Beneath the Boy Scout demeanor of the Louisiana congressman with horn-rimmed glasses, lies a shrewd political operator who finessed his way to the most powerful position in Congress. But while U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson may disarm some with his unimposing pleasantness, the Shreveport Republican is consumed with maintaining and growing one-party domination.
To that end, he’s gracing Ohio Tuesday night to headline a Cleveland fundraiser in support of the gerrymandered dominance of Ohio Republicans and to boost their coming disinformation campaign to defeat an anti-gerrymandering referendum on the November ballot. The citizens’ initiative to end the stranglehold of political autocracy, manufactured through distorted voting district maps, would replace a Republican-majority redistricting commission with a citizen-led, multi-party redistricting panel without political ties.
The Citizens Not Politicians amendment would boot career politicians from the process of drawing state legislative and congressional voting lines because of their notorious history of putting their thumbs on the scale with lopsided district maps drawn to favor themselves. That’s what the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission did. Repeatedly.
Republicans on the redistricting commission including Gov. Mike DeWine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, Ohio Sen. President Matt Huffman and former Ohio House Speaker Bob Cupp (before the latter two rotated out with other party members) consistently violated voter-approved redistricting reform amendments in the Ohio Constitution with unconstitutional voting districts designed to keep a GOP lock on power. Their lawlessness was the last straw for many Ohioans who had demanded fair not fixed districts.
But competitive districts that are won on the strength of ideas (not manipulated mapmaking ) are too risky for Republicans only concerned about increasing their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives or keeping their supermajorities in the Ohio Statehouse. Speaker Johnson, DeWine, LaRose and Huffman are terrified of voter-centric redistricting reforms that threaten political power sustained through gerrymandering.
Johnson and panicked Ohio Republicans don’t trust voters and certainly not robust district competition to serve the public interest. They fear a functioning democracy. They can’t fathom citizens owning their self-governance by crafting truly representational, nonpartisan voting boundaries without predetermined election outcomes.
They depend on “safe” districts drawn around select demographics to rack up guaranteed wins. In Ohio they prefer subversion to persuasion any day and gerrymandering does the trick. Many gerrymandered politicians never face any opposition at the polls. None. That’s what is so insidious about gerrymandered districts created to cocoon power—not check it. Johnson never had to court voters with better ideas to become a state rep or a congressman from his “safe” district. The fix was in. Johnson assumed power mostly uncontested and ascended to the speakership without his zealotry as a theocratic extremist ever checked.
Johnson operates in public office without the burden of accountability. He doesn’t need to be answerable to get elected. The fix is in with how his district is drawn. He is insulated from electoral liabilities associated with a far-right legislator or an election-denying, coup-plotting congressman swept into positions of authority on the potency of gerrymandering.
Johnson isn’t afraid of losing power in his partisan-rigged district. But he and his Ohio cohorts are scared to death of citizens asserting power over them. The speaker’s razor thin majority in the U.S. House and the super-sized GOP majorities in Columbus rely on the status quo of partisan-skewed gerrymandered districts surviving in perpetuity.
Relinquishing control of voting district boundaries to an independent citizens redistricting commission — committed to fairer district maps — is out of the question for the Republican kingpins and architects of Ohio’s unconstitutional legislative and congressional districts. They enlisted help from a prominent Capitol Hill powerbroker — with his own affinity for preserving gerrymandered districts in his home state — to fund an aggressive attack against the Ohio initiative to give citizens power over political heavyweights to implement effective redistricting reform for the people.
Expect ugly. Like the dirty campaigns high-profile Republicans waged last year against majority voting rights and abortion access. Expect the governor, elections chief and legislative leaders to keep lying through their teeth about the anti-gerrymandering amendment promoting (not curbing) gerrymandering and how (ironically) only politicians can really do redistricting fairly.
Johnson sings from the same self-serving hymnal. Earlier this year he urged the Louisiana legislature to ignore a court order (sound familiar?) to draw a second majority Black congressional district in the state because he wanted to protect the Republicans’ razor thin majority in the U.S. House. So what if Black residents — who make up roughly a third of Louisiana’s population — only had one Black lawmaker? Fairness and representational equality to increase the voting power of particular groups must take a backseat to maintaining and growing one party domination. It’s all about control.
That’s why Johnson flitted into Ohio to raise money and rally Republicans intent on hoarding manufactured power at all costs to the “one-person, one-vote” equality principle that gerrymandering defeats. But the sly Boy Scout and Ohio’s unprincipled GOP hoarders underestimate the people who rule with equal political authority. We do not suffer fools gladly.
Surely the hundreds of thousands of Ohio citizens who signed the redistricting amendment to get it on the fall ballot made that abundantly clear.
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