(bright music) - Hello and welcome to The Journal.

I'm Steve Kendall.

Midterm elections are a bit more than a month away, and early voting in Ohio starts in October, as well.

So what does the political terrain look like over the summer, now into the fall, as we get closer to the election?

Joining us are Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes from the Department of Political Science at Bowling Green State University, and also from the Political Science Department at BGSU, Dr. David Jackson.

Want to thank you both for being here.

As I said, you know, we, last time we talked, it was post-Dobbs, pre-August primary, which was a primary that nobody really wanted to have, but we ended up having it.

Has anything really changed now?

Cause I know one of the things people say is, "Well, nobody pays attention to political stuff until after Labor Day."

Is that the case anymore, or do people start paying more attention, solidify their positions early, and then don't change?

I mean, where do we stand?

Is it different now than it was in late July, or not?

- I think some of the fundamentals have been locked in place.

I read a study that showed that the best guess is that maybe one out of four state legislative districts will be competitive this year due to gerrymandering.

And so, you know, those aspects of the election are built in.

Now, that's not to say that campaigns don't matter, and candidates don't matter, but certainly some of the fundamentals and basic elements of the campaign, well of the structure, have already been created.

And gerrymandering remains a big story here in Ohio, because the voters tried really hard (laughs) to pass some legislation that would make gerrymandering more difficult.

But that appears to have not succeeded at all.

- Right, right.

And I know I had the Karen Kasler on, from the state of Ohio, and that's been one of the big things that they've talked about, that we went through this whole summer, maps, maps, unconstitutional map, unconstitutional, ended up basically, as you said, with maps that aren't that much different in terms of which way they lean compared to the pre-amendments, which were, as you said, were supposed to cure that gerrymandering issue that Ohio was so famous for, but didn't happen.

So, yeah.

- Yeah.

I think it's really interesting 'cause the amendments, when they were passed, I don't think anyone envisioned that we needed built in enforcement provisions with them, and that's kind of what they're lacking, is there is no true enforcement.

And if the people who draw the lines, which is members of the legislature and part of the redistricting commission, are free to ignore the constitutional amendments, then it puts the people in the same position they were in prior to 2015.

- Right.

And, and that's, as you said, basically what's happened.

We are no better off really, as you said, one of four may be competitive, and even that's probably giving it the benefit of the doubt.

- Well, you see it in the expectations game, too, where the Democrats, statewide in Ohio, in the legislature, have been in a very weak, minority position for a long time.

And it seems as if, you know, one of their objectives might be to try to prevent a super majority.

And if that's one of your objectives going into a campaign being that low, you know that the structures have been, been placed, in such a way as to make it very difficult for, you know, your party to succeed.

- Sort of like, you can't win, you're not, you're barely, you're not even playing for a tie.

You're playing to just say, "Well, at least we won't be completely massacred when the election takes place."

- Well, the Democrats argued that since the state goes about 54, 46%, a Republican versus Democratic, that the district should be drawn to what produces a legislature that's roughly 54, 46.

Republican position was that they win 80% of the elections statewide, so that it should be 80% in their favor.

And so when the rules are being drawn by people who have a very explicit interest in the outcome of the election, you really shouldn't expect, you know, fairness to prevail.

- Yeah.

And well, and I think it's interesting as Michigan went to a similar, through a similar process, towards trying to correct it's redistricting process, and what was citizens who are employed to do it, versus political or elected officials, theirs got challenged a little bit, but it seems that theirs did come out a little more reflective of the electorate in Michigan versus Ohio.

Which again, depending on which viewpoint you ascribe to, 80% or 54, or 46, we haven't made as much progress, at least in some people's minds.

- Other states have done that too.

10 years ago, or a little over 10 years ago, California moved to a Citizens Redistricting Commission, which is kind of the same approach.

But all of those assume that the people who are serving on those are without any kind of political interests or without bias, and that's not a fair assumption of really anyone.

So, and like there's been movements to have computers do it, because they, you can make a computer draw the lines in a truly unbiased way.

But there's little support for that, because the situation we have now is essentially legislators pick their own districts.

And if you are in the state legislature, why would you ever give that power up?

- Sure.

Oh yeah.

Why Yeah, if you're in, yeah, exactly.

And that's the dilemma that we see, that no one wants to give any ground either way.

And, but it does leave us then, with that same situation that it looks as if, at least for the most part, Republicans will continue to control the state, at the statewide level, all of those offices, pretty much it looks like, and then the legislature as well, which as you said, the reduced expectation, as well.

