“Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ OK. It’s a little crazy, by the way, but – especially for women that are like past 50, I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”
A Moreno spokesman said he “was clearly making a tongue-in-cheek joke about how Sherrod Brown and members of the leftwing media like to pretend that the only issue that matters to women voters is abortion ... Bernie’s view is that women voters care just as much about the economy, rising prices, crime, and our open southern border as male voters do.” It might also occur to Moreno that women voters, regardless of their perspective on abortion, also care about respect.
Another example: The boldfaced distortions propagated by Statehouse Republicans, notably Secretary of State Frank LaRose, of Upper Arlington, about November’s statewide ballot issue, Issue 1.
If voters pass it, Issue 1 would forbid gerrymandering – political rigging – of Ohio’s congressional and General Assembly districts. Gerrymandering has produced a legislature in which Republicans hold 68% of the Ohio House’s seats, and 78% of the Ohio Senate’s, in a state that cast 53% of its 2020 presidential vote for Donald Trump.
GOP insiders, with the help of the Ohio Supreme Court’s Republican majority, have the gall to claim Issue 1 is somehow pro-gerrymandering. That’s a brazen lie. And it’s being spread by the very Republicans gerrymandering has cemented into Ohio’s laughing-stock legislature, a playground for big business and Capitol Square busybodies obsessed with Ohioans’ sex lives.
As noted, the state Supreme Court has been a willing accomplice in the antics of LaRose and GOP legislators who cherish the status quo in Columbus. With the high court’s OK, LaRose slanted Issue 1′s official ballot language to try to flim-flam Ohio voters into opposing it.
Three Supreme Court seats are on November’s ballot. Democratic Justices Michael P. Donnelly and Melody J. Stewart are seeking re-election. Democratic Judge Lisa Forbes, of the Ohio Court of Appeals (8th District) is seeking an open seat. The Republican candidates are:
- Hamilton County (Cincinnati) Common Pleas Judge Megan E. Shanahan, opposing Justice Donnelly;
- Incumbent Supreme Court Justice Joseph T. Deters, once Hamilton County’s prosecuting attorney, opposing Justice Stewart in an extremely rare Ohio instance of a justice vs. justice contest;
- Franklin County (Columbus) Common Pleas Judge Dan Hawkins is competing with the Appeals Court’s Judge Forbes for the Supreme Court seat Justice Deters is leaving in order to challenge the re-election of Democratic Justice Steward.
Ohio voters’ OK of Issue 1, the anti-gerrymandering reform, and election of a balanced Supreme Court that doesn’t march in lockstep with the legislature’s GOP clique, are the best hope for moving Ohio forward: Otherwise, the Statehouse will remain a backwater of yesterday’s ideas and undisguised bias against law-abiding Ohioans who dare to be themselves.
If you need encouragement to vote this year, keep this in mind: The Powers That Be in Columbus, lolling in their state-supplied hammocks, really wish you wouldn’t. Things are fine just as they are. For them.
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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