Measure to redraw lines fails

The Austintown lawmaker says Democrats were invited at the tail end.
STAFF/WIRE REPORTS
COLUMBUS -- Partisanship trumped policy in the Ohio House on Thursday as an attempt to change the way legislative and congressional districts are drawn -- the most political of issues -- failed along party lines.
It all happened in a rapid-fire series of strategic floor maneuvers led by ruling Republicans, who sought to put Democrats on the spot for opposing new rules for drawing the boundaries that closely mirrored those advanced by a Democrat-leaning coalition of election reformers last fall.
Lawmakers were considering the overhaul in response to complaints that one party is able to control the drawing congressional and legislative districts. A change to the process would have required voters to amend the state constitution, and with lawmakers not planning to meet until after the deadline to qualify for the November ballot, the issue likely is dead for the current session.
Republicans, in danger of losing all three seats on the board that draws legislative lines, fell just short of the 60 votes needed to pass the resolution, supplying 57 votes. All but one of the House's 39 Democrats voted against it.
"It was an objection based on politics," GOP Speaker Jon Husted said. "I'm very disappointed it was struck down along partisan lines."
How Dems see this
Democrats saw it as a Republican tactic to blame them for the failure in election campaigns.
"We hear this thing about bipartisanship. We were invited into this at the tail end of the process," said state Rep. Ken Carano of Austintown, D-59th.
"We asked them to wait," said Carano, who voted against the redistricting measure.
Husted, a Kettering Republican, said he thought the proposal had a chance and did not bank on it failing when he put it up for a vote. After the initial vote, which was 53-42, sponsoring Rep. Kevin DeWine, a Fairborn Republican, immediately substituted a slightly different plan Democrats had touted last year. That was the version that all but one Democrat voted against.
The proposal would have created a seven-member, bipartisan commission to draw boundaries after each census, with the next one set for 2010. Currently, a board of the governor, auditor and secretary of state draws the legislative districts, and the Legislature decides the congressional districts. The Republicans have controlled those decisions since 1991, and critics complain the GOP has been able to draw districts to favor the party.
Husted gave a speech from the House floor, rare for a speaker, imploring members to support the plan Republicans had crafted with the help of former Democratic state Rep. Ed Jerse, a Cleveland attorney who represented the group that backed the failed ballot issue.
Putting the plan Democrats supported in the past up for a vote was a sincere attempt to take politics out of an important part of elections, Husted said. He had an admonition for anyone who voted against it.
"If you do, you lose the right to complain about it," Husted said.
He chided Democrats who said Republicans wanted to change the system on their own terms.
"Those who make this criticism fail to understand this is exactly the right time," DeWine said.