Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

Moore and Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OAG Dawg.

Big things are set to happen with maps and chips this weekend.

It's the weekend.

Every day for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans have joined the great resignation.

We explore some reasons why those workers walked away and the chairs of Ohio's major political parties preview this election year.

All this weekend, the state of Ohio.

Welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Counselor.

two big things are happening as we record the show this weekend.

New maps for Ohio House and Senate districts are set to be approved by the Ohio Redistricting Commission.

The previous maps had more than 64% of state legislative seats favoring Republicans, which the Ohio Supreme Court ruled violated the constitutional amendment that voters approved in 2015 to take partizanship out of redistricting.

The panel met on Tuesday for an organizing meeting and its only new member.

Minority Leader Alice Russo was sworn in.

Russo told the panel she thinks the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling spells out a 54%, 46% split between Republicans and Democrats, and that the commission must do that unless they can't do it.

And Russo says it has already been done in the six weeks before the previous maps were approved.

We know from the prior work of this commission that there are many maps that have been proposed that meet all of those requirements.

And so let's not move forward assuming that attempt is unachievable because it has been proven in prior attempts to actually do this.

Republicans dispute that there are any maps that were previously submitted that meet all constitutional requirements, and Republican Secretary of State Frank Rose, who voted yes on the previous maps while calling the rationale for them asinine and saying you should vote no, told the commission he's very concerned about coming up with maps in time for the primary on May third.

And I am committed to making sure that that happens, but without finality on maps that starts to become mechanically impossible very soon.

And so we need to reach that finality as quickly as possible.

On Thursday, the commission met to see Republicans and Democrat maps of districts in Franklin and Union counties and in Hamilton and Warren counties.

Democrats say their proposed statewide maps reach the 54% Republican, 46% Democratic split mentioned in the Ohio Supreme Court's ruling.

Republicans haven't released their statewide breakdown, and the commission still has to redo the congressional map as well.

The Ohio Supreme Court tossed out that map last Friday, ruling by the same 423 vote that it was also unconstitution That map would have had twelve of 15 congressional districts likely going to Republicans.

And on Friday afternoon, Ohioans may learn the details of what could be the largest economic development in state history, even bigger than Honda's transformative investment in Ohio in the early 1980s.

An announcement is planned at the Midland Theater in Newark, about a multibillion dollar computer chip manufacturing facility by Intel on 3600 acres of land annexed to New Albany from Licking County.

That's 5.6 square miles.

We'll have more details on that coming up on next week's show.

COVID hospitalizations are falling, but deaths are still high.

More than 8500 people have died in Ohio just this month, and COVID has claimed more than 31,000 people in Ohio so far.

The pandemic is just one reason why more than 20 million Americans left their jobs in the last six months.

Over 150,000 Ohioans quit work just in October, but that same month, 227,000 Ohioans were hired, and there are signs that the number of people finding jobs is growing.

Yet employers say they can't find available workers despite raising pay and offering signing bonuses.

State House correspondent Joe Ingles takes a look at why some Ohioans have quit their jobs and reports some aren't sure if and how they'll work again after what's been called the great resignation.

Andrew and Lindsay Godchild both worked as engineers and had good paying jobs during the first part of the pandemic.

But last year they quit love.

And with that happening and all the stress and just the tension in the world, it felt like it was vast.

I think in the end to just kind of.

I want to take a break.

And for me, it was it was scary.

You know, I moved up very quickly.

I had some good things going for me.

And it just kind of got to a point where, you know, we're mid upper twenties and we're just kind of like, is this what life is going to be as an adult, you know, pandemic or not.

But the pandemic would allowed us to kind of stop for a second and kind of look what vices.

And we started just, you know, we had to take a gamble on ourselves.

Yeah.

So they took some money they'd saved, bought a van and started traveling to places they want to discover.

So we started Dutton got in the van, but in walls, insulating it do the whole nine yards.

And then for the holidays, you drove back to be with my family for Christmas here in Dayton.

And so now we're finishing it up, putting the furniture and getting things tidied up, and we're about to head south and head up a bunch of national parks in the south.

Melissa Hoffman of Delaware says she was working two jobs trying to make enough to survive and pay off her outstanding student loans.

Her aha moment came as she was picking up more and more work while others in her former company left.

And I think for for me, the big shift happened and there's been a big shift during the pandemic with a lot of people, you know, that were let go.

Reassessing.

But you see them reassessing and you're hearing this and you're going the same.

But I'm still stuck in this.

I'm still stuck in this hustle culture.

This grind where it's almost a boast.

It's a good thing to brag about how much stuff you can hold, just exactly how much you're doing.

You know, I work 70 hours.

I only get four hours of sleep last night.

