MENU
SECTIONS
OTHER
CLASSIFIEDS
CONTACT US / FAQ
Advertisement
Redrawn boundaries of the 9th District forced two longtime congressional representatives — former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, center, and U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) — to run against each other in a nasty primary battle.
5
MORE

How GOP gerrymandering cracked northwest Ohio and what happens next

THE BLADE

How GOP gerrymandering cracked northwest Ohio and what happens next

When Stephanie White moved here a decade ago, her home in Sylvania placed her squarely in a blue congressional district encompassing a majority of Lucas County.

But by 2012, Sylvania and the western two-thirds of Ohio’s sixth largest county had been removed from the 9th Congressional District. Instead of Marcy Kaptur, Toledo’s longtime Democratic U.S. House member, suburban Sylvania would be represented by GOP Rep. Bob Latta of Bowling Green.

In the last round of post-census redistricting, the 9th District lost half of Ottawa and Erie counties, and was stretched like Silly Putty in a slender, droopy line from Toledo to western Cleveland — giving it the infamous nickname “Snake on the Lake.”

Advertisement

Voters like Ms. White, who have watched the 9th District creep farther east over the last three decades, were nonetheless shocked by its new contours.

Tim Ryan speaks during the Iowa Democratic Party's Hall of Fame Celebration on June 9 in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
Liz Skalka
What you need to know about Ohio's Tim Ryan before debates

“The numbers and things, I’m not an expert on all that,” said Ms. White, a 43-year-old forklift operator and Democratic union organizer. “But you look at [the district] and say, ‘Why did they do this?’ Why is this wavy and shaped like this? Why isn’t Lucas County a whole county? Why isn’t Cuyahoga [County]?”

The answers to Ms. White’s questions are laid out in the legal challenge to Ohio’s congressional map. Last month, a U.S. District Court in Cincinnati struck down the map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander drawn by GOP state officials and national political operatives to cement an unwavering 12-4 majority for House Republicans.
 

“Performing our analysis district by district, we conclude that the 2012 map dilutes the votes of Democratic voters by packing and cracking them into districts that are so skewed toward one party that the electoral outcome is predetermined,” the judges wrote.

Republicans argue that while they’ve dominated Ohio’s congressional map, the state has also been trending redder. President Trump won here in 2016, and the midterms ushered a slate of GOP officials into statewide elected office. In an interview last month, Republican Attorney General Dave Yost said, “If gerrymandering were the sole cause for what’s perceived as disproportional representation in the congressional delegation, you would expect to see a different outcome — a much more competitive outcome — in the non-districted statewide elections.”

Advertisement

Democrats, meanwhile, cite the 47 percent of ballots cast in 2018 congressional races for their candidates as proof of a lopsided map that disadvantages voters.

Ohio’s gerrymandering case is now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court, which by the end of the month is expected to rule on a map drawn by Democrats in Maryland and one drawn by Republicans in North Carolina. But observers are skeptical the high court — with a new conservative majority after two appointments by President Trump — will use this opportunity to rein in the kind of extreme partisan gerrymandering that has long been performed by both parties.

“[Democrats] have been complaining since about 2012, but never fessed up to having an opportunity to perhaps fix it,” said Mark Wagoner, a former state senator and chairman of the Lucas County Republican Party, citing a 2006 bill in the state legislature to establish nonpartisan line drawing that Democrats voted against, assuming they would control the apportionment board.

The outcome of the Supreme Court cases will impact next steps in Ohio. Experts say it’s unlikely lawmakers will be forced to redraw congressional maps for the 2020 election, as initially ordered by the district court. They believe it’s more likely the ruling will influence what happens ahead of the next federally-mandated redistricting in 2022, when a voter-sanctioned overhaul of the state’s redistricting system designed to make it more balanced goes into effect. 

A view of the Supreme Court in Washington, Friday, March 15, 2019.
Liz Skalka
U.S. Supreme Court allows partisan gerrymandering

‘Bizarre, elongated sliver’

Point to one of the most gerrymandered districts in one of the nation’s most gerrymandered states and you’ll likely end up with a finger on northern Ohio’s “Snake on the Lake.”

In their May opinion, the judges refer to it as a “bizarre, elongated sliver of a district,” severing several counties to pack as many Democratic votes as possible into a single House seat.

“In some ways, district nine was the star district of the trial, just in terms of the difficulty of articulating a reason for its existence other than pure political advantage,” said David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati who served as an expert witness for the voting rights’ groups that brought the suit. “What defines it is you have a willingness not just to link Toledo and Cleveland, but to carve out every single county along the way to make that happen.”

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of the election forecasting website Sabato’s Crystal Ball and a Cleveland native, called it a “monstrosity of a district.”

“It just makes no sense to me that the west side of Cleveland should be connected with Toledo,” he said. “But it exists for a reason, and that was to create a Republican map that elects 12 Republicans and four Democrats, which the map has consistently done throughout the decade.”

The 9th District wasn’t always this way. Between 1992 and 2000, it covered all of Lucas and Fulton counties. Now, it extends more than 100 miles between Toledo and Cleveland.

Congressional maps are redrawn every 10 years following the U.S. Census, which provides new population estimates. Because the state has lost population, Ohio is expected to lose a congressional seat by 2022.

Republicans have argued the 9th District was given its current shape at Miss Kaptur’s request, and was part of an overall plan to advantage incumbents from both parties. But Miss Kaptur — who, with 36 years in office, is the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House — denied this in her testimony, saying she first learned of her district’s new shape in the newspaper after the state legislature’s redistricting bill became public.

