(upbeat music) (logo bubbles) - Hello, and welcome to "Journal."

I'm Steve Kendall.

In just a few days, Ohioans will go to the polls in a rare August primary to determine state legislative candidates and party central committee members.

But in the wake of recent Supreme Court decisions and the January 6th committee hearings, will voters be more energized than they might have been?

Joining me in the studio is Nicole Kalaf-Hughes from the Bowling Green State University Department of Political Science, and from Columbus, the host of the "State of Ohio," Karen Kasler.

Welcome, both of you, to "Journal."

And Karen, let's start with you with that.

I know on your show on Sunday, you had a number of people on to talk about what would happen with this primary and what would turnout be like.

It's always been speculative what would go on with that.

What was the tenor about that?

What are people thinking about this August primary, who aren't necessarily on the ballot, but are looking at it as a political exercise, kind of?

- Well, in talking to people who are experts of this, not only campaign people and strategists, but also academics, this is really an unprecedented circumstance.

I mean, this is very, very unusual for a legislative primary to be happening, legislative-only primary to be happening in the middle of summer.

And for one of the academics I've spoken to, who was on our TV show, the "State of Ohio," this past weekend, David Cohen with the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron, he said it's an embarrassment for Ohio.

He says it's a dumpster fire, a train wreck because it all ties back to, of course, the redrawing of state House and Senate maps, which those maps have been ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court five times.

The reason we have this primary in the first place is because a group of Republican voters went to a federal court to get a set of maps that were ruled unconstitutional be put into place.

So all of this comes down to, most likely, a very, very low turnout, a very small number of people who are aware of what's going on and who are engaged enough in the process to turn out and vote on August 2nd.

And that just really is problematic for a lot of people who wanna see more attention and more engagement when it comes to state legislative reasons.

- Yeah, 'cause I know, and Dr. Kalaf-Hughes, even people, I think, as Karen said, even people who are extremely engaged are sort of confused by what's going on.

Even the ones who normally are hardcore voters for every election are like what is this and why are we here sort of an approach.

- I think that's right.

I think a lot of people who are typically your engaged voters are not actually aware that this primary is coming up.

Most of the ads that you see and the attention has already shifted to November.

- [Steve] Right.

- A lot of the focus on national politics has moved to November.

It's the end of summer; people are thinking about getting their kids back to school.

And a lot of people are still out of town.

And people may just not realize that this is going on.

And because a lot of these races are non-competitive, some are very competitive, but a lot of them aren't, there's not gonna be a lot of motivation to turn out.

And this is gonna turn into something that is really expensive for the State of Ohio and really just exemplifies, right, the garbage fire that was alluded to in our state legislative districts.

And you pair this with the fact that the congressional districts are unconstitutional as well, that we're gonna be using in November.

It's really a mess and it's not a great look for the state.

- Yeah.

And I think, Karen, you mentioned that, that, yeah, this has been a debacle from, it took them a long time to even start doing the maps, and then as they did them, the Supreme Court kept saying, "No, try again, No, try again.

No try again."

And in the end they just quit trying once they got the federal court decision that said, "Well, if you can't come up with a plan by this date, we'll just use map number three, which has already been declared unconstitutional, but hey, it's the best we got or it's what we have to work with."

Yeah, I guess, as you've both said, it makes the State of Ohio look like the gang that can't redistrict straight, kind of.

- Yeah.

And it's really frustrating, I think, for a lot of people who had thought that this was settled law.

That in 2015 and 2018, when voters overwhelmingly approved a way to change the process of redrawing state House and Senate districts and congressional districts, that this was not gonna be an issue.

These maps were gonna be drawn.

They were not gonna be unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

This was gonna be a done deal.

And here we are 10 months into the process and that's not been the case.

And I think there's real confusion too, even among people who are engaged, that there are these two separate sets of maps.

There is the congressional map, which just this last week the Ohio Supreme Court ruled is unconstitutional.

And that map, we already used that for the May primary.

We will use that again in November.

And then the House and Senate maps, which have been ruled unconstitutional, but we're still going forward with a primary and a general election vote for those districts.

