They’re playing dirty. Again. Turns out underhanded, undemocratic schemes to consolidate unilateral power are a feature, not a bug of Ohio’s one-party tyranny in the state. You and I are being systemically disempowered as an electoral check on imperious partisans who seek to rule not represent.
Ohio Republicans, who control every branch of state government and have gerrymandered themselves into unaccountable Statehouse supermajorities, have outdone themselves with their latest stunt: a twisted legislative maneuver to exploit a state ballot issue affecting the sitting president of the United States. Yep. That’s where we are, Ohio.
The ballot question involving candidate certification deadlines has come up twice before in presidential election years (2012, 2020) and been resolved by bipartisan consensus without pre-conditions. Not in 2024. Ohio Senate Republicans made a minor deadline extension for President Biden conditional on partisan gain. Forget bipartisan comity for the sake of democracy.
Ohio Senate President Matt Huffman is a control freak. The Lima Republican didn’t hesitate to draft a plan that would subvert the sovereignty of voters (and direct democracy) and roll it into a simple ballot fix. Huffman’s nemesis, Ohio House Speaker Jason Stephens, didn’t hesitate to crater the Senate legislation and ditch a clean ballot resolution to certify Biden for the general election because “why create a stir that’s not necessary.” Why??
Why allow Ohioans a choice of major party candidates for the presidency? “There’s just not the will to do that from the legislature,” said Stephens. “Republicans in both the House and the Senate aren’t going to vote for a stand-alone Biden bill,” said Huffman after inserting his unrelated amendments (into what should have been a stand-alone ballot measure) as the GOP’s price for allowing a fair election in the fall.
It’s the one-party-price-or-else plan for disenfranchising nearly 500,000 Ohioans who handed Biden an overwhelming primary win in March and the millions who may vote for him in November. Sadly, holding democracy hostage to devious legislative riders is emblematic of the self-serving, anti-democratic party presiding over Ohio with a pronounced disdain for voters.
Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is no outlier in his party’s political sabotage machine. And he is no hero for ordering a special session of the General Assembly this week to get Biden on the general election ballot by legislative fiat. It was a cunning performance by the governor to appear as though he had a spine regarding Statehouse Republicans.DeWine played the unconvincing role of adult in the room corralling misbehaving children. Straighten up and put the prospective Democratic nominee for president on the ballot, he thundered. His “moderate” role-playing was also a gambit to mitigate the bad national publicity Ohio has been receiving for shamelessly trying to leverage ballot placement of a major party candidate for partisan points.
But DeWine’s guise about giving a damn over the basic principle that Ohioans should be able to vote for either major party candidate seeking the presidency was blown when he embraced partisan legislation as leverage. He sided with Huffman’s ploy to score political paybacks as a condition to grant Biden ballot access.
The Senate leader is still smarting over his smackdown in two statewide referendums last year. So Senate Republicans came up with a red herring designed to prevent what happened in 2023 (with both Issue 1s) from happening again. No more citizen revolt at the polls to circumvent an extremist legislature. No siree. Not if Huffman et al have their way.
Instead of sending a no-strings-attached bill to the Ohio House to ensure Biden gets on the ballot in the fall, the Senate larded the legislation with a provision to ban foreign spending on state ballot issues. The add-on is a smokescreen to throw a wrench into future citizen ballot initiatives — like the one advancing to end gerrymandering in Ohio.
The devil is in the details of this disingenuous move which goes beyond banning foreign nationals (already barred from contributing to candidates and campaigns) with new requirements and hurdles intended to stop grassroots groups in their tracks. It is Huffman’s way to make it even more difficult for ordinary citizens to launch a ballot initiative — especially one opposed by the ruling class.
Also slyly folded into the compromised ballot bill embraced by DeWine was another “poison pill” that is also related to last year’s successful citizen initiative to enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. This one attempts to short-circuit the legal process governing lower courts that temporarily block enforcement of state law while it is being challenged as unconstitutional — like Ohio’s abortion law. It was put on hold pending resolution of lawsuits that argue it in violation of the Ohio Constitution after passage of Issue 1.
Republicans aim to leap-frog over temporary restraining orders from county courts straight up to the partisan, Republican-majority state supreme court with an expedited appeal to overrule the common-pleas court judges blocking state law enacted by Republicans. Sound on the up-and-up to you? Me, neither. But there it is, along with the bogus foreign nationals ban tucked into Huffman’s outrageous tradeoff to put Biden on the ballot.
DeWine endorsed the crass charade in his proclamation calling the legislature into special session. Shame on him. Shame on them all. Playing dirty. Again.
This commentary was originally published by the Ohio Capital Journal and republished here with permission.