In 2012, the revised boundaries of the 9th District pitted Miss Kaptur in a primary against veteran Cleveland Rep. Dennis Kucinich, whose seat in Cuyahoga County was drawn out of existence. Miss Kaptur won but was thrust into a new political scene east of Lorain County. Since then, northwest Ohio Democrats have feared a serious primary challenger emerging from Cleveland.

At an Ohio Democratic Party fund-raiser in May, where members bashed the Republican-led gerrymandering effort, Miss Kaptur told the audience: “Our district has only half of Parma. ... They gave us only some wards of western Cleveland. They took only part of Lorain County. They only gave me a third of my hometown. What they did was really wicked.”

Miss Kaptur also testified that an early version of the 2012 map removed her family church and her parents’ graves from her district. Its boundaries were later redrawn to include them.

Anchored in Toledo

For decades, the 9th District has never failed in its engineered outcome: to elect a Democrat to the U.S House.

Miss Kaptur, 72, won her last four elections by comfortable margins. She beat her 2018 Republican challenger, former state Rep. Steve Kraus — who was kicked out of the Ohio House over a felony conviction that he’s tried to overturn in court — with 68 percent of the vote.

A less gerrymandered version of the 9th District would look less like a limbless reptile and would likely be anchored in Lucas County, experts say. But a district combining Toledo and and its suburbs would also be more competitive. Wood, Ottawa, and Sandusky counties all voted for Mr. Trump after electing Barack Obama. Voters in those counties also supported Republican Mike DeWine for governor in 2018.

“I think Toledo should have its own House district. It makes sense that it would,” Mr. Kondik said. “That district wouldn’t have to be super Democratic. While Lucas County is Democratic, a lot of surrounding counties are either heavily Republican if you go to the west, or Republican-leaning swing counties to the south and east.

“You would probably expect a Democrat to win a district that has Lucas County at its heart — but not necessarily.”

A new Toledo seat would also spell changes for Mr. Latta’s sprawling 5th Congressional District, which contains all or part of 14 largely rural counties, as well as GOP Rep. Jim Jordan's 4th Congressional District, another of Ohio's infamous gerrymandered House seats resembling an animal. It has been compared to a duck, with its bill touching Lorain and its webbed feet extending into Columbus suburbs. Both districts are reliably Republican.

In 2011, mapmakers had initially drawn Mr. Jordan’s district into downtown Toledo. It made it only as far as Sandusky County in the final adopted version.

Ms. White believes it makes more sense for Sylvania to be included in Miss Kaptur’s district than in Mr. Latta’s. Though she works in Wauseon, Ms. White more closely associates with what’s happening in Toledo. She says she’s never met Mr. Latta, whose district extends to Indiana.

“I’m cut off in the 5th District, which puts me into Fulton County, Williams County, Henry County — all the stuff that I don’t involve myself in,” said Ms. White, who is president of Toledo's chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, one of the voting rights groups that sued over Ohio’s congressional map.

She has found that people in her city still think Miss Kaptur is their representative.

“She’s represented Toledo for how long?” she said. "People know her as all of Lucas County, and now we’ve been split up.”

First Published June 10, 2019, 1:50 p.m.

RELATED
Chris Gibbs is launching an exploratory committee for the Fourth Congressional District.
Liz Skalka
Ex-GOP farmer who voted for Trump to challenge Ohio's Jim Jordan
President Trump will tout his administration's successes and the campaign promises he's kept.
Liz Skalka
Trump's Ohio campaign training volunteers to tweet
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who has represented District 9 in its many forms since she was first elected 1983, must include Cleveland in her travels.
Tom Troy
Mid-decade redistricting is nothing new
In Ohio, few congressional races are proving competitive
LIZ SKALKA BLADE POLITICS WRITER
In Ohio, few congressional races are proving competitive
State auditor-elect Keith Faber, shown at a campaign event in Bowling Green, will be part of the seven-member Ohio Redistricting Commission.
Jim Provance
State Republicans maintain control of redistricting
Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, votes while holding his granddaughter, Ela Molina, 1, Tuesday in Cleveland.
Liz Skalka
Incumbents Latta, Kaptur, Brown all win seats
SHOW COMMENTS  
Join the Conversation
We value your comments and civil discourse. Click here to review our Commenting Guidelines.
Must Read
Partners
Advertisement
Redrawn boundaries of the 9th District forced two longtime congressional representatives — former U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, center, and U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) — to run against each other in a nasty primary battle.  (THE BLADE)  Buy Image
Stephanie White is president of the Toledo chapter of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, one of the voting rights groups that sued the state over its congressional map. Ms. White lives in Sylvania, which used to be represented by Toledo Rep. Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat.  (THE BLADE/LIZ SKALKA)  Buy Image
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) delivers remarks in Toledo.  (The Blade/Katie Rausch)  Buy Image
key04pU.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D., Toledo) listens to members of Toledo City Council comment on her long career in public service before presenting Rep. Kaptur with the key to the City of Toledo Tuesday, July 3, 2018, during a meeting of city council at One Government Center in downtown Toledo. Rep. Kaptur became the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House of Representatives when she broke the record in March. THE BLADE/KATIE RAUSCH  (The Blade/Katie Rausch)  Buy Image
U.S. Rep. Bob Latta  (THE BLADE)  Buy Image
THE BLADE
Advertisement
LATEST local
Advertisement
Pittsburgh skyline silhouette
TOP
Email a Story