(intense music) - Ohioans decisively rejected State Issue One , and now attention and surely big money is focused on November and the abortion rights amendment.

Republic Steel indefinitely idols operations at its steel plant in Canton, shifting production to Mexico.

And should Ohio take redistricting away from lawmakers?

"Now is the time," says Former Attorney General Betty Montgomery.

Ideas is next.

(dramatic music) Hello and welcome to Ideas, I'm Mike McIntyre, thanks for joining us.

The push to make it harder to amend the state constitution came to a quick and decisive end Tuesday.

Voters rejected Issue One, now attention turns to Ohio's November vote on a proposed amendment to protect abortion rights in the state constitution.

The battle over abortion is far from over.

Betty Montgomery, a prominent Republican who served as the state's attorney general says voters should take the momentum of the Issue One vote, to remove legislative mapmaking from lawmakers hands.

Republic Steel in Canton will idle operations indefinitely.

And the US Marshals service is teaming up with Cleveland Police to help tamp down violent crime in the city.

We'll discuss those stories this week on the round table.

Joining me from Idea Stream Public Media, Reporter Abbey Marshall, from Axios Cleveland reporter Sam Allard, in Columbus State House News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler, let's get ready to round table.

Ohio voters rejected Issue One Tuesday, the constitutional amendment that would've made it harder for citizens to propose and approve amendments to the state's constitution.

It wasn't close, 57% no, 43% yes.

Concerns about extremely low voter turnout for an August election were unfounded, turnout approached 40%.

It's not an incredible number, Karen, but for an August special election?

- Yeah, I mean, 38.5% approximately, that's a pretty big number for an election that happened in the middle of summer, wasn't even scheduled until May.

And in fact, there was a law last year that outlawed almost all special elections in August.

So this was kind of a surprise, but it certainly wasn't a surprise when you started to look at the ads and the fervor that was surrounding Issue One from both people who were opposed to it and people who supported it.

So the turnout, though, in local counties was really kind of amazing.

- We'll talk about that turnout in a second too.

But I was interested to hear the Senate President Matt Huffman, explain that there just wasn't enough time to get our message out, and yet, aren't those the folks that set the timetable?

- That was a really, really interesting comment that he made, that he didn't feel that there was enough time to build a victory when actually it was him and other Republican state lawmakers who put this thing on the August special election ballot.

He also said in that press conference that usually there's a year, maybe more to build a campaign to win an election like this.

And that's actually not the case either.

I mean, last year you might recall, there were two constitutional amendments before voters, one on bail reform, one on non-citizens voting.

The legislature voted to put those on the ballot in June.

They both were on the ballot in November, and they won.

In fact, in 2018, going back to the Congressional Redistricting Amendment, lawmakers put that on the ballot in February, it won in May.

So this is kind of an interesting thing for him, Matt Huffman, to say.

- We're seeing a lot of analysis coming out, and it obviously comes from wherever your point of view is, but there are some that are looking at this and saying, this is a rebuke of Frank LaRose who pushed for this so hard, as well as Republicans in general.

There are others that are saying, no, it's this particular issue.

And in fact, a lot of people who looked at this who might also want to be against the abortion amendment would be against this because it was putting too much power in the hands of a legislature.

So where does it, do you think, come down in terms of a message sent to anyone?

- Well, I put a piece on that exact idea on our website, statenews.org, and also discuss that on our TV show, the State of Ohio this weekend.

The idea you hear from Republicans is that, hey, voters were confused.

This was not the right time for some people.

There was real question about that, and that this does not change the political landscape at all, this is an outlier.

This is something that happened and it's over and we're moving on.

But then Democrats are looking at this as potentially a sign that people are getting to their limit in terms of policies that they want to see Republicans enact and that they felt like this was a real power grab and attack on democracy.

And so the question of course becomes, what's gonna happen in November when you've got the abortion Rights Amendment, as well as potentially and marijuana legalization law and then of course, next year in 2024, you've got the presidential race, you've got US Senator Sherrod Brown, the State's best known Democrat running for reelection.

So I think it remains to be seen what the long-term effect of this is.

- Let's talk about the money it cost, I think 18 million.

They were saying an estimate was up to 20 million for this election.

And Matt Huffman, the Senate Senate president now says, this'll come back someday.

What about that?

The expense of almost $20 million, essentially, to keep the law as it was.

- Well, you know, I thought about that and I thought that was really interesting because he's talking about that particular idea, the 60% threshold idea coming back again and, and you know, Republicans have said several times that this is not a new idea that other times it had been proposed, even with the Constitutional Modernization Commission 10 years ago, that there is some support for the idea of raising that threshold among voters.

