Flip4.org

In every even-numbered election year, all 99 seats in the Ohio House of Representatives are up for grabs.  Yet, while the election outcomes are so highly consequential to the daily lives of ordinary Ohio citizens, voters don’t go into the polling precincts on election day with nearly enough information.  Flip4.org is one tool that can be used to chip away at the enigma of state legislative election races, and I’m only too happy to make use of this tool.

Voters know that they haven’t been happy with the state of Ohio.  They’ve been dissatisfied with state laws.  They disagree with the state government about what the legislative priorities ought to be.  They absolutely deplore the quagmired economic conditions prevalent in Ohio.  Above all, the scandals of some high-profile Ohio politicians (from both major political parties) have made voters restless and in search of change (if they havent been so soured on politics to the point of giving up and staying home).

With all the voter dissatisfaction, however, the voters still haven’t been able to do their job right when it comes to electing the right state representatives.  Boundaries of state rep districts change every 10 years, as new census figures become available.  The state population has to be divided up into 99 equally populated sections.  There are a number of voters who don’t even know what state rep district they live in.  There are a number of voters who don’t even know who their own state rep is.  If they do know who their own state rep is, they often don’t know who the challenging candidates are in the primaries or in the general elections.  Some voters don’t even know what a state rep is and what a state rep does.  If they’re deeply disappointed in the direction Ohio is headed in, they really ought to know what to do to fix it, and, at a bare minimum, they ought to know the state rep candidates on their ballots, especially how those state rep candidates stack up to each other when it comes to their views on the issues and what their legislative priorities are.

Day in and day out, state representatives vote on issues.  That’s what legislation is.  Legislation is issues.  Too many newspapers and other media outlets try to cover Ohio House races on the basis of comparing biographies or resumes.  Such comparisons are entirely appropriate for executive and judicial branch election races.  Because executive branch offices are highly visible, the newspapers often give additional coverage to candidates for executive branch offices that explores their views on the issues.  Meanwhile, the legislative branch offices, because they’re so numerous, are too low profile for the newspapers to deliver more than a brief biographical blurb about the legislative candidates.  This is backwards.  It would be much more useful to know where legislative candidates stand on issues than it would to know where executive candidates stand on issues.  With mostly biographical info available in print about legislative candidates, but not positions on issues, voters wind up with a legislature of aristocrats, not a representative body of the people who will fashion state government to be by the people and for the people.  Successful lawyers and successful businesspeople dominate the ranks of the state legislature, but do they share the same priorities that ordinary Ohioans have?  Experience suggests that they might not.  Experience even suggests that they might be more perplexed about the issues than bloggers are.

Flip4.org, though, can be a tool for drilling down to discover the most useful information, and then sharing it, so that informed choices can be made.  We can discover who’s worthy of our support.  We can discover who’s worthy of our resources.  We can let everybody else know what we’ve discovered.  Then, we can get out the vote, and retake the legislature.

Without the kind of information that will be made available on this blog, voters will continue their hit-and-miss approach to voting for state reps.  Among those hit-and-miss approaches are: 1) voting for the familiar name, whether familiar by way of incumbency or by way of publicity and advertising; 2) voting according to party affiliation in the general election, but voting totally blindly in the party primaries; 3) voting the same way in downticket races (where one doesn’t know the candidates) that one did in top-of-the-ticket races (where one does know at least something); and 4) not voting in downticket races (and letting everybody else decide the outcome).

The current Ohio House district boundaries were drawn by Republicans back in 2002.  The Democrats captured a 53-46 majority in the 2008 general election, but it will not be difficult for Republicans to recapture the Ohio House of Representatives in 2010. I’m optimistic about our chances.

Looking at the long-term, however, Republicans may have a very hard time prevailing in the state rep races beginning in 2012, depending on who is in control drawing state legislative district boundaries in response to the 2010 U.S. Census.  For a political party to gain the advantage in redistricting, that party must hold at least two of these three elected seats in the state’s executive branch:  Ohio Governor, Ohio Auditor, and Ohio Secretary of State.  Currently, Republicans only occupy the Ohio Auditor’s office.  All three of those statewide positions will be up for election in 2010.  Can Republicans hold on to the Auditor’s office and capture one of the remaining two in 2010?  That will be the key if the GOP wants to maintain an edge in state rep races through the next decade.

So, what happened that allowed the Democrats to capture the Ohio House of Representatives in districts drawn by Republicans?  Did the coattails of Barack Obama have something to do with it?  Did internal strife within the GOP have something to do with it?  Did the GOP have the wrong leadership in the Ohio House of Representatives?  Yes, coattails had something to do with it, but Obama won’t be on the 2010 ballot.  Yes, internal strife within the GOP had something to do with it, and that strife continues with the upcoming retirement of the GOP’s state executive chairman, and lots of heated debate among righty bloggers, as well as lots of soul-searching among the party faithful (hopefully, we’ll get a few wrinkles ironed out soon).  Yes, the GOP had the wrong leadership in the Ohio House of Representatives, but the leadership has changed hands, and I’m very upbeat about William Batchelder.  If we can put the GOP back into the majority in the Ohio House in 2010, I’m very happy to say that Batchelder is the kind of person we can trust with that responsibility and power.  I intend to write more about Batchelder in the future, so that blog readers can feel at least a spark of confidence in who is leading us once we manage to flip those 4 state rep seats.

Flipping four state rep seats in Ohio in 2010 is very doable.  My thanks goes out to those who created this website.  This is absolutely where Ohio Republicans need to put their focus if they want to improve our state.

More to come . . .