So following both of these tracks and then realizing that the vote in November will be using maps that the Ohio Supreme Court has ruled unconstitutional is really difficult to explain to people and it's, I think, really very frustrating for the activists who work to get those maps on the ballot, or the amendments on the ballot, and thought that this was a settled issue.

- Yeah.

I mean, these responses, the process that was used was designed to eliminate all of the problems with the gerrymandering of the previous maps.

When you look at it, Nicole, is there any way now for Ohio to fix this?

Because what's in place are the laws that were the constitutional amendments and things that are there.

I'm not hearing any people saying, "Hey, we gotta go back and redo this.

We don't this process hasn't worked.

We have to come up with another process."

There's no initiative going on like that that I've heard of.

- Not yet.

You may see one coming up, but I think given the current political environment, that would be really hard.

Because right now, there's no incentive to play by the rules.

And if you're just allowed to use unconstitutional districts, why wouldn't you keep doing that?

Right now, the way the districts are drawn benefits Republicans.

And they are not going to participate actively to change that, and I think they're going to express to their voters, "Don't change this because right now, we can not play by the rules," and they will win.

And that's gonna perpetuate more not playing by the rules.

And so I think we're in a really tough spot, where you had an overwhelming majority of Ohio voters want less gerrymandered districts and more fair politics in Ohio and more accurate representation of what Ohio looks like.

And you're not going to get that.

And the incentive to change that is just not there from the political elites in the state.

- Yeah.

Now, of course, looming in the future is the 2024 election.

And I guess you could argue, or some people might argue, that, well, maybe by the time that rolls around, maybe what currently is in place, percentage-wise, Republican seats versus Democratic seats, who knows, Ohio may turn out that those numbers are gonna be accurate in 2024, what we would consider, some people would consider, offset numbers.

You know, 54-46 versus the 80s.

You know, you hear 66 to 80% Republican distribution, but maybe that's it.

We're just gonna wait it out and see, by 2024, maybe 66% will be the number in Ohio for Republican voters versus the 54 right now.

- Well, I think as long as you don't have to play by the rules, it doesn't matter.

- [Steve] Doesn't matter.

- It doesn't matter what the actual population of Ohio looks like.

If you can ignore the rules, then it really doesn't matter.

- Yeah.

Now, when we come back, I'll give you guys a heads-up, does the average person really care about all of this?

I guess we can talk about that when we come back.

I mean, is it that big a deal with everything else going on?

Are legislative districts that big a deal to the average voter?

So back in just a moment on "The Journal" with Karen Kasler, host of "State of Ohio," and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes from the Bowling Green State University Department of Political Science.

Thanks for staying with us on "The Journal."

We're talking about the August primary in Ohio.

And hopefully by the time August 2nd rolls around, which is not that far off, more people will be aware that there is actually a primary in August in Ohio.

It's a rare occasion brought on by some interesting developments in Ohio's redistricting process.

Joined by Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes and Karen Kasler.

We talked about a lot with both of you, and you've been on the show before.

We talked about a lot and how complicated and how disjointed and how bad this process has been.

But I'm wondering, Karen, do people really, to the average person, has this fallen below their radar now with everything else that's going on in the world?

That worrying about redistricting, is it a thing to them at all even?

- I think the problem is that, for many people, state government is not a thing.

I mean, it's hard to remind people that Congress and the president, that's the federal government.

There is still a state government.

And a state government includes 99 members of the Ohio House and 33 members of the Ohio Senate.

This year, all 99 members of the House and 17 districts in the Senate are on the ballot.

And of those, 19 House districts and seven Senate districts are considered toss-ups under this new map to try to get that 54% Republican, 46% Democratic split.

But again, the problem is most people don't know who their state representative is.

They don't know who their state senator is.

And that's really frustrating for people like me, who cover state government all the time, to remind folks that these are the people who decide the state budget.

They decide things related to schools and roads.

And now we're seeing, with Supreme Court decisions like the Dobbs decision on abortion sending the regulation of that procedure back to the states, that really means that whoever is in the state House, especially if there's a supermajority, that really does matter.