But yeah, trying to find a place to put it.

And you don't want to, if you're Matt Huffman or people who are opposed to abortion, put that 60% into place if indeed the Abortion Rights Amendment passes with a simple majority in the fall.

So the timing of that could be potentially difficult.

- Sam, let's talk about turnout.

We mentioned it a little bit earlier as expected, Ohio's urban counties went strongly against Issue One.

Let's talk about Cuyahoga County.

It was the biggest no turnout.

- Oh, by far, yeah, I mean, well, I shouldn't say by far, but it's both in total votes and in margin of victory for the no side.

Cuyahoga County came out 76.1% for no 253,000 total votes, but the story was the same across all of Ohio's urban counties.

Franklin County, where Columbus is, that was over three quarters, 75% in change in Summit, in Lucas and in Hamilton County, Akron, Toledo, and Cincinnati, about two thirds, 66%.

But what's really interesting to me is that you're seeing the same story that shift leftward, I guess you could say in in rural counties and in exurban counties.

So even in like the most hardcore red counties in the state, like the ones bordering Indiana on the far western part of the state, these are counties that voted for JD Vance and Donald Trump, 80% or better, 81%, 82, 83%.

And if you look at the vote totals from Tuesday, overwhelmingly they voted yes, but a little bit, just a little bit less, so like 75, 76, 77%.

And if you extrapolate across the entire state, that shift, that five to 10 point swing in every county, I mean, that tipped the scales.

- What does that tell us?

Does it tell us this issue was bad or that, as you mentioned, it might, they might be moving somewhat more to the left, which doesn't seem likely?

- I think it tells us a number of things.

We can interpret it in any way we want, for sure Abortion is just a huge hot button issue and, you know, republican's efforts to portray this as about the sanctity of the constitution, not withstanding, people recognize that this was about abortion and they wanted to be able to vote on it in November.

And I think the, actually the vote totals for Tuesday kind of bear out the abortion numbers nationwide.

What we've seen in Kentucky, Michigan, Kansas, it's about that 57 to 59% that tends to, the abortion tends to pass.

In fact, the Ohio, the Suffolk University poll that came out a couple weeks ago.

- [Mike] Right.

I think that had support for abortion statewide at 58%.

So right about the, the vote totals for Tuesday.

It also says, I think that so in the parts of the state that wouldn't necessarily support abortion, those more conservative corners of the state, they recognize that the constitution-- What's sacred about the Ohio Constitution is not that it's unchangeable, but that it's responsive to the public.

I don't think people like the idea that the State House was betraying us.

You know, that they said they established law outlawing August elections, and they went ahead and did it.

I think people that didn't sit well with a lot of voters.

- Yeah, when you hear Benny Montgomery talk and she was in a debate at the city club, that was exactly the point.

It was the timing of it was one of the things, the fact that this was not just a 60% threshold, which some people might have gone for, but it was 88 counties.

It was a much higher version.

- My God, yeah, that burden is outta control.

I mean, the 88 county is, is one thing.

It's an enormous, I mean, if you talk to people gathering signatures for marijuana or abortion, it's an enormous expenditure of time and resources.

88 counties is absurd.

The other one that's less talked about is the idea that you're doing away with that 10 day cure period, a grace period to get more signatures.

Under the proposed amendment, you wouldn't have that.

You have to start over from scratch.

So if you got all say like you're the marijuana folks, well, actually, I don't think that'd be a constitutional amendment.

- [Mike] Yeah, if it was a constitutional amendment or not.

- But if it was a constitutional amendment and six your 600 signature short, you'd have to start over, start over again gathering signatures, it's crazy.

- [Mike] Right, so-- - So that's why people were saying it's virtually impossible.

- Abbey, let's talk about election night.

You were at the helm on election night, making sure that things were going smoothly as well as getting reaction from folks to the result of the vote.

How did the defeat of Issue One play in northeast Ohio?

- Yeah, like Sam said, it's no surprise that Cuyahoga County pretty overwhelmingly voted no.

When you look at the whole region as a whole, though, it also voted no, there were several surprises.

You look at Ashtabula County elected JD Vance with 59%, but they voted no at 52%.

Again, we can't speak to if there's a tide change or if this is just kind of, we didn't like this specific issue.

I spoke with many, many happy organizers here in northeast Ohio, from union leaders to obviously reproductive rights leaders.

Kayla Griffin, the Cleveland's NAACP president, she's also the statewide coordinator for all voting is local, has been basically telling me for months, this is not a Republican/Democrat issue.

It's a freedom issue and people on both sides are pretty upset by what they view as being a pretty obvious power grab and I think that we saw that misselection.