It's a boast and something clicks in your head when you start to realize that you're not seeing people during the pandemic, but even beforehand, you weren't.

Because you were working too much, but now it's just delaying the last time that you have spent with family and friends.

And as people are dying, you start to evaluate the regret of that and assess like work can replace me.

If I die tomorrow, they will have to replace me.

But it can't be replaced as a wife, as a daughter.

You know, I can't be replaced in those situations.

Hoffman now has one job that pays well and has benefits, including a retirement plan and health care.

Health care, or lack thereof, is the main reason Patty Wiggins of Delaware left her previous job.

She quit last year after becoming too ill to work and not having enough paid time off to recover.

So when I got sick, it started out as a sinus infection, and because I didn't have the opportunity to just rest and recover, I ended up with walking pneumonia.

I was six months and.

It's really hard to do your job when you're the only thing that stops your cost is.

Cough sirup with codeine and it.

Or Vicodin and that.

And so naturally, I'm not doing the best work that I can possibly do, but I'm also not being given the time to get healthy, which everybody clearly knew how sick I was these days.

Wiggins home schools her kids and lives on her husband's income and her disability check.

She says she'll probably try to find another job at some point, but they're making ends meet right now, and she's focusing on her family's health and well-being.

For Caleb Merchant of Columbus, the key issue for making a job change comes down to one thing the need for a change at the top.

People are looking for solid leadership, I think, especially because our political and national climate has been so tumultuous and pretty toxic for the last several years.

And I think it's kind of that moment of everyone's looking for an adult in the room and kind of forgetting, right, we are the adults.

We're the ones in charge here at the ballot box anyway.

But leadership is huge and making sure that leadership is developing a healthy, inclusive, positive, open door type culture, whether that be virtual or in-person, making sure that that is priority is absolutely critical.

People will no longer work for toxic leadership.

It's not going to happen.

Merchant is now working in a public sector job where she feels valued and has benefits for Columbus attorney Joe Moss and his wife, Linda Mirka Dante.

The pandemic meant early retirement.

Now I had always planned and had always thought that when I was around 7273, that I would just cut back.

Maybe even thinking of closing the office downtown and see how I could make a go at it actually was even more well developed like that because I had talked to friends who had office space and they said , Oh, why don't you come in and you can handle a case or two for me every now and then that kind of thing to to just cut down on the overhead.

But what COVID actually did is that it operated as an accelerant in those decisions.

And so anything that I had planned to do two or three years down the road, I faced doing it immediately.

And if you didn't do it, you know, people that didn't.

They ended up taking a hit as a consequence.

Linda, an ordained minister and author, was teaching at a seminary while also speaking to groups when COVID hit well.

The plan didn't work out because as well as the teaching part, not not working the way I had hoped.

Then COVID hit right away and I was not planning on being retired.

I was planning on transitioning and so I've never really seen myself as completely retired.

Except in effect, I am because COVID forced it because my speaking engagements got canceled.

Nobody else wanted to book.

And even now, when I'm starting to rev it up just a little bit, it's online and people don't want to pay you for that now.

Joe and Linda worked part time from home, and they don't think there will be an opportunity to do more than that anytime soon.

Though Joe was named the vice mayor of Worthington this year, filling in for the mayor when he's unavailable.

Ohio State University Economic Development Professor Ned Hill says a lot of older Ohioans retired early.

Were the labor force.

Participation rates have dropped.

A lot is among those 55 and above.

And with that group, what you're seeing is.

They they may have enough in the retirement.

They may have other family situations, but we've seen labor force participation rate 55 and above drop really dramatically and those 65 and above without disabilities.

It's not too high to begin with, but that's taken in percentage terms.

A pretty big drop in.

Health, says women with children Mike Wiggins are also sitting on the sidelines right now because of uncertainty or the lack of child care.

Central Ohio economist Bill Lafayette says another problem is there are too few jobs available that pay a living wage, and people simply aren't jumping into full time jobs that won't pay for basic expenses, especially if they have big debts like student loans.

Or we have to address the student loan crisis one way or another.

It's keeping people in their parents house.

It's keeping people from going out and buying big ticket items, buying houses and so forth.

And so it is a weight on the economy.

There's no doubt about that.

Lafayette says it's important the economy undergoes some structural changes to include big ticket items like universal child care, medical care or loan relief.

He says public investments into things like that will make it possible for more Ohioans to go back to work.

Joe Ingles Statehouse News Bureau.

The 2022 election year promises to be huge in Ohio, with six major candidates vying for the Republican nomina for the open U.S. Senate seat, as well as a Democratic primary.

There will be 15 members of Congress elected, down from 16 now, and the five statewide executive offices of governor, auditors, secretary of State, Attorney General and treasurer are on the ballot, along with Chief Justice of the Ohio Supreme Court and all 99 members of the Ohio House and 17 seats in the Ohio Senate.

