- Ohio Republicans turn a super majority in the legislature into a super duper majority, and sweep statewide offices.

Akron voters overwhelmingly approve a civilian police review board, now the work to create it begins.

And Chris Ronayne has appointed a transition team as he prepares to be the next Cuyahoga County executive.

Ideas is next.

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to Ideas, I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

Republicans have built on their super majority, and gained seats in both the Ohio House and Senate.

While nationally the Red Wave Republicans predicted didn't happen, in Ohio it was nearly a clean sweep for the GOP, but Democrats did make headway, claiming five congressional seats.

The clock is ticking for Akron to implement a civilian police review board after voters there approved issue 10 by a big margin.

And Cuyahoga County's new executive, Chris Ronayne moves quickly to form his transition team.

We'll talk about those stories and the rest of the week's news on the reporter's round table.

Joining me this week from Idea Stream Public Media, reporters, Anna Huntsman and Gabriel Kramer, and in Columbus, Ohio Public Radio State House News Bureau News Editor, Andy Chow.

Let's get ready to round table.

The predicted red wave didn't splash across the country Tuesday, in Ohio it did.

There was a clean sweep of statewide offices, the legislature grew more Republican, and JD Vance's victory keeps Rob Portman's Senate seat in Republican hands.

Andy, I wanna start with the State House races with you because Republicans are now in control of a two third super majority even firmer, they were before but this is an exclamation point.

It really brings a whole new level of power for introducing and passing legislation.

- Yeah.

It's a pretty fascinating turn of events, especially given that the whole point of the redistricting process was to bring that super majority number down to below the 60s and closer to maybe 54% Republican, 46% Democratic.

But, like you said, these were maps that were ruled unconstitutional, and now, I liked your phrase, the super duper majority in the House and Senate.

I, when it comes to the things that we may or may not see as far as policy goes, we have been expecting some contr, some controversial bills coming down the pipeline for the end of this year and going into next year with the new session, and that's when the 68 Republican majority will take place.

One thing that we've been following, of course, is the move for a total ban on abortion in the state of Ohio.

And there has been talk among the Republican leaders for a while now that they have wanted to move on that this session, and it remains to be seen.

You do have some Republican insiders who are sort of suggesting that maybe that won't be tackled this year in lame duck session, and maybe just take it on next year.

Why not?

Since they will have, will continue to have a super majority.

The only other thing to keep a lookout here when it comes to policy making is that yes, the Republicans do have a super majority, continue to build on that super majority in the House and in the Senate, but some of these races were a little more competitive.

So even though the Republican incumbents won, some of them, a handful of them did not win by as wide of a margin as they usually do.

Now, some have suggested that because those seats are more competitive, maybe that does drive some Republican members closer to the middle.

Maybe it does make them think twice before voting on a piece of legislation that is further right than maybe they want to plant their flag in a district where it's a little more competitive.

- So the competition was the whole goal of redistricting, the idea that these would be competitive districts.

And if you look at one vote total or one number, which is the total number of Republicans representing districts in Ohio, it's out sized, and it looks like redistricting didn't help.

But on other measures, as you just mentioned, competitiveness in some of those races, and then the congressional side, the fact that Democrats picked up a seat, would that be an argument for the folks who drew those maps to go back at it and say "Look, it worked"?

- Yes, it will be the argument coming from the Republicans who are part of the redistricting commission.

I talked to Republican House Speaker Bob Cup the other day, and that's essentially the argument that they're making, that, hey, look, yes, we have a super majority, but these are several Republicans who had to go into tossup districts, districts where they were not favored to win, and they did end up winning.

Republicans are making the argument that that's because their message is still working, even in districts where it's considered to be a tossup district.

Mike, you mentioned the issue of competitiveness, and there's sort of two schools of thoughts when it comes to redistricting.

There's the competitive aspect of it, and the proportionality aspect of it.

When you look at Ohio over the course of 10 years, it's about 54% Republican, 46% Democratic, and the maps drawn for the state legislature, on one hand they do represent that proportionality because in the Ohio House there were 40, 45 districts that were drawn to be Democratic, and then 54 drawn to be Republican.

But of those Democratic seats, 16 of them were considered tossup districts, and none of the 54 Republican districts are toss up.