And so while a lot of people will ignore and have no idea that this primary is coming up on August 2nd, it really is important.

And knowing who your state legislator is is important, whether you like what's going on right now or whether you don't like what's going on right now.

- Yeah.

And Nicole, it's an interesting point that Karen makes.

We hear about the federal government all time.

It's on the news, the national news.

It's the biggest story.

State government gets only when something really strange is going on or something really off the wall takes place.

It's like, "Oh yeah, there's something going on in Columbus.

I know there's a governor, there are representatives, but how important is it to me, really?"

So yeah.

- Yeah, I mean, these people have a tremendous amount of power over your daily life, and you're far more likely to interact with decisions that they make rather than, say, the president.

And your state representatives, your state senators you'll actually see around town.

And I think people often forget that or don't realize it because they don't know who they are, but these are people who you have far more access to as well.

So if you're interested in emailing their office or sending a note, it's far easier to do that for your state representatives or your state senators than it is, say, the president.

You're far more likely to be heard.

And given the Dobbs decision, especially for women, these are people who are going to make decisions that are affecting your health and they're not physicians.

And they're gonna limit the amount of medical care that women can get.

And given the concurring opinions by Justice Thomas inviting challenges on birth control, on marriage equality, on same-sex relationships, you're going to see additional state challenges, and you're going to see state legislators taking a more active role in areas of private lives that we thought were settled years ago, even over 50 years ago.

And so I think for Ohioans, and actually, people in every state should be far more aware of who their state reps and state senators are.

And it becomes really difficult when you don't even know what district you're in because the state can't make up its mind.

- 'Cause the maps are sort amoeba-like.

They're constantly changing.

Yeah.

And Karen, you would know this better than I would, Ohio, of course, has its abortion law that's in place.

Have you heard anything down, is there a movement to bring that down to point of conception abortion target?

I mean, 'cause it would not be unlike this legislature to do as much as they possibly could in those kind of directions.

They've shown they're a very conservative legislature and it's controlled by basically conservatives.

They have the numbers.

And all the other things that Nicole talked about, marriage equality, same-sex relationships, all that probably will come back on the table down there now that the court has kind of said, "Well, you can do this, and we may be thinking about allowing you to do more in those other areas," that, again, we thought we're settled law, to some degree.

- Well, when it comes to marriage equality, it's really interesting to note that the case that went to the US Supreme Court that decided marriage equality was an Ohio case.

It was an Ohio man, Cincinnati resident, Jim Obergefell, who sued the director of the Ohio Department of Development, Rick Hodges, for the opportunity to be listed as his husband's surviving spouse on his death certificate.

That created the case Obergefell v. Hodges that legalized same-sex marriage in this country.

He is now a candidate for the Ohio House, running as a Democrat in the Sandusky area.

And so that's interesting to note that.

There's no move that I've heard to try to deal with that in Ohio right now, but that's because it was dealt with before.

There already is a law in Ohio and a constitutional amendment in Ohio that says that marriage is between only one man and one woman.

So if Obergefell v. Hodges falls, then Ohio then reverts to those two amendment, the amendment in the law, meaning that same-sex marriage would be illegal under Ohio law.

Now, when it comes to abortion, of course, this legislature has been very proactive for years in passing laws to restrict abortion rights, and now they have a very close partner in Governor Mike DeWine, a Republican who's been very strongly anti-abortion for his entire career and has even said publicly that he would do everything that he can to restrict abortion and was happy to sign the so-called heartbeat bill, which bans abortion after a fetal cardiac activity is detected about six weeks into a pregnancy.

There is a bill that was sponsored by a small number of Republicans that would confer personhood at conception, meaning that there would be no abortion from the time of conception, but that whole personhood idea also implies other things, such as financial responsibility for the embryo and allowing all sorts of tax deductions and things like this.

There are a lot of things involved in that personhood element.

And so I think I'm not sure that we'll see that go forward.

I'm not entirely sure if we'll see any more abortion restrictions right now because basically most abortions are banned in Ohio because of that six-week ban that's now in place.

- Right.