And the timing of the primary could possibly be up in the air because of the redistricting situation.

This week, the new chairs of the Ohio Republican Party and Ohio Democratic Party met to discuss all that and more.

My Statehouse News Bureau colleague Andy Chow moderated that discussion at the city club of Cleveland last Friday.

Something that we're all kind of keeping an eye on, especially on the Republican side.

Running for nomination is if former President Donald Trump is going to weigh in, especially on the U.S. Senate race.

Bob, as you run the Ohio Republican Party, what is it like to sort of plan out the future with that possible endorsement coming from former President Trump?

Well, I don't know that it really has an impact on what the state party does.

The president's endorsement is very strong for Republican candidates in a primary, and we've seen instances where it's swayed races.

Mike Carey, open congressional seat in Ohio, 15, received the president's endorsement, survived a very crowded primary field and and won the general special election.

I talked to the president.

I'm not going to share those conversations.

He will make a decision if he wants to endorse in this race, and it will have an impact.

Liz.

You know, what are your thoughts on the fact that the race has been especially on the Senate race has been sort of focused on President Trump's endorsement possible endorsement?

And is your party planning on any possible endorsement from, you know, high profile people, maybe former President Barack Obama or current President Joe Biden for any of the people running on the Democratic side?

Yeah, I think, you know, I can't speak to what I think.

Bob laid out the outlook there for his own primary race.

I think on our side, we're just excited to have this really great set of candidates who are talking about issues that matter most to voters.

And at the end of the day, the only endorsement that matters is that of the Ohio voter and what they decide to do in November of this year.

And that's what we're going to focus on fighting on every day.

When it comes to the governor's race.

We have people who have announced for governor, auditor not out of drops to excuse me for the Democratic side.

We have somebody who to mayors who have former mayors running for the governor's race, secretary of state attorney general.

But that seems to be some empty slots missing on the ticket.

Maybe not.

Where are the Democrats when it comes to fulfilling that.

Have a full.

Slate?

We do have a.

Few, but announcements are special moments for candidates, right?

They get to have that moment to get the press coverage, to raise some money.

And we're not going to steal their thunder.

But we have petition circulating for all four offices, all for down ballot offices.

So we expect that within the next two to two and three weeks that you'll see those come out, respectively.

Comparing it to other years, it is fairly late to be announcing.

Do you see that as putting the party behind in any way?

Not at all.

I think, you know, again, the party is an apparatus has been focused on the work going on on a year now, right?

We're focused on building the the.

Infrastructure that our candidates need to be successful and our candidates are going to have a compelling story to tell and be talking every day to Ohio families about why they're on their side.

And that's what will be helping them to do it with the strong structure that we've built around the state.

Bob, you.

Know, I agree with Liz on this.

I think that in a lot of ways there's this idea that the political parties hold this role that they don't necessarily do.

We're there to help win elections.

And that means if you're going to do a good job, that means you follow the lead of your candidate.

You give them the support that they need to get the job done.

You don't dictate those things to it.

And that's one of the reasons why I think is Liz for Ohio Democrats is a much better chairman than her predecessor.

That's honest truth.

It might have something to do with the fact that we're both from Akron, which is which is not Cleveland, Ohio, which is not Cleveland, but it is northeast Ohio.

Yeah.

Honestly, I didn't know how that was going to play in this crowd.

But.

You know, on the Democratic side and in the municipal elections of 2021, Ohio Democrats had the best election night in the country, right?

Because we're starting to learn some very valuable lessons about data and where our opportunities for gro And we're seeing this rising generation of leaders who are really inspiring and connecting with their community, not least of which is here with us today, mayor.

And so we are we're thrilled by that and it's really kind of pointing us in a direction of trust, going to test and verify every time we go.

And so whether that or that are the gains we made in places like Gihanna or Bay Village or Aurora, whether, you know, communities outside those urban cores, but then also really connecting with our base voters and making sure that we never take a vote for granted.

There is no such thing as a given vote in this state.

Ohio voters are smart, they're savvy and they're busy and they're overwhelmed.

And so you have got to do the work to connect with them and show them who's on their side in every election, in every race and every community.

And that's exactly what we're working to do for us.

You know, there's been a shift in the electorate in Ohio.

You really saw a stark contrast on it in the 2016 election.

I think it was a confluence of two different things happening.

one is the Democratic Party has abandoned working class voters and some urban and rural counties in Ohio.

It used to be where the first presidential election on George W Bush in 2000 Democrats would win Lucas County, all the counties across the Great or Lake Erie down the eastern border and down the Ohio River.

This inverted C was sort of the Democratic playbook on winning presidential election in Ohio.