So when we're talking about competitiveness, all of the pressure for competition is put on the Democrats to try to make up in these tossup districts, and there's not any pressure among the Republican safe seats to sort of make up in any sort of toss up races.

- How did the Dems do in the toss ups?

- They, the Republicans won 12 of the 16 toss up districts that were considered democratic.

So, again, on paper, if you look at it, the house could split 54 Republican seats, 45 Democratic seats.

But, again, 16 of those seats are tossup districts, and Republicans won 12 of those 16 tossup districts, and that played into that super duper majority that they have.

- And I mentioned that the Supreme Court is more conservative now, the folks who've voted for this being a constitutional map are in, and more in power with the different Supreme Court Chief Justice.

So likely you would think that these maps will pass muster at some point.

Question from Patrick is "What happens when "and if the redistricting issue dies?

"It was voted on, wasn't it?"

That's what Patrick asks.

- Redistricting issue was voted on, it was passed overwhelmingly by the citizens of Ohio and amended into the state constitution.

And that's where we've seen this issue play out, where the Republicans on the redistricting commission have been drawing and approving maps, and the Supreme Court has been rejecting those maps as unconstitutional.

And, Mike, like you said, the court is going to remain four Republican justices, three Democratic justices.

That's under the assumption that DeWine will appoint, Governor Mike DeWine, will appoint a Republican to fill the seat that's going to be vacated by Sharon Kennedy as she moves up to Chief Justice.

So the question is who will that fourth, who will that new Republican justice be?

Would that person be somebody who's more inclined to vote traditionally Republican and join the other Republicans in siding with the maps that have been passed by the redistricting commission?

As was mentioned, the key vote in rejecting these maps is unconstitutional, has been Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, who will not be on the bench next year.

- All right.

Before we leave the legislative, the state legislative issue, we have a, a comment from Susan who says, "We need to have those legislators who are term limited "not be able to run for office for a number of years.

"Some of them in the Senate that have been term limited "have successfully won in the Ohio House."

I've seen that.

I keep referring to Tom Patton as Senator Tom Patton, but I think he's Representative Tom Patton now, but he's been senator, he's been representative, et cetera.

- Yeah, it's called Chamber swinging, where you just go from one office to the other.

You're term limited in the Senate, so then you jump over to the house, and then that just goes on back and forth.

And that has been a criticism of the state legislature when it comes to term limits.

And I do wanna mention one more thing when we're talking about the proportionality and the future of redistricting, we've had this number for a while now.

It's been when the numbers are crunched over the past 10 years, again, 54% of the state tends to vote Republican, 46% tends to vote democratic.

That is including past statewide voter tallies.

If the redistricting commission were to start to consider the most recent election, this Tuesday's election, that would bode well for Republicans because Mike DeWine and John Husted blew out their competition out of the water and won with 62% of the vote.

That could skew the numbers once more to give Republicans even a bigger edge when they're looking at that proportionality.

- Let's talk a little bit about Congress.

The, as we mentioned, Republicans won 10 of 15 races, five races won by Democrats, bigger than expected by the party.

Anna, one of those five Democratic wins was Amelia Sykes in Akron.

She came through over Trump-backed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert.

Grueling campaign, lots of outside money, nasty commercials, et cetera.

What was your take on that?

I listened to the quote that you actually fed through to the newscast where she basically said they messed with a kid from Akron.

- Yep, she referenced LeBron there, but she was talking about how competitive and how grueling the campaign was, as you mentioned.

And she even said it her, in her victory speech, that it was really tough for her to watch, and she had to put a brave face on, because there were a lot of, just like in any race, a lot of smear campaigns and whatnot.

But this was considered one of the most competitive races across the country.

It was considered to determine who controlled Congress, which is obviously still a little bit up in the air.

And this, this was really tight.

I mean, it was, I think 52-47, so it was very, very tight even down to the end.

And it really was, when I was covering this before election day, analysts were saying we don't know, we can't predict because Summit County is a, a big democratic stronghold.

But this district had a little bit of the northern part of Stark County and a little bit of Portage County, which both, I believe went for Gesiotto Gilbert.

- In fact you were out at the polls, Gabe, on election day, and in North Canton, which is sort of the home turf of Madison Gesiotto Gilbert.

What were voters telling you there?

I remember you and I having an exchange in the newsroom that I pondered for a good while after that.

- Right.

