Inside the Ohio Democratic Congressional heist
Ohio Democrats walked away with a deal that would have seemed impossible as little as month ago. They can thank a "small group of people."
Last week, I suspected the worst when The Rooster broke the news that Ohio Democratic legislative leaders had struck a bipartisan deal for congressional maps.
But a funny thing happened after reviewing the map with a Republican source. My gut said it wasn’t a disaster—far from it, in fact.
That original feeling only solidified over the weekend after conversations with insider Republicans and Democrats who spoke to The Rooster on background.
I now have a firm belief that the Democrats agreed to a map that would have been dumb and reckless to disregard, given the national redistricting fight.
I understand that’s a tough pill to swallow for my activist friends who wanted to brawl. It’s not something that I write lightly.
Especially since House Minority Leader Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) and Senate Minority Leader Tricky Nickie Antonio (D-Lakewood), by definition, enshrined a Republican-gerrymandered congressional map into state law until 2031.
A map that Republicans will be able to call “bipartisan,” despite only two Democrats in Ohio agreeing to the deal.
Isaacsohn and Antonio didn’t cover themselves in glory at the vote meeting, either. Antonio stayed silent, and Isaacsohn offered feint, generic praise to the activists that had come from across Ohio to register their disgust.
As I wrote last week, any activist anger is righteous, justifiable, and understandable, and neither Democratic leader met the moment during the final voting meeting.
It was unsurprising, given that current Democratic leadership (on state and federal levels) doesn’t seem to understand the furor pulsating through the base of the party—not only at Trump, but at milquetoast Democrats who continue to conduct business as usual.
And this bipartisan deal, on its face, is business as usual.
It’s the product of Ohio’s faux anti-gerrymandering system, where seven (in this case, white) politicians can dictate legislative maps to a state of 11 million through negotiations that occur in secret until the last minute possible.
However, this system is the only one we have. And given the constraints and stacked deck arrayed against them, the Democrats delivered a map that they never thought possible until the last minute.
For that, they can thank Senate President Rob McColley and “a small group of people.”
Here’s what I’ve been able to glean through conversations with five sources with first-hand knowledge of the negotiations, the ad-hoc pressure campaign to torpedo the deal, and how the Republicans mustered a unanimous vote on a map that doesn’t meet their national needs:
Speaker Matt Huffman, who does not give a damn about federal redistricting, outsourced the gruntwork to Senate President McColley’s team.
In fact, according to sources on both sides, McColley’s team, led by Senate Chief of Staff John Barron and their de facto map guru, Budget Director Ray DiRossi, would send maps to Huffman, who then would present them to the Democrats.
U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was bluffing about having financial backing for a statewide referendum effort already lined up. One top Democrat admitted that their team called Jeffries’ office and got him to say the magic words in order to “plant” the story in Punchbowl News.
The gambit worked like a charm. One House Republican told The Rooster on Sunday that Leader Jeffries had his Republican colleagues “running scared” over the potential referendum.
Curiously, however, Huffman admitted to the Democrats during negotiations that they would also have a solid legal case against a Republican-only map, which could have frozen the current map for two years during a protracted legal dispute.
Contrary to what I reported last week, Ohio Democratic Party Chairwoman Kathleen Clyde and “donor table” head Misha Barnes backed a referendum despite questions about funding, the reality of gathering 250,000 signatures throughout the winter, possible ratfucking from Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and the MAGA-fied Ohio Supreme Court looming to adjudicate a new map after a successful referendum.
Clyde and Barnes had ulterior motives for the referendum. They saw it as an easy way to weaponize volunteers for future Democratic campaigns, which helps explain Barnes blasting Isaacsohn and Antonio in a “cover your ass email” shortly after the vote. She stoked the angry sentiment for professional gain, despite knowing the inner contours of the deal better than almost anyone.
Isaacsohn is obviously denying The Rooster’s report on a side deal with Congresswoman Emilia Sykes in exchange for a future campaign favor from the influential Congressional Black Caucus. The problem for him is that Sykes’ team isn’t working as hard as he is in that regard.
Regardless, nobody disputes that Democrats had a choice between emboldening Sykes’ district or keeping Cincinnati Congressman Greg Landsman’s seat roughly the same.