And of course I did speak with some other folks who were on the Republican side here in northeast Ohio, even though that is less represented in the city itself.

And I was hearing the same thing that Karen has mentioned, which was, you know, people were erroneously conflating this with the abortion amendment, and they say that's a totally separate issue.

This is about the constitution.

But when you look at the timing and you look at comments that people like Secretary of State Frank LaRose has made that said it was a hundred percent an attempt to block abortion.

I think that it was pretty clear to voters what this was.

- I'm just so curious to find out in November how this shades that vote.

- [Abbey] Right.

- Whether we're going to see this be simply the split along lines abortion's right, or abortion's wrong, or whether we'll see something more akin to these kinds of numbers in November.

Do they talk about both sides about what this might mean for the November vote?

- Yeah, I think that it's interesting because I think that we often think of abortion as being a pretty partisan issue, split along party lines.

But like Sam said, actually a majority of Ohioans do tend to support reproductive rights in a woman's right to choose.

And I actually have done a lot of reporting inside abortion clinics and have spoken to many women before and after their abortion.

And a lot of them did tell me that they were actually against abortion until it happened to them.

So I think that it is a deeply personal issue for many people.

And it's also something that might be more taboo for people that they don't wanna come out and say, you know, I do support this, or I would get an abortion, or that sort of thing.

- Karen, it feels like we're already into the campaign for the Abortion Rights Amendment in November.

- Right, and I was saying before, I think I disappeared there, that I had spoken to Ohio Democratic party chair Liz Walters, about Democrats being overconfident.

And she says, no, Democrats are not overconfident And I think that's the case potentially or the group, all the groups that are working on the abortion rights amendment, that they're not overconfident, they're already working toward that.

And, of course, the people who are opposed to that are also working.

We saw some of a preview, I think, during this campaign that, you know, this is gonna-- There's gonna be some things that are brought up that are gonna be misinformation and disinformation, things about gender transition surgery from minors and lots of discussions about parental rights and things like that.

And so it's gonna be pretty brutal, I think.

- Governor DeWine has forever been staunchly against abortion, still is.

He made some news this week, though.

He had one point suggested lawmakers clarify the existing six week ban, which is suspended at the moment on abortion that the heartbeat bill, but now he's saying not enough time for that.

- Right, and he's saying he supports the efforts to try to stop this abortion rights amendment and that lawmakers and everybody need to just go ahead and vote on that.

What I think is interesting is that we're gonna hear a lot about that six week ban, because the Ohio Supreme Court has scheduled arguments on it for September 27th.

They've had the case for several months, and yet, two weeks before early voting starts, they're gonna schedule-- They're gonna hear those arguments.

And so we're gonna hear a lot of details about that law, people who support it are gonna be talking about it.

People who are opposed to it are gonna be exposing the things that they think are problematic in it.

So right, as early voting getting ready to start, we're gonna have that court case and we'll learn probably more than many of us ever thought we knew about that six week ban.

- The court's also going to rule at some point, or it's been asked to hear a challenge to the November amendment proposal itself.

Opponents are trying to prevent a vote on it.

- Right, and we're still waiting to hear on that.

That was about the petitions that were circulated to get signatures to put this on the ballot and we haven't heard anything on whether they're planning on ruling on that anytime soon.

And I would not expect, by the way, there would be any sort of a ruling on the six week ban before the November 7th election.

- Let's talk about Frank LaRose.

It's interesting because this is something that he really carried the torch on and it got defeated, you know, very soundly.

And he's saying, you know what the fight continues, this is an important issue, the abortion issue, but he's also running for US Senate, and this is not a win.

What does this do to his campaign?

- He hasn't lost a step, I mean, just yesterday he was putting out tweets about the qualified immunity proposal that has been put forward for another constitutional amendment, saying this is part of the problem.

This is the leftist, I can't remember the language that he used, he has not let this in any way derail his campaign.

And the question, of course, and I think we'll get some sort of an answer of it when we see the fundraising filings, did he actually benefit in some way from this in terms of getting money from the base, from the voters that he's seeking to ask for their votes so that he can go ahead and run against Senator Sherrod Brown?

I don't know that it's necessarily cost him that much, but will it cost him next fall?

People have short memories sometimes.

- That's the key, Sam, is politics is all about money, and this is a fundraising opportunity at every turn.

It sure is, it sure is, although we'll see, you know, his, maybe his chief competitor in the race, Bernie Moreno, Northeast Ohio businessman, former car dealer he, I think throughout the race, he was trying to portray this as about the sanctity of the constitution.