We'll at least try not to have a complete super majority if you're a Democrat.

If you're a Republican, you're, "Hey, this is great.

Best thing that's ever happened."

So what would be, and, I think you were saying it too, that no one thought that the lack of an, that we needed an enforcement element, but obviously, if there's no reason for you to be forced to tow the line, human nature being what it is, and political power being what it is, nobody's gonna tow the line unless somebody makes them do it.

And, obviously, that hasn't happened here.

- Well, yeah.

It's legislators choosing their own districts, legislators choosing their own constituents, and that, you know, produces, you know, an outcome that's not unexpected.

Now that's not to say that things like candidate quality don't still matter, that money doesn't still matter, but you can probably go along.

If you only knew the partisan lean of a district, that would be a useful fact to know, if it was the only fact you knew, to try to predict the outcome of that election.

And then looking at issues like, you know, candidate quality and the amount of money, those follow that, because the parties and the candidates look at a district that's, you know, plus 20 in favor of the other political party, and they're not gonna find a quality candidate to run, and the state party's not gonna spend any money on it.

- Right.

Yeah.

'because it's pointless.

Yeah.

There's no reason to.

You're just wasting money.

Although, there were arguments in the past, that you would try and make somebody spend their money in a district that wasn't really competitive, just to pull the money from some other district that was, but that doesn't, probably, work either.

The parties go, "Well, you can't fool me.

We're not gonna throw money in a district we're gonna win 80 to 20 anyway."

Or 75 to 30 or 75 to 25, something like that.

What, and we've got just a moment, we can come back this.

Maybe we should think about what are our alternatives.

What's the next step with redistrict in Ohio?

Where do we, how do we address this issue?

Or can we even address it?

We can talk about that when we come back.

Back in just a moment here on The Journal, with Dr. David Jackson and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes here on The Journal.

Back in a moment.

Thank you for staying with us here on The Journal.

Our guests are Dr. David Jackson and Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes.

When we left, we can move on from this, but yes, we have a situation that there is no incentive to change the rules for redistricting, and you have a legislature, and a redistricting committee, that basically told the Supreme, the Ohio Supreme Court, to pound salt on this.

"Well, you can't make us do this.

You can tell us it's unconstitutional, but we're not changing our minds.

And what are you gonna do about it?"

It's kind of their approach to it.

So what's the solution to that?

If the current rules don't seem to work, and again, we don't wanna spend forever on this, but if those aren't working, what's the next step?

What's the alternative if the legislative people are gonna go, "We don't care what you say at the Supreme Court."

And, "Why should we change if you can't make us change?"

Where do we go from there in Ohio, then?

- Well, I think if you're at the point where you're ignoring the Constitution, and you're ignoring the Supreme Court's decision, as it relates to the Constitution, you're kind of in a really tough spot.

Because there's no, the Constitution is supposed to be the enforcement mechanism, and that's kind of gone out the window.

The people can pass new amendments, which would build in additional enforcement provisions to the Constitution for these gerrymandering provisions, but I don't know that the political will, statewide, is there for that.

And I think, because this relates to both state legislative districts and congressional districts, these took two different amendments, I think in 2015 and 2017, to get on the books in the first place, you'd have to essentially do the same thing with some sort of enforcement provision.

But if you already won't listen to the Supreme Court, what's left?

- Where do you go next to get some.

- Yeah.

So it presents a really difficult situation for Ohio voters, because if their legislature isn't doing what they're supposed to do, then where do they turn?

- And the legislature said they're gonna ignore the Supreme Court regardless of what they say.

So, yeah.

- And I think I may have made this point previously on this broadcast, but I think it's one worth making again, which is the last six years of American political life have shown us the extent to which norms are how things function.

That, you know, you go back to 2000 in Bush versus Gore, and the Supreme Court, you know, decided that this case that had the effect of deciding the presidential election, and Al Gore gave a speech where he said, "I disagree with the decision, but, you know, the court has spoken.

On we go."

He had to go back to mend some fences, as he put it, back in Tennessee, and that was that.

He had a big party with, you know, Jon Bon Jovi and Tom Petty, (laughs) and things were over with.

Now when somebody doesn't like the decisions that are made by a fair process, and, you know, fair institutional structure, much like Andrew Jackson said about the Indian Removal Act, "Mr. Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it."

We just, you have situations where elected officials will say, "No, I will not obey the norm of obeying the courts."