So before I went to North Canton I was in Akron, and I went to a polling place in Akron, in downtown Akron, and people were very, we love Amelia.

Name recognition was key.

Everybody knew her name, and everybody wanted to support her at the polling place that I went to.

And then I went to North Canton.

It wasn't about, it wasn't about name recognition, it was about voting party lines.

And in fact several people I talked to either didn't know her name, or didn't know that she was running, didn't know much about the race.

I would say things like do you have any particular candidates you're supporting in the congressional race?

And they would say things like "I don't like that Tim Ryan so much."

And it was not the, it was not the race that I was talking about.

- [Mike] Right.

- And then I would kind of talk about, I would maybe mention the names of people running, and people would often say "I just like the Republican."

And it was clear that while Gesiotto Gilbert maybe didn't have the name recognition, she still had the support from her party supporters.

- When we talk about the statewide executive races, no surprise there, they were swept by Republicans, and have been for a long time, led by Mike DeWine.

In fact, Nan Waley, his opponent, carried just three of Ohio's counties, including Cuyahoga.

That's a, that's a surprising result, I think.

What do you think?

- I think it's absolutely surprising.

Another surprising result is that Nan Waley was not able to carry her home county of Montgomery, where she was the mayor of Dayton for a long time.

And that really, everybody's Monday morning quarterbacking at this point as to why.

I think one of the biggest takeaways, and it's simple, everybody knows who Mike DeWine is, and if they didn't know him before 2020, they did know him after the COVID-19 pandemic for his response, for his wine with DeWine, his daily press conferences.

And when it comes to Ohio politics and name recognition like we just talked about with the Sykes family, it's really hard to overcome that challenge if somebody just has nearly 100% name recognition around the state.

And from there on, on down the ballot, if you've got DeWine really carrying the party, and then that really has long coattails.

And what was really interesting, when you go back to the U.S. Senate race with JD Vance, when he took the stage in Columbus to accept victory in his Senate race, he did not thank or even mention Donald Trump, who has been in Ohio several times to campaign for JD Vance.

But Vance did thank several times, at least three times, Mike DeWine.

And he came really close to saying that if not for Mike DeWine the results might have been a little different, because, again, the coattail effect.

- Well that's interesting 'cause we've been having this discussion nationwide about the Republican party, and is it still Trump's party?

And you see Vance, who is Trump's candidate, not mentioning him in an interview afterward, he said "Oh, it was just a, "there was a bunch of people I didn't thank, "I didn't even thank some of my own staff.

"I mean sometimes you just forget people."

And I heard him say that, and I thought "Well, I don't know, "Trump isn't just people in this case, "he's the one that got him through the primary "and into the general."

- Yeah, especially when you're talking to politicians, and when you're talking to people who've been on the campaign trail for a long time, like JD has, it seems like a clear omission, especially when a huge part of his campaign strategy in the primary was to get the endorsement of Donald Trump.

That was basically the only thing most of the Republican candidates in the primary were going for, and he won that coveted endorsement, and that really helped put him over the edge to get the Republican nomination.

So to not mention Trump during the election night speech, I found pretty interesting.

But it wasn't just JD, as far as I could tell, nobody, none of the Republican candidates who won and who took the stage mentioned Donald Trump.

- [Mike] Interesting.

- Even though he was in Ohio the night before to campaign for everybody.

- I've got one question here from Doug.

He says "I've always thought of Ohio "and Michigan as fairly similar states, "and yet Michigan had a blue wave "and Ohio a red one.

"Why are these states diverging?

"Any thoughts?"

- Yeah, I, I think it really depends on what metrics you're looking at.

Again, when, you can't blame gerrymandering for statewide races, 'cause it's there, there are no districts when it comes to the rest of Ohio.

And I think what we have here is a governor who is extremely popular.

I don't think Democrats wanted to admit that, but there are a lot of moderate voters, moderate Democrats who voted for Mike DeWine, because they know him, they believe that, that he is somebody that they can trust.

I think the other issue is it's just kind of discombobulated.

You had some democratic candidates who were really focusing on abortion, thinking that that was the issue that was gonna drive voters to the polls, then you have somebody like Tim Ryan who took on really a different strategy, sort of an anti-Biden strategy, moving towards the middle, trying to appeal to Trump voters, and he performed much better than the other Democratic candidates.

