Ohio government is already captured by radical special interests. State Issue 1 would make it worse

Opinion

: David DeWitt; June 30, 2023; Hits: 870

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COLUMBUS, May 10, 2023 - Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis watches the Ohio House floor as House Republicans prepared to pass a resolution for an August election proposal to make it harder for voters to amend the Ohio Constitution. (Photo by Graham Stokes / Ohio Capital Journal)

The central issue for Ohio voters to consider over State Issue 1 on the ballot Aug. 8 is whether we want to give up our own power to hold our politicians accountable.

Right now, due to unconstitutional gerrymandering, we have very little power to do so anyway. But Ohio Republicans are underfunding a low-turnout August election to try to take what’s left: majority rule itself.

By asking voters to pass State Issue 1, Ohio Republicans are asking a majority of voters to shred our own authority over our constitution, and to make citizen-ballot requirements so restrictive that only the most wealthy special interests will have the resources to participate in the process.

State Issue 1 would do these things by raising the threshold for Ohio voters to pass amendments from 50% to 60% — giving a minority of 41% of voters veto power over anything a majority of Ohioans wants — and increasing signature requirements from 44 counties to all 88 counties — giving any small county in Ohio veto power on citizen initiatives over all of Ohio’s other counties.

This effort is being bankrolled by an extremist Illinois billionaire named Dick Uihlein, who has also funded both Jan. 6, and Trump-sycophant 2020 election deniers around the country. Uihlein’s group has launched similar attacks on direct democracy in Missouri, South Dakota, and Arkansas, all of which failed.

Ohio has one of the most corrupt state governments in the country, where politicians have regularly given away billions of dollars in public money to sweetheart donor special interests in scandal after scandal over the years.

At the end of this column, I’ve collated a collection of headlines, but these scandals include: massive utility company special interests robbing ratepayers of hundreds of millions of dollars; charter school scam artists ripping off taxpayers by hundreds of millions of dollars; drug companies that admitted defrauding Ohioans by tens of millions of dollars; predatory payday lenders skirting accountability to fleece vulnerable Ohioans; a nursing home industry peddling campaign donations and influence for sweetheart lawmaking, special interest groups writing legislation; lobbyists writing lawmakers’ testimony, and lawmakers creating standards that benefit their privately-owned businesses.

In 2011, Republicans met in a secret hotel room bunker to gerrymander themselves into Statehouse supermajorities, which they’ve used to carry out this staggering amount of unabated public corruption.

In 2021 and 2022, they defied voters, the Ohio Constitution, and a bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court five times to rig Ohio’s Statehouse maps with gerrymandering again, forcing voters to cast ballots in unconstitutional districts.

Since winning their new gerrymandered supermajorities last November, Ohio Republicans have pursued the most anti-democracy, anti-education, anti-liberty, reactionary, extremist agenda I have ever witnessed in Ohio.

In lame-duck session, they gave Ohio one of the most restrictive voter laws in the nation. With State Issue 1, they became the first legislature in Ohio history to try to roll back the constitutional power of voters.

They have admitted in private and in public that their effort is aimed to stop an abortion rights amendment slated for the November ballot, and to stop voters from any effort toward further anti-gerrymandering reform.

One of the biggest advocates in favor of this attack on Ohio voter power has been Ohio Right to Life, which lobbied lawmakers to pass the resolution, paid $5 million for false and deceptive ads to manipulate Ohioans against the abortion rights proposal, and is holding events with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Issue 1 celebrating the overturning of Roe v. Wade to try to stoke energy to dismantle voter powers that Ohioans have had for more than a century.

Remember who filed the federal lawsuit to bypass the bipartisan Ohio Supreme Court’s rulings against gerrymandering? Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis.

Also in support of Issue 1 are gun-ownership absolutists, whom Ohio Republicans in recent years have showered with sweetheart lawmaking such as a “stand your ground” law that increases gun violence, a permitless concealed carry law that also increases gun violence — from a lawmaker whose testimony was written by a gun lobbyist — and another law, on hold right now in the courts, that bans Ohio towns and cities from enacting their own ordinances to try to prevent gun violence.

The Ohio Chamber of Commerce jumped in on the attack on Ohio voter power, but refuses to discuss the proposal’s clear and admitted ties to restricting abortion rights. This, from a group that represents businesses that have promised to pay for their employees’ abortion travel due to Ohio’s draconian ban.

The Chamber says they support the assault on voters because they oppose a proposal to increase the minimum wage.

Notably, poll after poll shows these groups are out of step with majorities of Ohioans on abortion rights, on gun violence protections, and on the minimum wage.

But we have an Ohio government not only captured by wealthy special interests to whom they corruptly funnel billions of dollars in public money, but also captured by culture war radicals intent on imposing their fanatical, authoritarian ideology on all Ohioans, and for whom Ohio Republicans are ruthlessly attacking democracy itself.

In a somewhat poetic twist of fate, as Ohioans gear up to vote on State Issue 1, former Ohio House Speaker and convicted felon Larry Householder is being sentenced to prison Thursday for carrying out a $60 million political bribery racketeering scheme funded by corrupt utility special interests to obtain a $1.3 billion bailout at Ohio ratepayer expense.

Former Ohio Republican Party Chair Matt Borges will be sentenced to prison for felony racketeering on Friday.

“The Ohio Constitution is not for sale,” the campaign in favor of Issue 1 states on their website. Ohio Republican politicians clearly are for sale, and majority rule over the Ohio Constitution is really the only tool of accountability voters have left to do much of anything about it.

As Ohio voters make this decision on whether to keep — or whether to give away — our own power, perhaps it would be useful to take a look at a collection of headlines about Ohio government in recent years, and to ask ourselves if this is the kind of state government that deserves less accountability, or more.

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Ohio government is already captured by radical special interests. State Issue 1 would make it worse

Gerrymandering, voter restrictions, and attacking the Ohio Constitution

Radical agenda against science and expertise

Sweetheart lawmaking and public corruption

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