And I think that's extremely problematic, and it's a slippery slope towards kind of lawlessness that I think is very dangerous.

- Yeah.

And even if you look at when, of course January 6th, another whole, you know, hours and hours could be spent on that, it turned out that there really wasn't much.

They're trying to rewrite some of that to give more direction to what happens if you have a situation similar to that, where if somebody just says, "Well I'm gonna ignore the Electoral College decision", and on, you know, when the Congress meets to do this, what's the enforcement to make you follow it?

There really isn't.

It was just assumed that you would, as you said, Supreme Court has made a decision, this has happened, I'm gonna move on.

That doesn't seem to be the way we, in some cases, roll anymore.

It's like, "Well, I don't like your decision and I'm not gonna stop.

I'm not gonna follow the convention, the norm of, 'Okay, I've lost.

I'm moving on.'

No, I'm gonna stand here and keep litigating."

Well we're gonna litigate, we're gonna keep going.

We're still working on the 2020 presidential election seems.

But that's how that goes.

Now with regard to redistrict during, and you know, very close to us, the 9th Congressional District, which was referred to in the previous iteration as the snake on the lake, has now been redesigned.

And it was pretty much a democratic district the way it was drawn out before.

Now it's much more competitive as part of this redrawing of that.

What does that stand?

Because that was, as said, pretty much a democratic district.

The person who'd been there, I think, had been somewhere in the 80's by the long, the longest serving Congress people there.

Now that's a sort of competitive district because the way it's been redrawn.

What does that mean right now?

Because two pretty much diametrically opposite candidates, and that one, you probably couldn't find two people more different.

- Well, I think with the way the 9th District had been drawn, it had been designed to pack Democrats into one district so they would not be in another district.

So it locked in democratic representation.

You have Marcy Kaptur who is the longest serving female representative in the House, and it picked up parts of Toledo, and parts of Cleveland, and put them in the same district.

So you had put all the Democrats there, and then you could have Republicans elsewhere.

When they redrew the districts, which again, the court has said, "These are not constitutional, but we're gonna go with it anyway."

They said that they redrew the districts to break that up.

They wanted to get Marcy Kaptur out of office, and so they drew her district, and what would be a Republican leaning district.

And so what you saw now, you still have Marcy Kaptur running to hold her seat, and you saw Republicans have a relatively competitive primary with two more traditional Republicans, and then one Republican who is much further to the right, I think was at January 6th, had aligned himself with Qanon, and he actually won the seat to the surprise of the other two more, or the primary.

Yeah.

So to the surprise of the other two, more traditional Republicans who were competing for it.

And so, you've ended up in a situation where you have Marcy Kaptur, who has been in a district for a long time, running against a very much newcomer Republican, who is not only ideologically opposed, but in recent weeks, has come out with, potentially, misrepresenting his military service, and assorted other factors.

- Now, again, I know we, and we go back to 2016, we were talking about the presidential election then, that usually would pretty much derail a candidacy if it turns out to be true, if it's accurate, all of that, that misrepresenting your military record used to be like the most obscene thing you could do as a candidate, well other things, but that was considered really, incredibly disrespectful for everybody who had served, and all that, but will that really have much effect?

I mean, you would think that it would, but then as you said, David, the conventions don't matter anymore.

The, what we think are the norms, don't follow anymore.

I mean, is that going?

How, we don't know, but how serious will that be?

Because you think, "Well, that'll be the end of that.

Well, no, maybe it won't be.

Maybe it'll be like, "Eh, whatever.

You know, everybody, all politicians lie.

So why are we surprised?"

I guess, maybe that's the attitude people have now.

- Well, I think Democrats think it's going to matter because there's been some allegations and evidence to suggest that, nationwide, Democrats have intervened in Republican primaries to encourage the most Trump-centric Maga-oriented candidate, because they think they have a better chance of beating that candidate.

The trouble with that is, they wanted Reagan to get the governor's nomination in California, and, I think it was, 65 or 66, and they were glad he got it, until he won, (Steve and David laugh) and he eventually became president.

So one lesson that the party's ought to bear in mind is that, you know, they don't know the other party's primary electorate and general electorate, as well as they know their own.

So getting involved in that kind of meddling might not be a good idea.

Now I don't know, or believe, that there was any meddling in the Republican primary in the 9th District.

And it just had two mainstream, moderate Republican candidates get, you know, outrun by a political novice, and candidate quality, then, becomes a factor.

So as we talked about it before in terms of, you know, gerrymandering and the structures that set the framework in which the campaign happens, the campaign does still matter.

