The state is stuck with gerrymandered Congressional districts for 2022: Today in Ohio

CLEVELAND, Ohio — Ohio will have 10 Republican Congressional districts and five Democratic in this year’s mid-term election.

That’s because the Ohio Supreme Court has largely closed the door on Democrats’ attempts to block Republicans’ latest congressional redistricting map from taking effect in 2022. We’re talking about what it means on Today in Ohio.

Listen online here. See the automated transcript at the bottom of the post.

Editor Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with editor Leila Atassi, editorial board member Lisa Garvin and content director Laura Johnston.

You’ve been sending Chris lots of thoughts and suggestions on our from-the-newsroom text account, in which he shares what we’re thinking about at cleveland.com. You can sign up for free by sending a text to 216-868-4802.

Here are the questions we’re answering today:

Is the battle over Congressional redistricting in Ohio dead for the 2022 election?

What are Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s themes in the first TV ad of his re-election campaign?

With the CDC opening the door for a bunch of people to get a second coronavirus booster shot, should we get them now or wait for the next surge?

Will the Cleveland Clinic London, which opened Tuesday, attract enough high-paying patients to justify the $1 billion investment?

How much do healthcare jobs dominate the economy in Cuyahoga County?

Which Ohio universities landed in the top 50 rankings for best graduate programs in the latest U.S. News report?

How high has the number of juveniles charged with murder in Cleveland and its suburbs spiked? How old was the youngest charged this year?

What warning does Susan Glaser have for vacationers this summer if their plans include a car rental?

The judge who forced into public view the names of the FirstEnergy officials who approved all the bribery has been immersed in his own legal fight for a few years, one that he just won. What was it about?

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Read the automated transcript below:

Chris: [00:00:00] Armond Budish and the Cuyahoga county council want to create slush funds, even though they adamantly say they’re not slush funds, $86 million of American rescue plan money. They want to flush down the toilet, but we’re not going to talk about that today on today in Ohio because of Layla Tassie. Isn’t he.

Well, wait until she comes back because she’s our expert on it. It is today in Ohio, the news podcast discussion from cleveland.com and the plain dealer. I’m Chris Quinn here with Lisa Garvin and Laura Johnston. No, Seth today we’re missing our political analyst and we will carry on in this small group.

It was snowing this morning, Lisa.

Lisa: It was, and there was black ice on my patio when I went out to get the papers. So,

Leila: but Hey, it was going to be in the sixties by the end of today.

Chris: I know you can almost put a camera on the thermometer and see it moving in real time to go from 32 to 67. Let’s hope it happens earlier than later.

Let’s begin is the battle over congressional [00:01:00] redistricting in Ohio dead for the 2022 election. Laura, this is.

Leila: It is sad. I don’t know that it’s completely dead. You know, they haven’t called it yet, but Republicans seemed to have won this battle because the primary ballots are already being prepped with the latest Ohio redistricting commission map, which favors Republicans to win 10 of Ohio’s 15 congressional districts.

And that was the second attempt. And because obviously the Ohio Supreme court struck down the first one, but these will be on the ballot for the may primary because the fight against them is basically falling apart and. Chief justice Moreno Connor gave the parties 25 days to present their written arguments and any supporting evidence.

She did that yesterday. Plus there’s a bunch of other days to file briefs replies, et cetera. So you, this could be two months. I mean, we could be, well, the election could be over and they could still be arguing about this.

Chris: Yeah, I get the feeling that, that everybody’s a little bit worried with the congressional redistricting, which has [00:02:00] different rules than.

Legislative that there’s a, that the federal court, if it takes, it could lead to an ugly Supreme court precedent and only state legislatures can draw lines and the people be damned. It doesn’t matter if you have a constitutional amendment that says otherwise. And so you see people putting the brakes on the courts, putting the breaks on the people, suing or putting the brakes on to stretch that one out.

And so we will be stuck. Once again with unfair congressional districts in.

Leila: Yeah. I mean, I guess it’s slightly better than what we’ve had, which was, you know, we’ve had 16 seats and 12 of them have been Republican solidly. So now we’re looking at 10 out of 15, but, um, that’s not much better.

Chris: No, it is not.

Okay. Well that’s over, but the legislative continues and we’re waiting to see what happens with the Supreme court. In that one. We talked about that yesterday. What’s

Leila: [00:03:00] funny. Is that still. Agreement and the Supreme court here because the 25 days came from Marino Connor where the Republican justices still said, that’s too fast.

And they wanted to lay out three months. I’m like, are we going to push this to the 20, 24 election? It’s like, how slow do they want to walk this?

Chris: Well, they want to slow walk it until Moreno causes John Sharon Kennedy you’ll win a big presumption, but that’s the, that’s the danger you’re listening to today in Ohio.

What our governor Mike DeWine themes in his first TV ad of his reelection campaign. Lisa, I think it’s interesting. He declined to debate the opposing candidates, but on the day of that debate, he put out his first ad.

Lisa: Yes. It’s part of a package of cable TV ads that started running yesterday and we’ll run all week.

He spent about $131,000 on this ad buy it’s a 32nd ad and it’s. His tough fight said he faced and it was [00:04:00] filled with GOP buzzwords, like big city unions, which is when he talked about the Cleveland teachers union, trying to delay reopening of schools because of COVID. He also called it on China, unfair trade.

Dixon, you know, when he mentioned that Ohio was number three in us manufacturing, and then you talked about radicals who want to defund the police when he was talking about, you know, spending more money on public safety. So yeah, it’s, it’s all there. And it’s kind of, I don’t know, I’ve never heard Dwayne use buzzwords like this and ads before, so it’s a little bit jarring to me.

Chris: Well, it’s also a little bit blinking that he does feel vulnerable to the Republicans that are coming at him from the right, saying he’s not trumping enough. And so his whole demeanor has been to try and seem as in the pocket of the fringe of the Republican party as possible. And nothing demonstrates that more than his complete lack of leadership in this [00:05:00] redistricting battle.

He could. Stopped what happened this week? He could’ve stopped Matt Hoffman from pulling out of the Supreme court ordered process and said, no, no, no, no, no. We’re going to finish the process we promised to start. He didn’t instead he voted with Hoffman. And so I would expect that once we get through the primary.

The Democrats will be publishing ads. That seriously question his leadership skills, because he is since about two years ago, when these attacks from the right started, he’s really showed a pretty serious lack of leadership.

Lisa: And yeah, and, and, and of course, a lot of Republican candidates are take, gonna take, uh, Credit for this COVID relief money, which was passed by Democrats and at the federal level.

And in the ad, Dwayne says, oh, we have $250 million on first responder and law enforcement grants, which, you know, no, of course he’s not in the Congress, but none of the GOP congressmen in Ohio voted for. [00:06:00]

Chris: The attack on the Cleveland school system is interesting because we talk often here about the urban, rural divide in Ohio that the, the rural elected legislators hold sway over the cities and the city.

Full representation. It seems like Mike DeWine is saying, I don’t care about votes in Cleveland. I’m going to use Cleveland as, as an emblem of what’s wrong with Ohio and how I beat it up to, to show that I’m strong to get the rural votes. He’s actually contributing to the polarization of this.

Lisa: Oh, that’s an interesting outlook on it.

We’ll have to see what future ads do. But yeah, that one about the Cleveland schools kind of really kind of hit me in the solar plexus there. I was…