And I think too, with regard to that, what we found too is that the abortion procedures are not so much medical anymore as they are Medicaid medication abortions, which how you would control that, how the legislature could move to say, "Well, we're gonna make sure that you're not allowed to use those particular drugs to do that."

So that's a possibility, I guess, Nicole.

- Well, and you're seeing that happen in other states.

And I think Ohio will follow what other states do.

Republicans have said they're gonna pursue a nationwide ban on abortion.

And essentially, there's kind of a race to the extreme on this to kind of throw everything at the wall and see what sticks.

And what will end up happening is women are going to die.

And I said that last time I was here, and I was like, "Oh, maybe that was extreme."

It isn't because while abortions and terminations of pregnancy happen for a lot of different reasons, some of them are medical.

And you already have people who are not pregnant and just happen to identify as women who are being denied medications that may interfere with pregnancy.

And so while that's happening in other states, you're gonna see some of that kind of trickling into Ohio.

Oh, Karen looks like she has something.

- I just wanted to join in.

Absolutely.

I think there are two important things to remember here.

And first of all is the story that went national about the 10-year-old girl who, and let's be clear, she was raped and she got pregnant.

She went out of state for an abortion.

This has happened again in Ohio.

It will keep happening because children do get raped and children do get pregnant.

That's one reason why a lot of people refer to pregnant people because we're talking about more than just women.

We're talking about children, in this case.

- [Steve] Right.

- And also, there is a law that was put into effect in the last budget cycle that allows for medical professionals to deny treatment if that treatment violates that medical professional's personal beliefs.

And so that may be where you're seeing some of this happen, when there's a doubt as to whether an abortion should be provided or whether abortion medication, which is how most abortions are done, would be provided.

Doctors and medical professionals can say, "I disagree with that and I'm not gonna do that."

- Yeah, okay.

Yep.

- Well, and I think the other thing to remember is when we're also thinking about that cardiac activity ban at six weeks.

It's not six weeks from when you find out you're pregnant, it's usually about from when you find out you're pregnant, the earliest chance, it's usually about a week and a half after.

So that gives you like a 9 or 10-day window if you're testing from the minute the test could turn positive.

So if you're actually looking for that.

And so I think a lot of that six-week idea is inaccurate marketing.

- Yeah.

And they're pushing me to a break.

We'll pick this up on the other side.

Back in just a moment on "The Journal" here with Karen Kasler and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

Back in a moment.

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

Our guests are Karen Kasler, host of the "State of Ohio," and from the Bowling Green State University Department of Political Science, Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

In that last segment, which we had to leave kind of abruptly 'cause I was getting some discussion, some direction from people here on the floor, the case and you talked about personhood.

And I know, Karen, you talked about that.

Nicole, you referenced that, too.

The laws that we have in place didn't necessarily see this coming, maybe, where you've got a 10-year-old, ends up in Indiana.

Indiana then reacts by saying, "Well, we've gotta check out the doctor that did this."

So all of these things revolve around what people said.

Oh good, we've settled things.

This is now the law of abortion.

But it has so many more tentacles that come out from that that we don't know how we're gonna address yet.

And that's an issue too, which means the legislature's gonna have more opportunity to do some things, I guess.

- Well, and what the Dobbs decision has created is a patchwork of laws around the country, many of which are not very well written when it comes to specific circumstances.

For instance, the 10-year-old girl story.

And that story was just an avalanche of horrors in so many ways, but one of the things that was brought up in that is the question about whether a 10-year-old girl could access abortion in Ohio based on the medical emergency clause in that six-week abortion ban, and it still is unclear.

I mean, and it's also unclear for people who have ectopic pregnancies, where the pregnancy develops outside the uterus.

This is a life-threatening circumstance for a woman that has this happen.

Whether this will affect IVF treatments for infertility, I mean, birth control.

There are so many things involved in this patchwork of laws that we now have that it makes it very confusing.

And a lot of this stuff's gonna end up in court to try to be resolved, I think.

- Yeah.

And Nicole, from a political science viewpoint of this, is this unprecedented, this sort of thing, this incredible change after 50 years of president?

And as Karen was saying, it raises more questions than it answers, in a way.

- It is.