And the Republicans are now saddled with a Republican nominee who was at January 6th.

Then the Kaptur commercials, and Democratic Party commercials have been brutal on that.

And who may have misrepresented his military service, which seems like a really big unforced error, since he in fact served honorably.

And there was no need.

- [Steve] To go to.

- Most people don't serve, and most of voters respect those who did.

So there was no need, you know, to aggrandize the service.

So it seems like a really big forced error on his point.

It was a chance for Republican pickup.

It still is, obviously, the chance for a Republican pickup, but I think that the balance is now shifted back toward Kaptur, especially with the big announcement of the $760 million investment by GM in Toledo, showing, you know, that, yeah.

- She can bring, yeah, she can bring the bacon back to, which still, which still is important.

We need to take a quick break.

We come back, we can talk a little more about that because difference between primary elections and general elections, we can touch on that a little bit to.

Back in just a moment, here on The Journal.

Thanks for staying with us on The Journal.

Our guests are Dr. Nicole Kalaf-Hughes and Dr. David Jackson, Bowling Green State University Department of Political Science.

You know, we've focused on the 9th District cause it's the one closest to us we're, you know, adjacent to it, and it's the one that's been reconfigured in a way that makes it competitive, whereas before, as I think as you said, Dr. Hughes, it was packed to be a democratic district.

That way, you weren't distributing democratic voters in other districts, making those competitive.

The difference, and I think Dr. Jackson, you touched on this, is the primaries are a lot different than the general election, and it's played out in the 9th with the Republic, cause obviously Marcy Kaptur and the Democrats not opposed, because she's an incumbent for the last, you know, 30 some years.

But it's a different group of voters.

And sometimes as you said, you'd like to think the parties know their own electorate better than the other party does, but in this case, that didn't happen, because you had two very establishment Republicans running against a newcomer.

Which, newcomers seem to be, that seems to be an advantage now, versus, "Well you're not a typical politician."

But, so how does that difference between a primary and a general, this is what you end up with sometimes, is an ex, well what some people would consider, an extreme candidate versus a mainstream candidate on the Republican side.

- Yeah, I think it's gonna be pretty typical of what we start seeing.

It's, with primaries, you're only campaigning to your party.

So if you're running as a Democrat, you're, it's Democrats who are gonna be voting, if you're running as a Republican, it's Republicans who are gonna be voting.

So you only have to appeal to them.

And historically, what we would see is that candidates would end up pretty far on the extremes, or just move out kind of to the sides where they're trying to pick up, kind of, some of the extreme voters, but then you'd swing back to the middle for the general election, because you have to appeal to the moderates to actually win whatever the seat is that you're running for.

We're not seeing that as much anymore.

So we're seeing more extreme candidates in the primaries getting the nominations, but then not able to, really, or not interested in, swinging back to the middle.

And in the general election, regardless of whether you're an established long-term candidate like Marcy Kaptur, or you're a complete political novice, you still have to appeal to the district as a whole to win.

And the 9th District isn't gerrymandered enough to lock it in for the Republicans without swinging back a little bit more to... - [Steve] To the center a little bit.

- to the center.

- Yeah.

- Because there are a lot of voters, who are either moderate Republicans, or slightly more conservative Democrats, who are not gonna go for someone who is so far to the left, or so far to the right.

And I think that's something, particularly on the right, with this candidate, is that they're going to struggle to move the campaign, to move it back.

And I think that's why you're seeing, statewide, Republicans reluctant to even comment on his military service, and you've started to see more, kind of, traditional Republicans, just not say a lot.

And it's a product of the rules that we have.

States that use different electoral systems, states that might start using ranked choice voting, where you get to kind of rank your preferences for the candidates, we'll see different outcomes.

But as long as we use, essentially, single member district plurality systems, you're going to, this is kind of what you're gonna get.

And that's where we are in Ohio.

- Well, and it's interesting you mentioned ranked voting, because there's mixed, some people don't like that either, because they don't like the outcome that came out of it in some cases, and maybe it'd be interesting to see if you went back and looked at that Republican primary and did ranked voting, to see if you could computer generate something and see whether it made a difference or not.

But it does leave an interesting, although I noticed that the Republican candidate is now saying, "Well, before I put on a tie, I was a working guy."

And he's much more mainstream looking.

Not that, you know, I know we're casting it to being extreme, but he doesn't, you know, he has some opinions that are a little different than maybe some people's.

