Proposed Franklin County congressional districts
A stronger hand
Reshuffle of seats likely to benefit area, experts say
By Jessica Wehrman and Jack Torry
WASHINGTON — Central Ohio might emerge as one of the few winners in a congressional redistricting process that has caused howls of protest elsewhere in the state.
While the rest of Ohio gained a scant 1.6 percent in population between 2000 and 2010, Columbus boomed: Franklin County saw an 8.8 percent population increase during the past decade.
That’s reflected in the map. While the state loses two seats overall because of slow population growth, central Ohio would gain one new lawmaker, most likely a Democrat, after the 2012 elections.
The county also will keep two Republican lawmakers — Reps. Steve Stivers of Upper Arlington and Pat Tiberi of Genoa Township — whose seats were strengthened by the new map.
The two are considered set for the next decade, drawn into districts with far more Republican voters than they currently have. Their only possible worry, observers say, would be a primary challenge.
While other metropolitan regions in the state feel slighted that their cities have been splintered among multiple members of Congress, observers say Columbus actually stands to benefit from the trend.
“I think having three members with their roots squarely in the Columbus delegation makes the community even stronger,’’ said Ted Hollingsworth, a Republican lobbyist in Washington and onetime chief of staff for former Sen. George V. Voinovich, R-Ohio.
He said Columbus gains by getting a likely Democratic congressional seat: It means that for the next decade, officials in Ohio’s largest city will have access to both political parties.
“If you indeed have the House in one party and the Senate in another … yes, it helps over the next decade to have representation in both parties,’’ Hollingsworth said.
But despite the benefits, Franklin County also experiences one of the worst examples of outright gerrymandering. Stivers would represent a broad, reverse C-shaped swath of Ohio that would include all or parts of Clark County, Franklin County and Highland County, and then veer east to the Appalachian counties of Vinton, Athens and Hocking. In all, he would represent all or parts of 13 counties under the new proposal.
The circumference of his district is about 934 miles, the most of the 16 new districts. Although the 15th District is geographically contiguous as required by law, Stivers won’t be able to drive from one end to another; it’s so skinny at the southern edge of Franklin County that no road passes through it. He would have to swim across the Scioto River near the Southerly Wastewater Treatment Plant to travel from one end of his district to the other.
David Wasserman of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report in Washington, D.C., said even by standard gerrymandering procedures, the Ohio map is a humdinger. He calls it one of the country’s most “adventurous” maps.
“I think we’ve finally figured out why it took so long for the map to get out,” he said. “When Republicans tried to take a picture of it, it broke the camera … this map is a reformer’s worst nightmare.”
But Larry Sabato of the University of Virginia said Democrats would’ve done the same thing had they been in charge.
“Democrats and Republicans are equally guilty,” he said. “They do this all over the country. Voters need to understand in politicians’ eyes, they are just pawns on the chess board.”
Political experts say the new Ohio map creates an all-but-guaranteed level of job security for lawmakers such as Stivers for the next decade at the expense of establishing congressional representatives for a specific region of the state.
“You can’t say, ‘There’s an Akron district.’ You can’t say, ‘There’s a Cleveland district,’” said John Green of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “ Historically, congressional districts were built around metropolitan areas or rural areas because of the idea that districts should represent communities … this is a very different kind of map.”
Geographic areas of interest are “not the point,” Sabato said. “Politicians don’t care about the local city and the county lines and communities of interest. They care about the partisan impact of the lines that they draw.”
Take the Dayton area. Montgomery County saw a 4.3 percent decrease in population between 2000 and 2010. That loss was reflected in the proposed map, which would pit Republicans Mike Turner of Centerville and Steve Austria of Beavercreek against each other in a primary.
The map has irritated people in the region who say it dilutes Dayton and Montgomery County, splitting the county between the new district and House Speaker John Boehner’s turf, and essentially minimizing the impact of Dayton as a metropolitan region by putting it with counties more likely to be considered Columbus suburbs than Dayton ones. Under this map, there’s really no true Miami Valley congressional district, they say.
“It’s a stupid map,” said former Rep. Tony Hall, a Democrat who represented Dayton from 1979 to 2002.
But perhaps nowhere is the trend more evident than Akron and Summit County: Under the new map, the county will be part of four different congressional districts. Former U.S. Rep. Dennis Eckart of Cleveland said they made “mincemeat” out of that county.
“They did the opposite to Akron which they did in Columbus,” the Democrat said.
It’s not just the metropolitan areas that are affected by this trend. In northwestern Ohio, rural Mercer County, population 40,814, would be represented by three lawmakers: Boehner, R-West Chester, and Reps. Bob Latta, R-Bowling Green, and Jim Jordan, R-Urbana.
Matt Gilmore, chairman of the Mercer County Republican Party, describes himself as “bemused” by that development. The county is currently represented by Latta and Boehner.
“I guess the line has got to get drawn somewhere,” he said, shrugging it off. “I don’t see it as earth-shattering, but I was surprised.”
What this means for voters in 2012: Even more political ads on TV, from a dizzying array of congressmen all trying to get known in the multiple media markets that they will represent.
What it means for lawmakers in 2012: Potential primary challenges, easy general elections and pricier campaigns as they scoop up TV time in those multiple media markets, said Stu Rothenberg of the nonpartisan Rothenberg Political Report in Washington, D.C.
What’s still unseen is how the state’s overall influence will ebb or flow in the coming decade.
Just five years ago, Ohio had two powerful Appropriations Subcommittee chairmen and a House minority leader. Now, it can claim the House speaker, but the delegation is younger and less experienced — and soon to be two fewer.
The impact of that decrease may be seen in particular in the state’s federal installations.
Locally, Columbus is less dependent on military spending than other areas of the state, such as Dayton with Wright-Patterson Air Force Base.
Still, central Ohio has scores of jobs linked to national defense. There are 8,400 jobs at the three defense agencies in the suburb of Whitehall: the Defense Finance and Accounting Service, the Defense Supply Center Columbus and the Defense Logistics Agency.
All — including Wright-Patterson — are represented by Austria, but under the new plan, the installations would be split between lawmakers — and it’s yet to be seen if the delegation will unite on behalf of those jobs or work to protect them on a district-by-district basis.
“There’s no question that when you lose two seats in the House, you lose impact and lose your ability to do things on behalf of your state,” said David Leland, former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “The fact Boehner is speaker mutes part of that, but that isn’t going to last forever.”
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