Morning Glory: Vote No on Ohio's Issue 1

Ohio has gone “deep red” over the last two decades, and as a result the Buckeye State is the target of an attempt by the hard left to use its dark money machine to permanently favor the blue jerseys. You do this via the Ohio State Ballot Issue 1.

Every serious person I've spoken to about this in my home state hates the prospect of unelected bureaucrats with unlimited budgets manipulating the entire state to achieve some amorphous goal of “proportionality” in representation. Citizens who truly believe in representative government will vote “no” on Item 1, even if they vote for Trump/Vance and Bernie Moreno in the US Senate and even if they are Harris/Walz/Sherrod Brown supporters.

Even the most partisan Democrat should shy away from this blatant power grab by the radical left and its dark money machine.

A last-minute hearing could determine whether the vulnerable House Democratic Party can vote for itself in the crucial race

When Issue 1 passes in Ohio on November 5, the radical left's agenda will advance in the short and long term. The terms “hard left” and “dark money machine” are used often in this column because what should be a scandal is simply not being addressed in this most consequential presidential election. Pardon the repetition, but it is the “hard left” at work, and the sum at its disposal is staggering, and its origins are deeply hidden behind many happy labels.

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

If Issue 1 passes, it is almost certain that Democrats will win eight or nine of Ohio's 15 congressional seats in the near future. Republicans currently hold 10 of those 15 seats after a bipartisan commission took nearly two years to reach a line acceptable to the Ohio Supreme Court.

The left didn't like that result, even though Ohio's congressional district map is one of the clearest in the country. The left's first attempt to change the state constitution failed because it thwarted the will of the people. So she created and submitted to voters a 26-page painting by Jackson Pollock depicting a ballot measure that would install gerrymandering within gerrymandering, all bundled with the label “Citizens Not.” Politicians.” The money flowing into Ohio to force this Rube Goldberg machine on Buckeyes is staggering.

The dark money behind this Trojan horse of a ballot measure now totals over $24 million. That's right: $24 million to write a bizarre, complicated plan into the Ohio state constitution, almost all of it from out-of-state leftists.

Less than 1% of the massive spending on this power grab came from individual Buckeyes. Tens of millions come from the left's dark money machine.

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

Ohio already has a “redistricting commission,” created by a statewide vote in 2015 and part of the state constitution. Its composition and mandate are clear and easy to understand – its seven members include the governor, secretary of state, and comptroller, as well as a majority and minority representative in each house of the state legislature. And the commission must adhere to clear instructions to keep cities, counties and townships together in one congressional district whenever possible.

The commission drew congressional maps that attempted to draw district boundaries so that the state's majority party, the GOP, would dominate, as Democrats did in Massachusetts and California. The Democrats managed to stop the Republicans' efforts. But it wasn't enough. The short-term goal of Issue 1 is now to move the House to a permanent Democratic majority.

However, the long-term “victory” would not benefit traditional Democrats. It would be for the hard left we see in “The Squad” through the successful transition of a deep blue congressional delegation to a ruby ​​state and, crucially, the “proof of concept” it would provide.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine, right, greets Ohio State Senator and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Matt Dolan during a campaign rally 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 spreads like kudzu. Here's how marijuana legalization has spread across the country after it first flourished in Colorado. The same goes for efforts to decriminalize crime and elect non-prosecutors in major urban jurisdictions. The chaos promoted by the radical left is primarily aimed at locking out the people and imprisoning the elites of the left.

Every statewide elected official in Ohio, starting with its center-right and wildly popular Gov. Mike DeWine, has urged Buckeyes to vote “No on 1.”

These officials are all Republicans, because just as California has all Democrats in office statewide, self-division of the state's electorate into “red” and “blue” is as 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. The fly-over country is mostly red, and the GOP relies on Texas and Florida as its electoral strongholds. The House and Senate are slowly moving closer to reflecting this reality.

The hard left wants to stop this. It was never on the agenda of the radical left that “the center” and “the right” would be represented in any legislative session, except as a token. The hard left hates the purposefully designed U.S. Senate, with its two members per state and six-year terms, just as they despise the Electoral College. Both are bulwarks of a constitutional government, a “republican form of government,” guaranteed to every state by our authors.

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The electorate instinctively knows that a 26-page initiative cannot be a push for “good government” or even “normal congressional districts,” as opposed to the deeply partisan, salamander-like districts that immediately marked the founding of the republic as “factions.” followed created and manipulated district boundaries.

This was a feature, not a defect, of our elegant and enduring constitutional structure. We are not a parliamentary system. Our republic is much more stable and permanent and is based on a federalist concept of dual sovereignty between the federal government with limited and enumerated powers and the 50 state governments.

Every statewide elected official in Ohio, starting with its center-right and wildly popular Gov. Mike DeWine, has urged Buckeyes to vote “No on 1.”

The Constitution that binds us all provides in Article IV, Section 4 that “the United States guarantees to every State in this Union a republican form of government….” This guarantee has been largely left alone by the United States Supreme Court over the centuries because states are inherently designed to optimize their own systems of government.

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But this provision certainly means that there is some limit to what the hard left's dark money machine can push through schemes like Ohio's Problem 1. But a constitutional challenge after 1 passes would be a long shot that would take a long time, even if that result eventually came from the “originalist majority” on the current court.

It would be much better for Buckeyes of all stripes to come together and reject this deeply disingenuous ploy. Tell every Ohio voter you know to vote “no” on Issue 1. Send them this column. Call them and explain what the trick is here. The stakes are national, and the good news is that Ohio's electorate, like much of the Midwest, is largely center-right, sensible and measured. When the smoke clears in two weeks, pray that the Ohio electorate spent enough time studying their ballots and voting in the two major elections and that they clearly defeated Issue 1.

Hugh Hewitt is host of The Hugh Hewitt Show, heard weekdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. ET on the Salem Radio Network and simulcast on the Salem News Channel. Hugh wakes up America on over 400 affiliates nationwide and on all streaming platforms where SNC is seen. He is a frequent guest on Fox News Channel's News Roundtable, hosted by Bret Baier weekdays at 6 p.m. ET. A son of Ohio and a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Michigan Law School, Hewitt has been a law professor at Chapman University's Fowler School of Law since 1996, where he teaches constitutional law. Hewitt launched his eponymous radio show in Los Angeles in 1990. Hewitt has appeared frequently on all major national news television networks, hosted television shows for PBS and MSNBC, written for all major American newspapers, has authored a dozen books, and moderated a number 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 column on the Constitution, national security, American politics, and the Cleveland Browns and Guardians. Hewitt has interviewed tens of thousands of guests over his 40 years in broadcasting, from Democrats Hillary Clinton and John Kerry to Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Donald Trump, and this column previews the main story that informs his radio presence today. /TV show will shape.

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