So he is, he's sort of making an effort that, but the question is it too little, too late now?

- Well, clearly that image makeover attempt, was driven by the party believing it had a chance to win the district, and believing it had to appeal to moderate voters.

The word I've heard, is that a major media buy, that the Republican Party was planning for that district, has allegedly been canceled.

And I've seen media reports of that, which suggest that the allegations about the exaggeration of service may have caused the Republican Party to say, "We should probably spend our money somewhere else."

And a lot of the stuff we're talking about here is, of course, district specific, too.

So as my colleague pointed out, the 9th District isn't gerrymandered enough where you could overcome.

I mean, if it was a plus 20 Republican district.

It's a different situation.

Right?

Then also, we talked about the idea of newcomers and people who've had no experience.

- Right.

- That's something that I think is, is nearly unique in our society in that, when it comes to automobile repair or heart surgery, we want the person who has the most experience.

(laughs) - Yeah, the first time I've ever opened the hood on the car, you work on your engine.

- [David] What's, what's under there?

- That'll be a good idea.

- But somehow we tend to celebrate the political outsider, the novice.

You know, there's a long history in political science of, you know, political philosophy arguing that governing is an art and a skill just like anything else.

- [Steve] Experience should matter.

- [David] Experience, you know, should matter.

And I think it was an interesting situation, last week, where that announcement of the plant in Toledo was certainly being used... - [Steve] Classic.

- by the Kaptur campaign to say, "See experience matters.

See, knowing what you're doing matters."

- Yeah.

"I can work with people.

I've done this, yeah, for the benefit of the whole community.

It's not just a political thing," But it's interesting you mentioned that, because when I was talking with Karen Kasler last week, she said one of the things that statewide, the Democratic Party's trying to do is push the fact that there's been, in their mind, and there a lot of corruption in state government.

And she said, basically, that is not resonating at all.

And I said, "Well, is it because we just now expect our politicians to be corrupt?"

So it's like, "Well, what a surprise.

There's corruption in politics."

I mean, you wouldn't think it'd be that cynical, but then you start to wonder when you hear that, it's like, they're just sort of like, "Well yeah, we expect that kind of stuff to happen now."

And maybe it's that sort of way, too, because there's not the vetting process for candidates that maybe there used to be.

As you said, a newcomer can somehow take care of a couple of establishment Republicans, when long time connections were well connected statewide, locally had done everything as state representatives and state senators, had all those skills, and yet people went, "No, we're not interested in you.

We like this other guy who has done none of that."

So it's, you're right.

It's like, as we said, "Convention turned upside down, again.

- Well, philosophically, and practically the point you made earlier, just then, was about corruption and everybody's corrupt.

I think that's a slippery slope and a dangerous road to walk down, too.

If the electorate in the public, or anyone abandons the concept of truth, I think we're in a very dangerous position then, where you can say, "It doesn't matter who gets elected, everyone's equally corrupt."

Well, the fact of the matter is, everyone isn't equally corrupt.

And humans have the capacity, and should use it to, you know, make differentiations in all aspects of their lives, especially when they're choosing elected officials.

There are, in fact, differences.

And I'm not just speaking in terms of ideology or party, just some people are more corrupt than others.

(laughs) But we have the ability to discern that and should use that.

- Yeah, we would hope that we would have that.

We've got just a moment, and obviously, you know, we're gonna get together right before the November election again, and on Halloween, we'll record it on Halloween, it'll play back a few days later.

Right now, I mean we've just, I mean, is there any kind of feel for what's going to happen in the State of Ohio?

I know, obviously, we believe the Republicans gonna retain control of all the statewide offices.

Is there any reason to think that won't happen?

Any reason to think they won't control both both sides of the legislature when everything settles back in?

- All of the data I have seen would suggest that.

I don't think, and while I'm reluctant to predict, because I have been wrong in the past, all of the data I have suggest, would, shows that Republicans are gonna retain control of both Houses, and retain the governor's seat.

And I think the fact that the news reports I've seen have said that Governor DeWine is just, is choosing not to participate in any debates.

I think they're pretty confident of that, because I think they view participation in debates only as a negative.

And so I think the, both parties, are confident that.

- [Steve] Of what the outcome's going to be.

- At the state level.

- State level.

Right.

Okay.

Well, we're gonna have to leave it right there, I guess, but I said, we're gonna get back together in about another month or so, and see if anything's different then than it was the month before this.

You can check us out at wbgu.org, and, of course, you can watch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock, on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night, and good luck.

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