COLUMBUS, Ohio – The Democratic National Committee plans to hold a “virtual roll call” to nominate the president Joe Biden before the party’s August convention — a tactic intended to spare Biden the growing danger of being left out of Ohio’s general election.
Biden’s campaign and the DNC announced the move Tuesday as the Legislature opened a special session here. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine ordered the issue resolved.
The Democratic Convention — where the party traditionally nominates its candidates for president and vice president — is scheduled nearly two weeks after Ohio’s Aug. 7 deadline to certify candidates. Republican state lawmakers, who hold supermajorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate, have been reluctant to pass a bill to ease Biden’s deadline without a vote on unrelated campaign finance legislation that Democrats have described as a ” poison pill’.
Democrats “will land this plane on our own,” DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison said in a statement. “Through a virtual roll call, we will ensure that Republicans cannot undermine our democracy through incompetence or partisan ploys, and that Ohioans can exercise their right to vote for the presidential candidate of their choice.”
The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee is expected to vote on a resolution on June 4 to allow the virtual roll call. All DNC members will then vote on the resolution in the following weeks, and once it is passed, a virtual nomination process can take place. Party officials compare the approach to the virtual convention held in 2020 during the Covid pandemic.
“Once again, Republican politicians in the statehouse are playing politics with our democracy by trying to prevent Ohio voters from choosing who they want to be president, but Democrats will not compromise Ohioans’ ability to hold their government accountable for access to the presidential election trade-in,” said Liz. Walters, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said in a statement.
Nickie Antonio, the Democratic leader in the Senate, announced the change in strategy at a news conference on Tuesday.
“The first thing we’ve done is we’ve asked the Biden campaign to issue a statement, which they will do today, assuring the people of the state of Ohio that Joe Biden will be on the ballot because they are in a vote will come. alternative direction to find a solution that does not involve the Ohio Legislature,” Antonio said.
The Biden campaign and the DNC had opposed such a solution for weeks. Ohio’s certification deadlines have historically come before both parties’ nominating conventions, and in those cases both parties have resolved the issue gracefully and without rancor.
But state Senate President Matt Huffman said this month that many Republican members in safe districts opposed a standalone bill because they worried their voters would see it as an undeserved endorsement of Biden. The Senate instead, in a party-line vote, proposed a bipartisan bill that would put Biden on the ballot while banning foreign money in campaigns for state ballot initiatives.
The House ignored the bill, leading to the impasse that DeWine tried to break last week with his call for the special session. In addition to specifically asking for a solution to the Biden ballot issue, DeWine also asked lawmakers to address the ban on foreign money, plunging the impasse deeper into partisan politics that shows no signs of abating.
Democrats have countered that such a ban is unnecessary because of existing federal laws and that other Republican Party-backed provisions in the measure would limit citizens’ power to request legislative initiatives and constitutional amendments through the ballot box. A Democratic-led coalition prevailed last year in codifying abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution. And progressives are looking forward to a redistricting reform initiative before the November elections.
“Look, what they fear most right now is the citizens, not the politicians,” State House Minority Leader Allison Russo told reporters on Tuesday.
It was not immediately clear what impact the plans to nominate Biden would actually have on the special legislative period, which will last at least Thursday. Some lawmakers would like to see a permanent solution that prevents both parties from having to work around nomination deadline issues in the future.
“Well, I really don’t know the answer to that because I think what I heard was there was going to be a virtual meeting and they were going to say Joe Biden is the nominee,” Huffman told reporters when asked about the DNC -plan. “And I think if that happens, it certainly changes the issue.”
Huffman acknowledged that lawmakers were unlikely to resolve the issue on their own this week, even after the Senate passed legislation Tuesday addressing both issues. The House has submitted separate proposals and it remains difficult to coordinate the work of both chambers.
“I won’t put myself in the optimistic category,” Huffman said.
While DeWine noted the DNC proposal, he issued his own statement asserting that he still expects the special session to produce legislation.
“As I said before, we don’t want to leave something as fundamental as having the sitting President of the United States on the ballot up to others when it can – and should – be done legislatively. It’s the right thing to do,” he said. . “For these reasons, it is important that a bill or several bills that implement these common-sense measures reach my desk immediately this week.”
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
