Requiem of the hog

The Republican junta struck back on Tuesday night.

Photo by Michael Starkie on Unsplash

The hog voter is dead. Long live the hog voter.

Last year, hog voters defeated an attempt to dilute the power of our vote in statewide ballot initiatives. A little over three months later, we unwound decades of anti-abortion work by enshrining reproductive rights in the State Constitution.

Oh, and we legalized recreational marijuana, as well.

No small things, to put it bluntly. But we appeared poised to deliver a knockout blow to the Republican junta by banning gerrymandering through Issue 1.

Well, we fell short last night. As Ohio Senate Majority Communications Director John Fortney said to me a couple of weeks ago: “Pigs get fat, and hogs get slaughtered.”

A couple weeks ago, I was talking to someone from the Citizens Not Politicians campaign. They said, if the election were a football game, the anti-gerrymandering side would be favored by 2.5 points.

“It’s going to be close, either way,” they stressed.

Well, I guess that’s why they were paid professionals, and I’m a political blogger who certainly won’t be earning a tenure-track position in the Ohio State Political Science Department any time soon.

Early last night, Ohio Auditor Keith Faber predicted that Issue 1 would “go down in flames.” And given our advantage in fundraising and pre-election polling, it’s hard to characterize the defeat any other way. I’m just thankful that Faber didn’t take my offer last week to bet $1 on the outcome because, given how five of my six bold predictions also went down in flames, I would be in bankruptcy court this morning.

I’ll have to have some conversations with folks about what went wrong. But I suspect I vastly underrated the effect of Secretary of State Frank LaRose and the Ohio Ballot Board ratfucking the ballot language to make it seem the issue would enact gerrymandering rather than ban it.

Tactically speaking, we probably erred by pushing the amendment during the presidential cycle, with Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, no less. It was also probably no help that the cycle also featured the most expensive Senate race in American history, which inflated the television advertising market.

We clearly didn’t do a good enough job of piercing the noise to make it clear it was YES on Issue 1 to BAN gerrymandering.

The good news is the ballot initiative isn’t going anywhere, and it’s not like the concept of gerrymandering will soon become popular.

The truth is, we were going to have to vote on this issue again, as the Republicans assuredly would have put the question back on the ballot next year to defeat a hostile takeover of their ill-gotten power.

Given the circumstances, I didn’t reach out to anyone with Citizens Not Politicians last night. But I’ll be doing so over the next few days to gauge the possibility of running the question back before voters.

I pray this isn’t the final result on the question.

Sayanora, Sherrod!

Earlier this year, I said Sherrod Brown was cooked regardless of his opponent in November.

But I thought nobody was helped more by Joe Biden exiting the race than Brown.

Brown’s campaign also made no secret of wanting luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno as his opponent, whom the Brown campaign thought they could define. And I thought they did a pretty good job at that.

Do I have my criticisms of Brown’s campaign? Sure. I don’t think “work is cool” is a good message coming from a guy who was an elected official before he graduated from Yale Law School.

I didn’t like how he basically ignored the racist fearmongering against Haitian immigrants in Springfield. And it was always a gambit that he could tout all the times he agreed with President Business Deals and not alienate loyal Democratic voters.

But given the electorate, I understand why he probably felt it was a move he had to make.

However, I am glad that I swore off political “watch parties” years ago because I might have relapsed on the vodka if I were at an ostensible Brown victory party last night ,and I saw the incompetent potato that is Mayor Suburbs take the podium instead:

This tweet got worse with every sentence.

That’s a drop-off the Grand Canyon couldn’t accommodate.

Still, I at least tilt my cap to Brown for standing his ground and making the Republicans spend a mountain of dark money and cryptocurrency to unseat him. He is probably the last statewide Democrat we will have for a long, long time because…

The suburbs let us down.

Photo by petr sidorov on Unsplash

Four years ago, I warned against the Democrats believing the suburbs could be a reliable voting bloc. But, like during most of those days, I was drunk. And Joe Biden managed to defeat Trump, anyway.

I thought that trend would accelerate in the suburbs, especially in Franklin County, where the population is more diverse than you might think. Given that Ohio’s urban cores have stopped turning out en masse, it was worth rolling the dice.

