committee.

The County officials cannot legally abdicate their role to you, nor will they."

However it seems like they did, because they decided, "Okay, well then we're not gonna go forward with it, and we're gonna wait until next year."

- Yeah, putting on my Professor of Organizational Leadership hat on, they might wanna go back and look at what their role actually is, 'cause clearly there's a difference of opinion.

That word "advisory" doesn't seem to be specific enough for what they need to coalesce around.

Is it an actual proposal?

How vetted should that proposal be?

Should there be alternative proposals?

So there's clearly, and I watched, I couldn't get through the entire 30-minute monologue, so well done, Conor, but for as much as I watched, it was clear that they are just not on the same page about what they're even supposed to emerge with from this committee.

(dramatic music) - The person who has watched over the Cleveland police reforms mandated in a federal consent decree has resigned.

Hassan Aden served as the consent decree monitor since 2019.

Ken, Aden's tenure has been contentious, but still, this seemed like a sudden surprise.

- It did.

It did.

Now, let's call out the obvious.

I don't think there's ever been a monitor who's been put in one of these positions who has come in to flowers on their desk, right?

Like, this is an unenviable position.

It's not usually where cities are saying, "We can't wait for the monitor to get here."

So he's already coming into a not-greased wheel situation.

That said, his tenure, people have described it as slow, high-cost progress, that there's been internal strife, and there have been prior calls for his resignation.

That said, we just talked about this two weeks ago here in this studio, about the extension of the two years, and nowhere in that conversation was the idea that the monitor might be withdrawing.

I actually met, with a group of journalists, with Mayor Bibb last week in City Hall.

And one of the journalists specifically asked Mayor Bibb, so what about the Monitor and calls for his resignation?

And there was no sense even last Thursday that this was gonna come down the pike, that there was going to be this resignation.

- It leaves a lot of questions then about the progress of police reform.

This is the guy that's been on it since 2019.

Now they're talking, and they had a meeting yesterday, a private meeting, actually it was virtual, with the judge, to determine what their next steps are, whether there'll be someone interim that replaces him.

But this is a lot of institutional knowledge out the door.

- Right.

Now, you would expect that that knowledge would then easily be passed on to the deputy.

And that's where this story gets interesting, because his relationship with his deputy is, "fraught" does not begin to describe the relationship with the Deputy Monitor.

So the deputy monitor is Case Western Reserve University Law Professor Ayesha Hardaway.

And the Monitor, who is now leaving, has called for her removal last year.

He had issues with some of her tweets, said that she was anti-law enforcement, and publicly said, publicly called for her removal.

The community then rallied around her, and there was a lot of outcry about not removing her.

And now, irony of ironies, a year later, it looks like she will then be in the position.

It's hard- - Could be.

- Could be, could be.

It's hard to imagine that they have been working in lockstep with each other.

So, you know, as we always want to talk about how knowledge is transferred, it's hard to imagine that this is going to be seamless.

(dramatic music) - The practice of conversion therapy has been condemned by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, and basically all the other health-minded organizations.

This week, the city of Akron became the 11th Ohio municipality to ban the practice on minors.

Cleveland banned it last month.

Ken, let's talk about Akron's ban.

It's in line with what we've seen in other cities.

And yet you still see folks that advocate for this kind of therapy.

- Yes, folks that say that this is freedom of religion or freedom of speech.

So Akron's ban is a little bit different than Cleveland's ban, in that Akron's ban uses their already existing non-discrimination complaint process, and says, through that process you can now make these complaints about someone who is practicing conversion therapy.

Cleveland's ban actually has some criminal pieces to it, as does Cleveland Heights.

But here's a fun thing, Mike.

I actually did math last night.

I got out my calculator.

- Wow.

- I know.

And so I added up the populations of the 11 different municipalities in Ohio that now ban conversion therapy.

And we are now at almost 25% of Ohioans living in municipalities that ban conversion therapy.

So that's a big deal.

Now, the Akron piece is particularly interesting, 'cause we sat right here in this studio and did a whole piece on conversion therapy with a pastor from Ohio City, who is a survivor of conversion therapy.

And the place where Pastor Hinkelman experienced conversion therapy, and is a survivor from it, is in Akron.

They are still in existence.

For a piece for The Buckeye Flame, we reached out to this counseling practice, I can't put "counseling" in quotes, but Emerge Counseling Ministries in Akron, and they are still operating.

They did not respond to our comments.

So it will be interesting to see if this is actually used, because we know that there are places practicing conversion therapy.

The difficulty is, if you call them, they will say, "We're not."

- Is most of this involving juveniles, because it's parents trying to get them to do that?

Or are there people that are convinced somehow that there's something wrong with them, and so they're themselves trying to engage in this therapy?

- Sure, so the bans, let's be specific about about the bans, these bans are almost universally applying to minors.

That said, yes, there are absolutely people who are of legal age, who subject themselves to conversion therapy, often because they affiliate with a faith identity that has told them this is not right.

So they will subject themselves to it.

But these bans, they apply to minors.

Now, the fascinating thing about all of this is that Cincinnati was actually the first place in the country, in the United States of America, to ban conversion therapy, in early 2015.

Since 2015, over the past seven, eight years, as we said, there have been 11 different municipalities in Ohio that have, a total of 11 that we are now at.

Four of those have come in the past six, seven weeks.

So we're really seeing some momentum now for different municipalities in Ohio to ban conversion therapy, much more than we've seen over the past seven years.

The reason for that, that some folks would say, is because we're seeing, on the state level, you're seeing all of these different anti-LGBTQ policies, pieces of legislation, that we'll see what happens during lame duck, we're gonna have a ton to talk about in that realm, but some of them that are specifically targeting LGBTQ youth.

And so if the state is gonna go after LGBTQ youth, then at least the municipalities are gonna provide protections for them.

(dramatic music) - Monday on "The Sound of Ideas" on WKSU, we'll discuss how the city of Cleveland is trying to bounce back from the pandemic and bring workers back to downtown.

Mayor Justin Bibb and the CEO of the Downtown Cleveland Alliance will join us for the conversation.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching, and stay safe.

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