Morning Glory: Vote 'No' on Ohio’s Issue 1

Ohio has gone "deep red" over the past two decades and, as a consequence, the Buckeye State is the target of an attempt by the hard left to use its dark money machine to gerrymander to permanently favor the blue jerseys. They are doing it via Ohio state ballot Issue 1.  

Every serious person I have discussed this with in my home state hates the prospect of unelected bureaucrats with unlimited budgets gerrymandering the entire state to reach an amorphous goal of "proportionality" in representation. Citizens who genuinely believe in representative government will be voting "No" on Issue 1, even as they turn out to vote for Trump/Vance and for Bernie Moreno for the United States Senate and even if they are Harris/Walz/Sherrod Brown supporters.  

Even the most partisan Democrat should recoil from this blatant power grab by the hard left and its dark money machine.  

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If Issue 1 passes in Ohio on November 5, the hard left’s agenda will advance in the near term and the long. The terms "hard left" and "dark money machine" repeat often in this column because what ought to be a scandal is simply not covered in this most consequential of presidential elections. Pardon the repetition, but it is the "hard left" at work, and the money at its disposal is staggering in its totals and its origins are deeply cloaked behind many happy talk labels.  

Hard left, dark money groups are trying to gerrymander the state. FILE: The Ohio Statehouse on December 18, 2023 (Maddie McGarvey/For The Washington Post)

In the near term, if Issue 1 passes, it almost guarantees Democrats will gain eight or nine of Ohio’s 15 congressional seats. Republicans currently hold 10 of those 15 seats, after a bipartisan commission took almost two years to arrive at lines acceptable to Ohio’s Supreme Court.  

The left didn’t like that result even though Ohio’s map of congressional districts is among the most reasonable to behold in the country. The left’s first run at tweaking the state constitution failed to thwart the people’s will, so it has produced and put before the voters a 26-page Jackson Pollock painting of a ballot measure that would install gerrymandering within gerrymandering, all bundled up as "citizens not politicians." The money pouring into Ohio to impose this Rube Goldberg machine on Buckeyes is stunning.  

The dark money behind this Trojan Horse of a ballot measure now tops $24 million. That’s right: $24 million to weld a bizarre, convoluted scheme on to Ohio’s state constitution, almost all of it from out-of-state leftists.  

Less than 1% of the massive spend on this power grab comes from individual Buckeyes. Tens of millions come from the left’s dark money machine.  

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The "Sixteen Thirty Fund," founded by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, has poured $6 million into the effort to impose permanent left-wing gerrymandering on my home state. "Several D.C. based leftist organizations contributed $1 million or more," the Ohio State Senate Republicans reported earlier this year. "Article IV gave $2 million, Our American Future Foundation gave $1.5 million, The Tides Foundation from San Francisco contributed $2 million," the report continued. "The Open Policy Center and Unite and Renew Fund both from D.C. gave $500,000 each.  And the far left ACLU Union Foundation out of New York contributed $1 million." 

Ohio already has a "redistricting commission," created by a statewide vote in 2015, and it is a part of the state constitution. Its makeup and mandate are clear and easy to understand — its seven members include the governor, the secretary of State and the state auditor and one appointee of both the majority and the minority in both houses of the state legislature. And the commission must abide by clear instructions on keeping cities, counties and townships together in a congressional district where possible.  

The commission produced congressional maps that tried to draw the district lines so that the state’s majority party, the GOP, would dominate, as Democrats did in Massachusetts and California. Democrats succeeded in stopping the Republican effort. But it wasn't enough. Now, the short-term objective of Issue 1 is to push the House toward a permanent Democratic majority. 

The long term "win," however, would not be for traditional Democrats though. It would for the hard left that we see in "the Squad," via the successful imposition on a ruby red state of a deep blue congressional delegation and, crucially, the "proof of concept" it would provide.   

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, right, greets Ohio state senator and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Matt Dolan during a campaign event in Columbus, Ohio, Monday, March 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Paul Vernon) (AP Photo/Paul Vernon)

When a political play works anywhere in the United States, it then spreads like kudzu. Thus, has the legalization of marijuana spread across the country after it first blossomed in Colorado. Ditto for the push for decriminalization of crime and the election of non-prosecutors in major urban jurisdictions. The chaos driven by the hard left is designed very much to lock out the people and lock in the left’s elites.  

Every statewide elected official in Ohio, starting with its center-right and very popular Governor Mike DeWine, has come out urging Buckeyes to vote "No on 1."  

Those officials are all Republicans because, just as California has all Democrats in statewide office, the self-sorting of state electorates into "red" and "blue" is as far advanced in Ohio as it is from Massachusetts to California.   

The party of wealthy coastal elites is blue and anchored in Massachusetts, New York and California. "Fly-over" country is mostly red, and the GOP depends upon Texas and Florida as its electoral strongholds. The House and Senate are slowly moving toward representing this reality.  

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The hard left wants to stop that. It was never on the agenda of the hard left that "the center" and "the right" would be represented in any legislature except as tokens. The hard left hates the purposefully designed United States Senate with its two members per state and six-year terms, just as it despises the Electoral College.  Both are bulwarks of constitutional government, of a "Republican form of government" which was guaranteed to every state by our framers.  

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The electorate instinctively knows that a 26-page initiative cannot be a push for "good government" or even for merely "normal congressional districts" as opposed to those deeply partisan salamander-like districts which followed the founding of the republic as "factions" instantly arose and manipulated district lines.   

That’s been a feature, not a bug, of our elegant and enduring constitutional structure. We are not a parliamentary system. Ours is a much more stable and enduring republic built on a federalist design of dual sovereignty between the federal government of limited and enumerated powers and the 50 state governments.  

Every statewide elected official in Ohio, starting with its center-right and very popular Governor Mike DeWine, has come out urging Buckeyes to vote "No on 1."  

The Constitution which binds us all together provides in Article IV, Section 4 that "The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government…."  That guarantee has been largely left alone by the United States Supreme Court over the centuries, as the states are by design intended to tweak their own governing systems.  

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But this provision surely means there is some limit to what the hard left’s dark money machine can impose via machinations like Ohio’s Issue 1. But a constitutional challenge after 1 passes would be a long shot that would take a long time even if that result came eventually from the "originalist majority" on the current court.  

Far better for Buckeyes of all sorts to come together to reject this deeply disingenuous ploy. Tell all the Ohio voters you know to vote "No" on Issue 1. Send them this column. Call them up and explain what the ploy is here. The stakes are national, and the good news is that Ohio’s electorate, like most of the Midwest, is mostly center-right, reasonable and measured. When the smoke clears in a fortnight, pray that Ohio’s electorate spent enough time studying their down ballot as well as voting in the big two races, and thus soundly defeated Issue 1.  

Hugh Hewitt is host of "The Hugh Hewitt Show," heard weekday mornings 6am to 9am ET on the Salem Radio Network, and simulcast on Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide, and on all the streaming platforms where SNC can be seen. He is a frequent guest on the Fox News Channel’s news roundtable hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6pm ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a Professor of Law at Chapman University’s Fowler School of Law since 1996 where he teaches Constitutional Law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show from Los Angeles in 1990.  Hewitt has frequently appeared on every major national news television network, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for every major American paper, has authored a dozen books and moderated a score of Republican candidate debates, most recently the November 2023 Republican presidential debate in Miami and four Republican presidential debates in the 2015-16 cycle. Hewitt focuses his radio show and his column on the Constitution, national security, American politics and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump over his 40 years in broadcast, and this column previews the lead story that will drive his radio/ TV show today.

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