And I think he jabbed at LaRose a number of times for making it for his abortion comments.

I'm sure they'll be, you know, going back and forth for the next couple of months.

Yeah, LaRose jabbed back and said, "Hey, you're rich.

Why don't you give a million dollars to this campaign?"

- [Sam] Did the same thing to Dolan.

You guys both give a million bucks and didn't Bernie say, "Well, you haven't given a million dollars, so when you do it, I will."

And he said, "Yeah, but you're rich and I'm not."

It's politics, it's the silly season, we're already in it.

I mentioned Betty Montgomery earlier, Karen, and I want to talk a little bit about her.

She was one of the most vocal opponents of Issue One, and I mentioned she said it was designed to thwart any attempt for citizens to amend the Constitution, was timed in August, specifically to get ahead of the November abortion rights vote, she told the plain dealer that state Issue One awakened a quote, sleeping giant, and she meant Ohio voters there.

She told cleveland.com that to her, the vote on Issue One, reengaged voters who she says are not on board with what lawmakers are doing in Columbus, and she's saying, maybe now is the time to seize control of redistricting.

- Yeah, and I think we've heard that from other people as well.

Certainly Democrats are saying, this is a great opportunity for us to engage with voters who were frustrated.

And, you know, I've asked this question a couple of times, did the results map give, especially Democrats, a roadmap to voters that they can reach voters that have gone toward Republicans in the last several cycles?

I mean, in the Youngstown area, near the Toledo area, these are areas that went for the no side, but the Democrats have had trouble really dominating like they used to.

And so I think, you know, certainly redistricting, we heard former Chief Justice Moreen O'Connor, who joined the Democrats in ruling that all of those maps last year were unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

She had said that she would work on a redistricting proposal that would put map drawing in the hands of an independent commission.

So I think this is the kind of thing that certainly those who want to see a change on gerrymandering might be looking forward to.

- Got a thought from Chris in Mentor sends an email.

She says Abortion played a huge role in the defeat of Issue One, but gerrymandering played a huge role too.

First, people didn't wanna lose their last check on a legislature that is out of touch with the majority of Ohioans.

Secondly, many of us want an amendment to set up an independent commission for redistricting.

- And, and I think, you know, the same group of people who were really pushing forward against Issue One are the group of people who have been pushing against the gerrymandering that we've seen in the maps that have come outta the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

So it's an overlap of a group, what they do with this momentum now after November, I guess, because that's obviously the next hurdle for a lot of folks that remains to be seen.

(dramatic instrumental music) - US Marshals will join Ohio State Highway Patrol Troopers and Cuyahoga County Sheriff's deputies to help Cleveland Police deal with the spike in violent crime in the city this summer.

Abbey, the city and the marshals are calling it Operation 216.

What is it?

- Is part of this Greater Rise initiative that Bibb has really been touting, which he says is a comprehensive technology and staffing approach to deal with increases in gun violence.

Basically, it's going to focus on areas and neighborhoods where shootings have been most prevalent.

And there will also be a task force that will work with Cleveland Police to get some of the outstanding warrants into custody.

So you're talking about people wanted for murder and other violent crimes.

- Sam, I was just talking with Dr. Edward Barksdale, the head of pediatric surgery at UH Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital, as well as the police chief Wayne Drummond.

And both of them talked about the way to stop this gun violence really has to go down to the roots.

You hear this all the time.

We've gotta get to the point why is the gun violence happening?

What's happening in these neighborhoods?

And studies will show where people are hungry, then there's a higher incidence of these kinds of crimes.

And all of that is true in the meanwhile, bullets are flying now.

So what about the-- The problem is multi-layered, what can the city do?

And we've talked about carjackings and those types of things as well.

What can the city do now with a depleted police force to try to make people feel safer and then also dig into the roots of these problems?

Well, I think what you're seeing is that the answers aren't clear.

That's why the city council is throwing up its hands.

And that's why I think, I think, you know, mayor Bibb, for example, is really leaning into technological solutions.

A lot of this rise initiative is the expansion of shot spotter to all five police districts, that's, for those who don't know, that's the technology that, you know, triangulates sounds of gunshot fire to alert police responders to come, and the police say it's saved like six lives at this point.

There's also the expanded camera registry for convenience stores and small businesses so that police have more feeds available.

If you talk to city council, they're all about, you know, they wanna increase the number of police cadets in the academy and partnerships with regional and state law enforcement agencies to get more boots on the ground, patrolling city streets, they say traffic and you know, safety starts with traffic enforcement.

So if we get, you know, if we get more highway patrol cars on the streets, that could reduce the number of crimes.