So, when you're looking at all the different campaign strategies, when you're looking at all the game plans, I think the Democrats are gonna have to take a hard look at what they need to do moving forward to try to win the overall statewide votes.

Now, when we are talking about the congressional races, and the state legislative races, those do come down to the maps, and a case can be made that the maps don't really fairly reflect Ohio as a whole.

- I think part of this is voter turnout.

And I think every election we can talk about turnout being low and getting people the polls.

But more specifically, if you look even deeper in these places where Democrats tend to vote in these metropolitan areas, you can look at Cleveland specifically.

There were precincts in Cleveland where voter turnout was less than 7%.

And I think it's perhaps a strategy where Democrats need to encourage voter turnout in those areas or run campaigns that appeal to those areas.

Tim Ryan specifically ran a campaign where he was really trying to appeal to rural America.

He was trying to steal votes away from Republican voters, and maybe perhaps that campaign neglected people in the metropolitan areas.

So if you want a blue wave you have to get those blue voters to the polls.

And in those larger cities, they're not turning out.

And I think you have to think systemically is the thing.

Disenfranchised populations need a reason to show up and think things can actually change.

I think it's very easy for a lot of people in these, not particularly wealthy areas, particularly black areas, to think that's just another white guy in a suit, what could change for me, right?

And I think we have to think very seriously about those populations being neglected in the election process completely.

- Issue 10 in Akron was approved overwhelmingly by voters.

Now work begins on implementing the civilian police oversight process now enshrined in the city charter.

- What happened is there have been calls for police reform in Akron for a long time, then this past summer, fatal police shooting of 25 year old Jalen Walker.

He was a black man, he was unarmed at the time he was shot, huge protests in the streets, lots of calls for police reform.

And one of those demands was a civilian oversight board.

And so people actually got this together, they put an effort together and went out, collected thousands of signatures to get a review board on the ballot, that was issue 10.

They got enough signatures, overwhelmingly goes on the ballot, and passes by like 62% to 38%.

- And nobody stands down because the city already passed the civilian review board, one that wasn't gonna be in the charter, at least now.

- [Anna] Correct.

- That didn't, that didn't dissuade anyone from voting for this.

- I think the message around issue 10 was this is a permanent solution because it amends the charter.

So this is gonna outlast any changes in the mayor's office.

You know, if city council, completely new people are next year and they say "We don't want a review board," that can't happen now because this is in the charter.

And the previous one that had been passed by city council was just legislation.

So it could be tweaked by future legislation, it wasn't permanent.

And I think that message probably resonated with voters.

But, yeah, this, it passed and this is, again, a citizen-led initiative.

So citizens got the signature, and now went out and vote, voted.

And now the next step is city council does have to pass what's called implementing legislation.

So they're gonna, anything that's not already prescribed in Issue 10, they have to figure out certain logistics.

And so the thought here is that maybe this can marry up with what was already passed, and kind of figure out some ways they can make it similar, because they already were taking applications for the previous ones.

So the mayor's office has said those 60 applicants are still on file, so perhaps they'll be considered for this one.

(dramatic music) - Cuyahoga County executive elect, Chris Ronayne has named a transition team, and a chief of staff, Sandusky City manager Eric Wobser, Gabriel, Wobser is seen as a doer.

- We had a good opportunity to actually meet him a few years ago, and meet, he gave us a tour of Sandusky, and this was shortly after he had left Cleveland.

I say a few years ago, it was more than a few years ago.

But, yeah, he's, he's a guy who, when you think about the, the making Ohio City cool again concept, and making it a happening place once again, he's credited with a lot of that.

We spent some time in Sandusky together, downtown Sandusky is pretty neat and a cool place to go.

He's credited with a lot of that.

So, for him to be a guy who was a big reason for changing Cleveland of years past, to bring him onto this is not a surprising move, but it's a move that I think a lot of people might get excited about because it'll remind them of how, of the good things he had done in two different locations.

- I was looking at the information about the transition team, there were five of them that are actually gonna collect a salary.

And I, I saw that, and I said "Where is this money coming from?"

That's part of the charter, that money is put aside so that transition goes smoothly, and when day one happens it's not like they're walking in and get the keys, and don't know where anything is.

- Right.

And this is, these aren't small paychecks they're getting either, and Wobser's paycheck is gonna be something like $90 per hour, that's according to what cleveland.com reported.

