Congressional districts are a creature of partisan politics

There’s got to be a better way of designing congressional districts that represent Ohio as a state in which Republicans and Democrats can fairly compete.

Ideally, independents and third-party candidates should also have a shot, but we’re talking here about the possible, not the improbable, and Ohio and most states function in a two-party environment.

Political junkies and even college and high school students have been able to use a computer to draw relatively clean, compact and competitive congressional districts, but don’t look for the Ohio General Assembly to follow suit.

In fact, look for the Republicans who hold firm control of the Ohio House and Senate to ram through a congressional map that overwhelmingly favors their party and that will have districts that have parrot beaks, fish hooks, dragon tails and bridges that create the kind of misshapen districts that gave birth to the word gerrymander.

What the legislators will do is eliminate two districts, because based on the 2010 census, Ohio can only support 16 congressional districts. And they will also manage to give a Republican candidate a strong advantage in 11 districts and a Democrat the advantage in four, which leaves one district as competitive.

If the Republicans could have built 16 districts that favored their party, they would have, but that’s mathematically impossible.

Fact of political life

This might be called despicable, if it weren’t for the fact that the Democrats would have done the same thing if given the chance. While it’s less than despicable, it’s still wrong.

It’s wrong because it not only gives the party that controls the House and Senate a disproportionate voice in who will represent the state for the next 10 years, it gives most incumbents an even greater advantage than they already have over a challenger.

Democrats, of course, are in high dudgeon over this state of affairs, but the time for their excitement was about a year ago, when they knew that their hold on the Ohio House, which would have given them a bargaining chip, was in jeopardy. Elections have consequences, and the dismal showing of Democrats in last November‘s election set the stage for what is happening in Columbus this week.

There may have been a window between 2006 and 2009 when both parties were uncertain enough of their long-term future in the state that some agreement to make redistricting less partisan could have been reached, but that window has slammed shut.

The efforts of such groups as the League of Women Voters of Ohio Education Fund, the Midwest Democracy Network, and Ohio Citizen Action to encourage citizens to submit better redistricting maps than any Legislature is likely to produce are commendable. But the voting public seems largely disinterested.

The Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting unveiled a map in which 11 of the state’s 16 districts would be considered competitive and in which community and county lines received far more respect than the General Assembly is willing to give. Examples can be seen at www.drawthelineohio.org.

But those are examples of what might have been, not what will be under a system designed to give the spoils of war to the victors.

Area did OK

The tri-county area will not fare badly under the new congressional map. Democrat Tim Ryan’s new 13th District will lose some of northern Trumbull County, but will pick up more of Mahoning and Summit counties. Republican Bill Johnson will lose a small part of Mahoning County, but will retain all of Columbiana County, which will remain the most populous full county in the 6th District. Ryan could conceivably face a primary challenge from Democratic Rep. Betty Sutton of Barberton, who has been redistricted into the 16th District of freshman Jim Renacci, R-Wadsworth. Renacci defeated Democrat John Boccieri last November and the new district will be even more heavily weighted toward a Republican.

Ryan is in one of the four Democratic districts. Johnson’s new boundaries will give him one of the 11 solidly Republican districts.

The Republicans will take some bad press for drawing the maps behind closed doors and out of the sight of Democrats, for ignoring the well-meaning submissions of nonpartisans and for rushing the vote. But they’ll take comfort in knowing that they given themselves a comfortable cushion in controlling the state’s congressional delegation for most of the next decade.

The only way Democrats have found to show their displeasure with the Republican juggernaut is to call off a deal that had been reached between House Minority Leader Armond Budish, D-Beachwood, and Speaker William G. Batchelder, R-Medina, to move the 2012 primary from March to May.

That would have to be passed as emergency legislation, which makes it one of the relatively rare instances when Republican need Democratic votes. Otherwise the new district boundaries wouldn’t take effect until the filing deadlines passed for the 2012 March primary.