Ohio - I don’t think it’s realistic to stretch a district all the way from Toledo to Cleveland. I did see a story that suggested that Republicans sacrifice one of their own in Ohio because of the geography. That should be a last resort.
This might not go over well but I would suggest combining the 5th and the 9th. It would be a fair fight district. It is better to have a 50% chance of retaining a seat than a 0% chance. The other possibility I could see would be attempting to make the 17th a fair fight district. The results are a bit harder to analyze because of Traficant’s 3rd party run, but it would appear that the exurban areas of Toledo are more reliably Republican than the exurban areas around Youngstown....easier to make a fair fight district around Toledo than around Youngstown.
Cuyahoga, however, will not be quite large enough to support two CD’s. So among Fudge, Kucinich, and Sutton, one should definitely lose a seat.
Ohio should go as follows.
First, carve out something in the middle of the state from Columbus to Cincinnati, or Columbus alone. That area is D and growing, and its what caused us to lose 2 districts earlier this decade.
Kaptur’s district in the 9th needs people, so it swallows part of Sutton’ district. Renacci swallows the GOP portions of Sutton’s district. Tim Ryan gets the rest. Sutton is gone.
Kucinich and Fudge are merged into 1, but we still need to shed population. So, about 100k of that goes to the 14th (hopefully we can still hold this). Another 100k gets dumped into Tim Ryan’s Youngstown district.
Either way, it ends up 12-4 Republican. Probably need to shore up Cincinatti a bit to prevent Chabot from losing again, though.
You’re not going to win a fight in a Toledo district. And we already tried redistricting Tim Ryan last time around.
You can’t dislodge Fudge. I’m not sure if that district is VRA, but it is 85% Dem.
You pretty much have to give up a Republican incumbent with the current configuration. Boehner is going to have to decide who it is, my money is on Schmidt since she seems to always underperform.
There is no realistic way to get to 13-3 without endangering half the GOP side.