Isaacsohn maintains that the optics of protecting a Black woman, rather than a white Jewish guy who is also from Cincinnati, was an easier sell to House Democratic colleagues.
Even setting aside Isaacsohn throwing his local Congressman under the bus, it was still a bold decision given that Sykes, despite being a Black woman, is the least effective Ohio Democrat on Capitol Hill for a list of reasons that would require another blog post.
Isaacsohn, a little naively, wanted Congressional Democrats, statehouse colleagues, and organized labor to publicly back the deal. He got none of that, with Congressman Landsman saying, “Don’t worry, Dani. I’m not going to fuck you,” after moments of silent reflection upon the demand.
Multiple Cincinnati sources confirm that Landsman, in fact, is trying to (figuratively) fuck Isaacsohn, with one Southwestern Ohio player advising Isaacsohn to “go into witness protection.”
While that feud could reverberate through Cincy politics for years to come, the consensus from one Democratic leader was that Landsman will be fine, “even if he has to work a little harder” for re-election. And once Landsman secures that win next year, the leader predicted that any anger against Isaacsohn will dissipate.
In that vein, Isaacsohn also sought public statements from his House Democratic colleagues in southwestern Ohio. None of them agreed to that except for State Rep. Ashley Bryant, whom Isaacsohn just got appointed to the Ohio House via a backroom deal with Bryant’s sister, an influential member of the Hamilton County Democratic Party.
Never thinking a favorable deal was possible until it materialized, the Democratic consensus in the final weeks of negotiation was that no agreement was possible and that continuing to establish the requisite public record was necessary should the battle land in court.
That proved unnecessary when, in the final hours, Republicans shocked the Democrats by presenting a compromised map that didn’t cross any of their pre-stated red lines. It’s a map that becomes even more friendly when Donald Trump, a unique force in American politics, is removed from the partisan index.
Given the national redistricting fight and staring down the barrel of a potential 13R-2D map, national Democrats withdrew any support for a referendum. They pushed for an agreement, arguing that those two to three extra Democratic seats were an unforeseen bounty that could play a pivotal role in deciding control of the House of Representatives in 2026, and with it, American democracy.
So what changed? Why did Ohio Republicans balk at jamming a 13R-2D map down our throats, as U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno predicted they would earlier this year?
Why did they act like “a bunch of pussies,” as one Senate Republican quipped to The Rooster over the weekend?
For insight, we turn to Kevin Coughlin, who would have been the Republican candidate in the old 13th District if his party hadn’t abandoned him by redrawing the district in a way that assured national Republicans wouldn’t spend what’s needed to defeat Congresswoman Sykes.
The Rooster highlighted the most telling sentence in Coughlin’s statement:
Coughlin is 100% right that “a small group of people” dealt a severe blow to Trump’s hopes of retaining the U.S. House of Representatives next year.
Outside of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur in the 9th District, the 13th District was seen as the best pickup opportunity for Republicans, who would have spent accordingly.
In that district, they had a venerable candidate running for the second consecutive cycle after a marginal defeat in 2024. Republicans had the infrastructure and opposition research in place.
It was such a pivotal race that, roughly a month ago, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam threw a fundraiser for Coughlin. State Rep. Mike Dovilla (R-Berea) and State Senator Tom Patton (R-Strongsville) were listed as hosts and donors.
And the Republicans threw all that money and infrastructure in the trash in exchange for an ostensibly more winnable First District, where they will face a stiffer incumbent in Landsman and have no clear-cut candidate or party infrastructure in place.
It’s a decision that makes no strategic sense, unless you’re familiar with the aforementioned cabal of political perverts and their ultimate motivations.
Enter Senate President Rob McColley and the New 9th District
As The Rooster reported on Oct. 11, the political winds had shifted on Senate President Rob McColley in recent weeks.
Once seen as the likely Lieutenant Governor nominee on a ticket with Vivek Ramaswamy, McColley had been making covert moves to declare for Congress in Ohio’s Ninth District.
While nothing could stop him from running for the office while living outside the district, the scuttlebutt was that McColley would wait until his home turf of Henry County got added to the Ninth District in the latest redistricting cycle.
And wouldn’t you know it? That’s precisely what happened.
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