Husted redistricting commission plan passes Senate, predicts court support on residency challenge

Thursday, 24 September 2009 12:37

By John Michael Spinelli of the Columbus Government Examiner

Columbus, Ohio: State Senator Jon A. Husted, who two days ago lost his right to vote in his hometown of Kettering outside Dayton when Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner ruled his residency is really in Columbus where his wife and family live, won passage Wednesday of a resolution creating a redistricting commission that would draw state and congressional legislative districts for ten years in a manner he said would squeeze the partisanship out of a system he said has no defenders and needs to be changed.

Recasting how Ohio draws legislative districts

Senate Joint Resolution 5 restructures the current apportionment board that draws legislative districts by creating a seven member board and requires a bipartisan, five vote super-majority to pass a new legislative district plan.

“Ohio has used a hyper-partisan process of drawing districts for far too long," Husted said in his Senate floor speech today. "The time is now for Ohio to adopt this proposal to end the partisan gerrymandering that serves political parties over the public,” according to a media release on the passage of the resolution that won all votes of the Senate's twenty-one Republicans and not one of the upper chamber's twelve Democrats.

The resolution also includes provisions that ensure one political party does not control the process by requiring two votes from the minority party represented on the commission in order to pass a plan.

Husted said that to solve the economic and budgetary problems Ohio faces now and into the future, the state "must design a new political system that stops rewarding partisan games and demands bipartisan cooperation.”

Now in the Senate after eight years in the Ohio House, Husted said he has been working with numerous stakeholder groups over the past several months to draft the resolution, including the League of Women Voters and Ohio Citizen Action, two watchdog groups who focus on voting and voting-rights issues.

The senator who wants to run for secretary of state next year and become the state's chief elections office, said he remains committed to building a bipartisan consensus on a plan to reform Ohio’s redistricting process as the bill is considered by the Ohio House of Representatives.

“I look forward to working with members from both sides of the aisle in the House of Representatives in order to bring real reform to Ohio’s redistricting process,”

If passed by a statewide vote, Husted, a Republican, said his resolution would change a system he says nobody wants to defend by creating a body and a system that would go a long way toward taking partisan politics out of redrawing state and congressional legislative districts, as follows with the taking of the Census every ten years.

Should Husted's resolution make it to a vote of the public, which is highly unlikely given the fact that the Ohio House, which he served as Speaker of from 2005-08, is now controlled by the Democrats, who took it back from GOP control last year and who probably won't line up behind it because he is its sponsor, Ohioans just might go for it if they thought it would produce more compact and competitive legislative districts, instead of creating electoral districts contorted by gerrymandered that benefits one party at the expense of the other.

Miller's call for fair treatment for African American candidates

Democratic Senator Ray Miller of Columbus took issue with Husted over one of the criteria the commission would use to determine a competitive district. Miller recounted with sobering accuracy the path and plight of how African Americans in Ohio came to have voting extended to them. His amendment, he said, would help ensure that African-American candidates have a fair shot at being elected in the future.

Miller, who knew his amendment was dead on arrival, nonetheless spoke passionately, so much so that he caused Senate President Bill Harris to remind Miller to focus on his amendment when Miller made what sounded like an insinuation that Husted may not be as concerned as he was about this issue. On the vote that ensued following a motion by Cincinnati Senator Gary Cates, the lone Republican to support Miller's amendment was Sen. Tim Grendell of Chesterton in northern Ohio, a senator with a streak of independence who not always marches in lock step with his caucus members.

A confident Husted predicts court support on residency issue

Husted was endorsed by the Ohio GOP recently as its candidate to retake the office of secretary state in 2010, when Jennifer Brunner, a Democrat who won it in 2006, steps down to run for the US Senate seat currently occupied by George V. Voinovich, who has announced he will not run for a third six-year term.

One problem Husted must overcome if he intends to vote in the November General Election from his home district is to have his residency for purposes of voting reinstated to him by the Supreme Court of Ohio, after Brunner took it away from him Monday, when she said his residency is in Franklin County, where his wife and family live, and not in his hometown of Kettering.

He asked the Court yesterday in a filing that explained why Brunner's ruling was wrong to reverse her and reinstate him as a qualified elector and voter in Montgomery County.

When asked by this reporter what he will do if the Court does not reinstate his voting rights in Montgomery County, Husted paused for a moment, then said with confidence, "They arn't  going to do that. The law is on my side."
For more info:
http://www.senate.state.oh.us/senators/bios/sd_06.html
http://www.ohiogop.org/news/articles/2009/09/ohio-republican-party-endorses-four-statewide-candidates

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