In this week's episode of Snollygoster, Ohio's politics podcast from WOSU, hosts Mike Thompson and Steve Brown consider how the state can hold primaries this Spring when district boundaries are still not defined. OSU law professor Ned Foley joins the show.
A game of "chicken"
In the past week, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected the Redistricting Commission’s second attempt at drawing a map for Ohio House and Senate districts. The court said the commission once again failed to create a map that reflects the state’s political division.
The majority opinion said the commission chose to change the first rejected map as little as possible to preserve as much political partisan favoritism as could be salvaged from the first invalidated map. The court gave the commission until February 17 to come up with another map.
The Ohio primary is only twelve weeks away and it has become pretty clear the maps must have a mix of legislative districts that match Ohio’s voting patterns of 54% Republican to 46% Democrat to pass muster.
The question remains: What happens if the commission decides to ignore or refuse to comply with the Ohio Supreme Court’s orders?
Snollygoster of the week
Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene went viral when she tweeted, "Not only do we have the DC jail which is the DC gulag, but now we have Nancy Pelosi’s gazpacho police spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work that we do, spying on our staff and spying on American citizens.”
Gazpacho: that delicious, cold tomato-based soup. We have to assume she meant “Gestapo,” which is more than a little problematic since it compares Pelosi to Nazi Germany.
Send questions and comments to snollygoster@wosu.org.