But according to The Election Oracle, the big story was that Democrats didn’t increase their margins in any of the suburbs. The Oracle has an extensive missive coming that I’ll restack in the Substack app and link in tomorrow’s column.

The stonewalling in the suburbs spelled trouble for my predictions in a state that Donald Trump would always carry. And I probably overestimated the effect of abortion rights voters given that Ohio settled that question in 2023—though we’ll see if that’s actually the case given that Ohio stacked the Supreme Court with Republicans in this cycle, as well.

Thank you, Marcy Kaptur!

I said before the night began that Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District race was the only one that could hurt me.

I couldn’t stomach State Rep. Derek Merrin (R-Monclova Twp.), who is probably the most reviled member of the Ohio House, beating the longest-serving woman in Congressional history in Marcy Kaptur (D-Toledo).

It wasn’t looking good for a long, long time. And then, a little after midnight, with 100 percent of precincts reporting, Kaptur held a 1,200-vote lead over “Mr. Mayor.”

I want to shout out to Libertarian candidate Tom Pruss. It’s weird as Hell being on the right side of a race featuring a no-chance third-party candidate, and I gotta say—it feels a lot better than the other way.

Yes, this result will almost assuredly be challenged and recounted, but patriots remain firmly in control in Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District.

And if the hog voter died as a concept last night… I take solace in the fact that the hog voters died in defense of Congresswoman Kaptur in a seat drawn by Republicans for other Republicans to win.

They’re now 0-for-2!

It’s not looking good for the Coconut Woman!

I’m writing this dispatch a little after 1 a.m. Nothing is official yet… but it’s not looking good for Vice President Kamala Harris.

It’s hard to note that the Democrats seemed to have some mojo when they were calling Republicans weird and joking about J.D. Vance fucking couches. But then the Democratic consultants got involved and showed why they are, perhaps, the lowest lifeform in politics.

Overall, I thought she ran a good campaign, even if I was baffled by her constant touring with former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney and touting the endorsement of her father, who very well could be the Antichrist.

But the proof is in the pudding. She didn’t run a good campaign, given that it ain’t looking good despite her sizable fundraising advantage and organization.

Tell me some more good news…

• Central Ohio passed the LinkUs initiative, triggering a massive step forward in the region’s otherwise lackadaisical mass transit system. I can rest easy knowing that within a decade, I’ll be speeding down Broad Street in a Bus Rapid Transit lane to a still-gerrymandered Statehouse.

• Franklin County Democrats Mark Sigrist and Crystal Lett flipped two Republican Ohio House seats.

• Hamilton County Democrats finally flipped the County Prosecutor’s office, with Connie Pillich defeating incumbent Melissa Powers.

This is a bleak list, to be sure.

Given that, at the time of this writing, Harris appears to be going in the blender… you’re probably vacillating between anger and hopelessness.

That’s fine! Allow yourself a couple of days to work through your emotions. And I would advise that you don’t bury them under a torrent of alcohol and/or mind-altering drugs. I’ve probably done more of that than you will in two lifetimes, and I’ll be the first to admit that you’ll only compound your problems.

My advice would be, after giving yourself a break for a couple days, focus on the things you can impact around you. Join an organization. Find somewhere to volunteer. Coach a youth team. You get an idea.

It’s easy to get lost in a national disaster, or even the one in Ohio. But if you look around and take stock of your life, you will realize there are many things to be thankful for. You will probably find many people in your neighborhood who can use material aid or your specific set of skills.

The fight would always continue, no matter how Issue 1 or the national election went last night. One election was never going to propel us to a communist utopia, though it would have been a lot cooler if it did.

Don’t get lost in the sauce, and don’t let the results of one election disillusion you to the point of cynicism and hopelessness. And never, ever let them take your sense of humor.

Let’s lick our wounds and regroup for the Lame Duck Session later this month. Sure, it’s depressing to think about, but multiple groups of marginalized communities could be on the chopping block.

Don’t let them down by checking out. The better days ahead won’t be given; they will have to be earned.

THOSE WMDs. After their son came out, this Christian couple went into a closet of their own… The story of a haunting, a kidnapping and an international incident… The Americans preparing for a second Civil War… A rock-star researcher spun a web of lies—and nearly got away with it… The real-life bank heist that reads like an Oceans Eleven sequel.