Replies

“why the OH GOP decided to cede the Democrats a seat in Columbus when they could’ve attached more GOP areas to the existing seat(s), I have no idea”

I’ll tell you why they did it—because otherwise the RATs would have picked up two Columbus-based districts. Remember that, while OH lost two CDs statewide, the Columbus area was is its fastest growing area, meaning that the OH-12 and OH-15 couldn’t expand too much. Under the 2002-2010 lines, even with a third CD (the OH-07) taking in part of Columbus, the OH-12 and OH-15 gave President Bush 51% and 50%, respectively, in 2004, and Columbus’s huge leftward turn left both districts majority Democrat. Plus, it’s not as if you could stick more Columbus Dems in the OH-07 without risking that it flips to the Dems, nor could you try to append every heavily GOP county around without losing the (former) OH-18 or OH-16, not to mention failing to pick up the new Medina-based CD. OH is just not Republican enough to draw a map without *any* Dem districts south or west of Akron.

What Republicans *should* have done is to draw an “uber-Democrat CD that stretched from Cincinnati to Columbus, by way of Dayton and Springfield, and it would be 57% black (I drew one with a redistricting ap on the Internet), making it impossible for a future legislature to unravel. It would pack so many Democrats into that district that it would make every surrounding district comfortably Republican, and leave GOP turf to shore up the Ohio River CDs. As it is now, the horribly gerrymandered CDs for Tiberi and Stivers should be safe for the decade, but the OH-01 could be competitive (especially if Chabot retires or runs for higher office at some point), while the OH-06 was not shored up enough and the districts south of Cleveland and Akron are still winnable for the RATs.

But the OH GOP wasn’t brave enough to draw the Cinci-to-Columbus CD, and now with the nomination (tantamount to election) of a black Democrat from Columbus it will be very difficult to do this later on, since “Columbus voters have shopwn that a black-majority district is unnecessary for black voters to elect a member of their choice” and “drawing a Cincinnati-to-Columbus black-majority CD will eliminate the possibility of a second black Representative being elected in that portion of the state,” or something.