And it's a paycheck that makes you really like "Okay, I guess this was worth leaving Sandusky "to come back to Cleveland for."

- Charter allows $200,000 in pay for that transition team.

The team itself is pretty diverse, and, as I mentioned, a lot of names we've, we know here on The Sound of Ideas, folks that have been on the show.

- Yeah, it was funny, we were talking with Lee, the producer, early this morning, and I'm looking at this list, and it's like "Wow, a lot of these people have been on this show."

But I think that's a testament to the fact that, on our show, not to pat ourselves on the back, but we bring people from different trains of thought, and we bring people from different areas of the county to talk about different wide variety of topics.

So this is, these are people who represent a lot of different ways.

Not only is it a diverse group ethnically and age wise, but these are people who come from law enforcement organizations, housing organizations, labor unions, religious organizations.

So when, in terms of getting insight from all over the county and different realms of the county, it's a good group of people that people can look to and say "Hmm, if feel represented, "because what I care about is part of this transition team."

- And when we talk about transition, change in leadership, so there's a new mayor of Cleveland, new in the last year, now a new county executive, there soon will be a new mayor in Akron, Anna, we're talking, and then when you look at all of the organizations, the United Way and a bunch of the other organizations, the gun foundation- - [Gabriel] The hospital systems.

- The hospital systems all having a change in leadership, to me it sounds like a real inflection point for northeast Ohio.

- Well, I think if you look at the 2021 election, particularly mayoral race, part of the reason that Justin Bibb did well is there was a strong showing from people who are kind of newish residents, your (indistinct) residents of Cleveland that are yearning for change and yearning for something different.

And I think for, for those people this looks good to you, this looks good, you're gonna have new leadership in all these places.

New, fresh ideas, fresh thoughts, all these things.

There's gonna be a new CEO of the school district.

- [Mike] That's right.

- So I definitely think things could look very different in northeast Ohio, not just the faces, but the way we do things in 10, 15 years.

- Let me say this before we leave today, I wanna take a few moments to acknowledge those who served our country in the military as we mark Veterans Day.

And, by the way, some breaking news, the Cleveland Veterans Day parade, sadly is canceled due to weather.

It does not, though, change the observance.

It began as Armistice Day, marking the first anniversary of the end of World War I in 1919.

According to the census, there were 16.5 million veterans in the U.S. in 2021, women veterans numbered 1.7 million in 2021.

Roughly a quarter of our veterans are 75 years or older, while 8% are younger than 35.

On a personal note, a shout out to my brother John, who served in both the Army and the Air Force, to my uncles, Dan, Jack and Bill, all of whom enlisted before the draft to serve in the Marines of Vietnam.

There are so many more in my family, and so many of our families who have served.

And so I just want to ask you guys about that, and give you a moment to think about those who you're connected to who have served in the military.

Anna.

- I come from a very big military family, so I wanna shout out, unfortunately many of my family members have since passed, but my grandpa Ed, my uncle Nells, my uncle John, and then I also wanted to shout out one of my best friends, Jackie, her husband is currently in the Air Force.

And my partner's brother, Zach, served in Iraq, so thanks to all, to all for your service.

- [Mike] Yeah.

Gabe.

- When I think of veterans, I think of my Uncle Dale, I think of my cousin Michael in Akron.

I love you guys death, and today we want to think about not just you two, but all veterans who have served, so thank you all.

- And Andy Chow.

- Yeah, my grandpa served in World War II, and he has since passed away.

And I have several family members on my wife's side who have served and continue to serve, Abby, Sidney, Walt, Will.

Abby and Sidney, they were actually really busy during the COVID-19 pandemic, helping with the response of, of the food banks and all, doing all sorts of things, even here in Ohio helping.

And one of my favorite things during election day is to talk to veterans who talk about how they served overseas and how important democracy is to them, and how just even casting a vote is, is part of serving.

- I'm so glad we had this time to call those folks out.

And if you have someone in your life that's served in the military or is serving, take a few moments today to say thanks.

(dramatic music) Monday on the Sound of Ideas on WKSU, The Sound of Ideas Community Tour return.

We headed to the Happy Dog in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood, where Justin Glanville led a discussion on the themes emerging from his podcast, Inside The Bricks, My Changing Neighborhood.

It's about the rapid development of that part of Cleveland.

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

(gentle music)