Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and a writer at Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
It seemed like the final days of the legislative process before a long, quiet summer, but the Ohio General Assembly was in turmoil last week, passing measures big and small that should have been resolved long ago.
Still, as a pure study of human nature, there’s nothing like watching the legislature try to squeeze what should have been six months of legislation into a few hectic sessions in late June, scheduled to end before Independence Day so that the state legislators can appear in parliament. hometown parades.
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People sometimes compare the ‘process’ to making sausage. That’s downright unfair to sausage makers, whose products, unlike those of the Legislature, must at least pass inspection.
As others have eloquently reported, perhaps no General Assembly in decades has been less productive than the one now convening.
Keeping the far right in check – for now
Some of that is structural.
Although the House of Representatives consists of 67 Republicans and 32 Democrats, the Democrats have power that is disproportionate to their numbers.
The reason: There is a split among the 67 Republicans, with opponents of the Republican caucus and allies of Republican Speaker Jason Stephens, from Kitts Hill in Lawrence County, winning the gavel in the House thanks to votes from Democrats in the House.
And in order to keep the gavel and not upset his de facto Democratic allies, Stephens has, it seems, reined in the far-right faction of Republicans in the House of Representatives, a vocal group that is not enthusiastic about anything, except about the past.
Meanwhile, the Senate, led by President Matt Huffman, a Republican from Lima, tends to be more conservative; Republicans are largely united because in the Senate, Matt Huffman often seems to get what Matt Huffman wants — a fact not lost on the Statehouse’s busy corporate lobbies, who are always pushing for bills or amendments to advance private interests, and who prefer results over promises when it comes to legislation in Columbus.
(That’s the case in a state whose per capita personal income last equaled that of the nation in 1969 and, as noted here previously, has been declining ever since.
Voters are distracted from that fact by the General Assembly’s politically convenient habit of pitting Ohioans against each other — on issues like abortion, sexuality and gender identity.)
And now Huffman, who is term-limited from the Senate, will return to the House of Representatives in January in the fight to wrest his speakership from fellow Republican Stephens.
Anti-Stephens House Republicans have won control of the House GOP caucus’ campaign fund, what’s left of it, in a legal battle that the House anti-Stephens faction won and lost.
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If you’re Republican Gov. Mike DeWine with 30 months left in your governorship, you can expect to find yourself in choppy waters at best in the Ohio Senate and House in 2025 and 2026, no matter how the Huffman-Stephens battle plays out.
Piting Ohioans against each other instead of addressing real problems
At the same time, the intraparty clawing and kneading over the 2026 statewide Ohio tickets from both the Republican and Democratic parties will divert attention from the Statehouse from issues that continue to demand attention — school funding, property taxes and energy rates, gerrymandering of General Assembly districts — to sensationalist “issues” and policy gimmicks.
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As things stand on Capitol Square today, even the most jaded Statehouse bystander probably longs for the era when the point of the game was to get things done, not just score points to make headlines and attract invitations to talk shows.
But don’t worry, before it went home, the General Assembly was preparing to give Ohio voters billions of dollars in gifts in the form of local construction projects — “gifts” that recipients, not donors, will long appreciate pay after today’s General Assembly has retired with a nice pension and without regrets.
On the eve of Independence Day 2024, and what will likely be the most momentous presidential election since Lincoln’s in 1860, that is the wonderful world of contemporary Ohio politics: nostalgia for the past, indifference to the future and devotion to the status quo .
It’s a great life – if you know the right people.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com
This article originally appeared in The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio Governor Mike DeWine should expect some very choppy waters ahead