We've never seen, essentially, rights in this way being revoked after such a long period of time.

It's just not something we've ever seen before affecting such a large part of the population.

One out of every four women, by the time they're 45, has terminated a pregnancy.

And so that's such a large percentage of the population and it doesn't get at the nuance of reasons why.

As Karen mentioned, as we were talking about at the break, the legislation is so poorly written and it's so imprecise because it's written by interest groups and then given to legislators.

It's not written by doctors.

That doctors don't have direction and they're forced to wait with threats of jail time or really expensive lawsuits.

And so when you're looking at something like an ectopic pregnancy, which is life threatening no matter what, there's no positive outcome for an ectopic, if you don't treat that right away, you start bleeding internally.

And if they catch that in time, best case scenario is you survive, but you've lost a fallopian tube or you're infertile.

If you're choosing to grow your family through procedures like IVF, and IVF deals with a lot of embryos, and the states are trying to legislate that, this all becomes really nuanced, really complicated, and really personal.

And it's very difficult to legislate the specifics in an area as complicated as medicine and even for doctors who don't practice that type of medicine.

- [Steve] Sure.

- And you have so many OB-GYNs in Ohio essentially fighting against this because it's limited what they can do for their patients.

And they're put in a position of watching people suffer because the law is so unclear.

- Yeah.

We're hearing all kinds of stories, and some people dismiss them.

Oh, that's not a true story.

As much as the 10-year-old rape story, the Ohio attorney general said, "Oh, I have no knowledge of that.

I don't believe that's actually true."

Et cetera, et cetera.

And you hear anecdotally of doctors saying, "I don't know now how bad off does a woman have to be before they meet the medical emergency clause, so I'm holding off on treatment until I think they're sick enough," which is not usually how medicine works.

Usually, you try to get in and immediately address the issue and not wait and see.

Well, it has to get a little worse before we do anything.

And that's, as you said, it's so imprecise and it's not medical people who have written the laws that we have.

- We don't typically legislate anything with this level of nuance.

And doctors are typically given latitude to treat emergencies when they present themselves or to decide care, and individuals typically get to decide care.

And so having rights that have been the law of the land for 50 years, and even prior to 50 years, states allowed abortions, states allowed abortions in case of emergency, you didn't see this many restrictions on how doctors could provide care, it's really unprecedented and there's gonna be a lot of lawsuits and waiting and seeing.

And unfortunately, in that timeframe, people are going to be in really bad situations.

- Yeah.

Now, and Karen too, one of the questions is this child had to cross state lines.

And I know that it seems that some states are trying to figure out how to restrict or somehow penalize someone who assists someone who goes from one state where they can't get abortion to a state where the laws allow it.

And that raises a whole array of issues too about, 'cause freedom of travel is kind of a basic fundamental right in this country.

And yet you're gonna say, "Oh, you went to Illinois.

When you come back, you're now a criminal.

Or the person who drove you there or provided money for you to travel there could become a criminal, not the person who went to get the abortion."

So is there anything like that floating around down there at this point that you've heard of?

- There is a bill that would allow for civil action against people who help other people get abortions.

So that is under consideration.

That's part of what we saw in Texas, the law that allowed people to sue others in that way.

But a lot of this depends, and we go back to the August 2nd primary, on who becomes a legislator in Ohio or who stays in the state House.

And so not just the primary, but also in November.

If you are concerned about what's happening at the state House and you're concerned about these kinds of pieces of legislation or you support them, then you should figure out who your lawmakers are and support them or not support them because they are the people who are gonna decide whether these things go forward.

And I think that that's really, to go back on the point that we've made before, that what happens at the state House gets, a lot of times, ignored, but really does impact people on a regular basis.

It really affects your life a lot more than what Congress does.

- Okay.

And we're gonna have to leave it there 'cause we're out of time.

And obviously, we'll get back together after the August primary, before the general election in November and pick this up.

- I'd like that.

- Yeah, we'll do that and we'll probably have even more to talk about because the legislature will have gone back into session between now and then.

You can check us out at wbgu.org, and you can watch us every Thursday night, usually at eight o'clock, on WBGU-PBS.

We'll see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

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