The move came hours after the Ohio Supreme Court ordered all seven commission members — including Gov. Mike DeWine — to personally attend a March 1 contempt hearing for failing to meet its court-ordered deadlines.
Immediately after the meeting, Faber said he had the same concerns about the latest Republican-authored proposal as he raised against the Democratic proposal voted down a week ago; and so he could not endorse it as meeting the constitutional standard set by the Ohio Supreme Court in its rejection of previous Republican-drawn maps.
After repeated delays and recesses, the commission reconvened at 6:15 p.m. Thursday, and Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, immediately moved to adopt the latest proposal from Republican map-drawers.
The new maps would likely create 54 Republican House seats and 18 Republican Senate seats. Currently Republicans hold 64 of the 99 Ohio House and 25 of the 33 Ohio Senate seats. But of those, 19 House and seven Senate seats lean Democratic by less than 4%, while no Republican districts are that close, according to the tally mapmakers handed out.
Huffman said that though district lines were different, it would create the same number of Democratic-leaning seats as the previous proposal from Democrats themselves.
State Sen. Vernon Sykes, D-Akron, co-chair of the commission, said he was disappointed in the lack of Republican openness.
“We’ve been told that you’ve been working on this since Feb. 11,” he said. Yet Democrats had no input, and had only received the new maps a few hours earlier.
“So we’re just wondering, do you expect us to vote on this?” Sykes said.
Huffman pushed for an immediate vote, saying much of the new plan “at least in concept” was adopted from Democratic proposals. Due to the court’s “urgency” for new maps, and the approach of the May 3 primary election, the commission needed to vote speedily, he said.
House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, called the Republican proposal “smoke and mirrors” on its compliance with the court’s standard of symmetry, due to the imbalance of so many close Democratic districts and no similarly close Republican districts.
House Speaker Bob Cupp, R-Lima, commission co-chair, said the court only cited margins of 2% or less in its order to draw new maps.
Russo read a portion of the court’s order, which pegged the problem with the previous Republican-drawn map as creating thin Democratic margins while making all Republican seats more secure.
“I guess you and I are reading it differently,” Cupp said.
Russo asked if commissioners thought maps that increased asymmetry over the maps the court had already rejected would satisfy justices.
Cupp replied that he wouldn’t comment on “pending litigation,” noting that all members of the commission are due to appear at a contempt hearing March 1 for failing to meet the court’s Feb. 17 deadline to pass new maps.
“We’re sitting here because of pending litigation, discussing these maps,” Russo shot back.
Secretary of State Frank LaRose also asked fellow commissioners to add an order for him to issue new instructions to county boards of elections. The law says candidates for state legislative seats have 30 days to move into districts where they intend to run, he said. Now the people who filed for office by the Feb. 2 deadline must have those 30 days.
There are only three weeks before LaRose has to mail out overseas and military ballots, he said.
“That is effectively the beginning of the election,” LaRose said.
He wants prospective candidates to quickly notify boards of election of their intended moves into the newly created districts.
LaRose’s proposal passed 5-2, with both Democrats opposed. Sykes said he believed authorizing LaRose to issue those instructions exceeded the commission’s authority.
Two previous Republican proposals passed without Democratic support, and the state Supreme Court has overturned both as unfairly favoring Republicans.
On Feb. 7, the Supreme Court ordered the commission to file new state House and Senate district maps by Feb. 17. That didn’t happen; instead several Republican commissioners declared an impasse. The court then gave until noon Feb. 23 for commissioners to explain why they shouldn’t be held in contempt.
All those responses were filed on schedule. House Speaker Bob Cupp, R-Lima, and Senate President Matt Huffman, R-Lima, said they shouldn’t be held in contempt because they were not ordered, as individuals to do anything.
Sykes and Russo apologized for the commission’s failure and blamed it on Republican intransigence.
LaRose and Faber said the 10-day deadline was insufficient. DeWine said he was in “full compliance” with the court order, based on his previous statement that the commission had to pass a map.
And for the commission as a whole, Attorney General Dave Yost — acting as the commission’s lawyer — asked for “a few additional days” to pass new maps.
Prior to the commission’s Thursday afternoon meeting, Supreme Court Justice Patrick DeWine — Mike DeWine’s son — recused himself from the March 1 contempt hearing. Justice Sharon Kennedy filed notice that she will dissent from the order for that hearing.
Cupp said the commission will reconvene Tuesday and perhaps Wednesday to continue discussion of a new map for Ohio’s 15 U.S. House districts.
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