- So this all out effort, Abbey, you've been doing some reporting on that as well.

- Yeah, as I mentioned last week, we've been going out to some of these areas where shootings and violence is more condensed and people have very complex feelings about the roots, but what we are hearing is they're asking for this immediate relief, but what that immediate relief looks like, I don't know.

A lot of it does have to do with law enforcement, but there are complicated feelings about law enforcement, understandably so, since many of these are communities of color.

A lot of people said that they did want more patrolling happen as opposed to a more reactive response to policing.

But in the same vein, they also have mentioned that many of the officers in their communities are not from their communities and kind of look at violence in Cleveland as a monolith.

So it'll be interesting to see how people feel about more outsiders coming in to patrol and respond to their neighborhoods.

(methodical dermatic music) - Republic Steel will indefinitely idle operations at its plant in Canton and western New York, near Buffalo.

The decision impacts about 500 workers.

Republic Steel is owned by the Mexican company Grupo Simec, the company blamed challenging conditions in the steel market, including decreased demand and rising prices for raw materials.

And it says that it will use its plant in Mexico, which is more state-of-the-art to fulfill steel-making demand.

But there's kind of a combination here, Abbey, the bad news about people losing jobs, but this plant in Canton makes leaded steel it's the last in Ohio that does that.

And there have been all kinds of issues with neighbors and with compliance officers, et cetera, about lead being released into the air.

- Yeah, since July, 2021, they have operated under a court order because of that re lead released into the air and they've been in settlements over this for a while.

They put about $10 million into that Canton facility that you're talking about to comply with those regulations.

But they say that ensuring any future environmental compliance with those while producing in these facilities, that some of them are 125 years old, just isn't possible.

- So I wonder if we'll hear the argument that, you know, regulation killed these jobs or if the idea is, you know, the lead would've killed the people.

So we have a sort of these competing thoughts at the same time.

- Right, I think that you see that a lot, this balance between economic versus environmental.

They don't always go hand-in-hand and unfortunately that's just the way it crumbled in this situation.

- And the union folks say that they aren't fond of this company since it took over and they say that this wasn't done appropriately.

Essentially, they should get some financial benefit from a shutdown.

But what's being, this is being called is a temporary shutdown so that those financial benefits don't flow.

- Right, so the 500 workers that you mentioned are furloughed indefinitely.

The union says that they should have gotten at least a 90 day notice, but they say they got no notice, also, the city said that they didn't get any notice either.

They say that they were never approached by the company for any type of business assistance.

So you're losing a major employer and economic driver for that city, at least temporarily as they're saying.

But yeah, some of these facilities are just so old and this region is called the Rust Belt for a reason, and they've held on longer than many other production companies.

(dramatic music) - If you're in the market for a fixer upper, there's a four story property available in Cleveland with Great Lake views and no need for a lawnmower.

The historic Cleveland Harbor West Pierhead Lighthouse is up for auction.

The bidding currently sits at $162,000.

You'll need a boat.

The bidding, the last time I saw was $161,000.

I think it went up from there even a little bit.

- [Sam] 162, I think.

- The lighthouse is listed on the National-- Has Register of Historic Places, does not come with its without its challenges.

For one, you'll need a boat.

Sam, you also talked about how it's theoretically livable.

- [Sam] Yes, I'd be worried less about the asbestos and more about the ghosts.

I mean, that place looks haunted as heck.

Have you seen those photos?

I mean, I don't even know how many hundreds of thousands of dollars to take to make that livable.

But it's not-- I mean, you wouldn't be buying it to, it's not what they call move in ready.

- [Mike] Right, exactly, well-- - [Sam] Is there even a bathroom today, anybody check.

- I didn't see, there's a kitchen, which I suppose could be used and there's also, by the way, there's a lake right there, so.

- Right, right, although no utility line, so it's not like you've got a gas stove or anything.

- Why is it up for sale?

Does anybody know?

What's the story?

- I actually do.

I mean the USGSA, General Services Administration.

- [Mike] Thank you.

- They put a number of these lighthouses on the public market every year.

I think the theory is, it's twofold, one, you make these properties available to waterfront enthusiasts and you remove the burden of maintenance on the American taxpayer.

- So I am dying to know who buys this, more than I want to know who wins the lottery.

I want to know who's the person that bought a lighthouse and what they're gonna do with it.

(dramatic instrumental music) Monday on the Sound of Ideas, on WKSU, talking Foreign policy produced by the Sound of Ideas and Case Western Reserve University.

It's all about the age of the strong man, how authoritarian leaders come to power and how the international community should respond.

I'm Mike McIntyre, thank you so much for watching and stay safe.

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