And what has happened since that is, you know, in 2016, Donald Trump took 80 of 88 counties and in 2020 took 81 of 88 counties.

And the reason for that is is, is he had come and campaigned in Ohio on a conservative working class message, issues that weren't traditionally Republican when it comes to trade and dealing with China and their monetary policy and being aggressive in that and getting rid of NAFTA.

It's something all hot northeast Ohio politicians have talked about for decades, and nobody ever really did anything about it.

We did something about it, and because of that, you have seen a shift in the coalition here in Ohio and and counties that like Lorain, Ashtabula, Trumbull, Portage and Belmont, where we wouldn't win county commissioner races.

Every elected county official and Belmont County is a Republican, except I think the county engineer and he is switching this year.

So hopefully I didn't make any news and upset him or anything.

But but the point on this is, is this dynamic of what's happened and one of the things you know, Democrats are going to have to do is figure out how to get back to those those voters, but that's where our target is.

And we've seen that change.

I mean, one of the largest contributors to the Republican Senate caucus is the building trades unions.

Think about that for a minute.

You know, what was it in 2014 where Senate Bill five was was put into place eleven, 2011.

You know, you look at it now in and you see this working class conservative Republican Party, which for me was the Republican Party I always wanted.

I grew up in Akron, Ohio.

My dad worked for CyberLink Tire and Rubber.

And there was always parts of the Republican Party that, you know, just weren't like that comfortable in a lot of that's changed.

And so our candidates are looking at that.

Our candidates consider that or our elected officials consider that as they govern is that, hey, there is a labor constituency in the Republican Party, and we're very pleased with that.

Liz, do you agree with that assessment?

What's what's your I'm guessing you have a counterargument to that.

So as also someone who you know, my grandfather worked for Firestone Tire.

Right.

Like the notion that the working class has left the Democratic Party is just false.

And we for us, that is a big net that we can reach across all sectors.

Yes, there are still Democrats in the trades and there are still Democrats in our public sector unions.

At the end of the day, time after time, we have seen that when it really comes time to judge what party and what candidates are on the side of working people, the votes, the policies, all of the work that happens is getting done by the Democratic Party and it is oftentimes being obstructed by the Republican Party.

So how are you going elected officials?

So.

So so how?

How are you going to do that?

So it's I mean with with what Bob just laid out here and proven by the.

Election in 2020, it seemed like those parts that insurgency is really moving towards, maybe a more of a red state, so how do you get those voters back?

Listen, what's funny is I see some some of the folks at the table with some of my team around the table laughing because we talk about the inverted C a lot in our own building, right?

That is true when you look at that map and it used to be, you know, the top and down to the bottom .

But then the last time you really saw that map was also the election cycle before we took Hamilton County and then one have now taken almost every countywide elected seat in that that region.

So, you know, electorates are dynamic.

You never get the same electorate two times.

And there has been a continuous geographic and demographic realignment of the state over the last 20 years that frankly, their parties grappled with better than mine.

Right.

And so how we move forward is really being clear eyed about where we go to fight for votes.

But the also the the truth about Ohio is the answer to that question is both, and there is no such thing is not competing in all 88 counties and expecting to get a statewide win.

It's about what is your win in that county look like?

How many votes do you need in each place to really put together that full map?

And so that's what like under the the look ahead for us is what we're focused on.

In and I agree with with Liz on that.

You have to look at it.

88 county strategy.

one of the challenges for us are the seven counties that went for Joe Biden.

And so when I became chairman, we launched an urban county initiative and part of that is taking a fresh look at things and getting a new start.

one of the most challenging counties we have is Kyle Hagen, Chair when Lisa Stickin is here with us today and she's doing a fantastic job, but it's not something that's going to change overnight and a lot of these dynamics, I mean, I talk about 2016 like it was yesterday, six years ago, OK. And and so it is it is a lot to deal with and and I'm sure that Liz and her folks will look at it the same way we do.

It's all a matter of triage.

What do you have time for?

What do you have resources for?

How can you put things in the right way?

Because again, as practitioners, which we both are.

It's about winning for candidates.

But you don't see us on social media all the time promoting ourselves.

Here's what I had for breakfast today would not be very interesting.

Walters said one of the stories Democrats will tell this year is about the 60 million dollar bribery scheme involving first energy and the nuclear bailout law known as House Bill six.

But Podiatric said those responsible for the law are no longer in power and that it didn't have an effect on the 2020 vote just months after the first arrests.

So he says he doesn't think the scandal will have any impact at all on the 2022 elections.

And that's it for this week for my colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our web site at State News Ford.

And you can follow us and show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutual, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at Med Mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter, Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP, now with eight locations across the country.

Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association, representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OAG Dawg.