Taken at face value, GOP maneuvering over Biden and Ohio’s ballot is just more of today’s standard-issue Statehouse bickering.
True, in the abstract, denying Biden a place on Ohio’s ballot, while depriving Ohioans of a choice in November, would be secondary: At this writing, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump will likely carry Ohio Nov. 5.
Instead, the Biden/ballot fight is arguably GOP camouflage for what’s really at stake – gumming up those statewide ballot-issue campaigns in expensive, time-eating rigmarole, and holding down Democratic turnout.
It’s increasingly obvious that Ohio voters genuinely shocked Statehouse Republicans last year by passing statewide ballot issues that (a) protect access to abortion; (b) legalize recreational marijuana; and (c) block a GOP attempt to make it harder for rank-and-file Ohioans to amend the Ohio Constitution.
One GOP counter-move: To assign Republican Attorney General David Yost, whom Democrats (to put it politely) distrust, responsibility for policing foreign campaign donations, something the bipartisan Ohio Elections Commission now does.
The pearl-clutching about foreign campaign donations is because the GOP has to blame somebody for its 2023 ballot fiascos, and who better than Johnny or Joanie Foreigner? It isn’t like Ohio doesn’t have a history: In a move the U.S. Supreme Court later killed, the General Assembly, after America went to war with Germany in World War I, made it a crime to teach the German language in Ohio schools, public or private, below the eighth grade. Take that, Kaiser Bill.
Moreover, in the unlikely event that General Assembly Republicans somehow did keep Biden off Ohio’s ballot, that might induce some Democrats to stay home on Election Day, creating two major challenges for their party – threatening re-election of U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat (vigorously challenged by Republican Bernie Moreno) and of two Ohio Supreme Court Democrats.
Ohio Supreme Court Justice Michael P. Donnelly, a Greater Cleveland Democrat, is being challenged for re-election by Republican Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Megan Shanahan.
Another Greater Cleveland Democrat, Supreme Court Justice Melody Stewart, is being challenged by fellow Justice Joseph T. Deters, a Cincinnati Republican who was once Hamilton County’s prosecuting attorney.
In the third Supreme Court contest, for a seat the GOP’s Deters now holds but is leaving to challenge Democratic Justice Stewart, Greater Cleveland Democratic Judge Lisa Forbes, of the Ohio Court of Appeals (8th District), is competing with the Republican nominee for Deters’ current seat, Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Dan Hawkins.
Given Republicans’ self-interest in GOP-rigged legislative seats, and GOP legislators’ alliance with business lobbies on the minimum-wage ballot issue, the bonus – from General Assembly Republicans’ perspective – of the Biden-on-the-ballot question could be extraneous legislation passed amid the Biden fix to complicate the “Citizens Not Politicians” and “Raise the Wage Ohio” campaigns.
That’s because the General Assembly’s Republican majorities are just fine with the way things are in Ohio. Aren’t you?
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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