Suddes: Some Republicans support abortion and other lessons from failed 'power grab'

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

To block the most outrageous Statehouse power grab in living memory, Ohio voters —57% to 43% — told the GOP-gerrymandered General Assembly on Tuesday to get lost.

Voters also signaled a couple other things about Issue 1.

More: Ohio voters reject Issue 1, scoring win for abortion-rights supporters ahead of November

Here’s one: In the privacy of the voting booth, it’s clear some Ohio Republicans do indeed support abortion rights.

More: Letters: After Issue 1 debacle, Frank LaRose should exist left.

Here’s another: When unofficial returns show Greene County — pro-life Republican Gov. Mike DeWine’s home — as narrowly rejecting Issue 1, you know something about the Issue 1 campaign wasn’t exactly taped down. (DeWine is incontestably right-to-life, but he seemed relatively quiet on Issue 1.)

Ohio Dem chair: After Issue 1 failure, Frank LaRose can be crowned Ohio’s biggest loser.

And a third: How can the state’s top elections administrator, Secretary of State Frank LaRose, an Upper Arlington Republican, be seen as an impartial umpire even while he campaigned night and day for “yes” votes on Issue 1?

The Republican-run Senate and House wanted to make it harder for Ohio voters to directly amend Ohio’s state constitution without interference from a lobby-run legislature.

Since 1912, Ohioans have been able to amend the constitution by a simple majority statewide vote (50% plus 1). But quarterbacked by Senate President Matt Huffman, a Lima Republican, the legislature wanted voters to instead handcuff themselves — fat chance — by raising to 60% the minimum proportion of statewide votes to ratify a proposed amendment.

Aim: To block potential approval in November, three months from now, of an amendment guaranteeing a woman’s right to choose abortion in Ohio.

That’s exactly what voters in a half-dozen other states — California, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, and Vermont — have done. And (complete coincidence) in four of those states voters did so by margins of less than 60%.

A look at a map of Tuesday’s statewide election returns reveals some interesting patterns.

Every county along Lake Erie, except Sandusky County, voted “no” on Issue 1. Also voting” no” were every county that adjoins Cuyahoga as well as Trumbull (Warren) and Mahoning (Youngstown), which in 2020 had voted for Donald Trump.

In Central Ohio, Franklin County has come a long way from the days when then-President Kennedy said, “There is no city in the United States in which I get a warmer welcome and less votes than Columbus, Ohio.”

But on Tuesday, Franklin County crushed Issue 1.

And voters in Delaware County, who cast 52% of their votes in 2020 for Donald Trump, voted “no” — with 58% of the vote — against Issue 1 Tuesday.

That’s the Delaware County that supported Right to Work (for Less) in 1958 and Barry Goldwater in 1964, as did neighboring Union County, whose voters only gave Issue 1 (an unofficial) “yes” vote margin of 350 votes, a “yes” margin of 50.9%. In 2020, Union gave 64% of its presidential vote to Trump.

One feature of Tuesday’s result us that Huffman tried to stoke inside-the-GOP recriminations about Republicans who opposed Issue 1 (former Govs. John R. Kasich and Bob Taft, former Attorneys General Betty Montgomery and Jim Petro) or sat on their hands.

In a late-life comeback, Democratic former Gov. Richard F. Celeste, a Greater Clevelander, energetically campaigned against Issue 1, reminding listeners of what an eloquent Ohioan can sound like.

While every Republican in the Senate voted “yes” on Issue 1, five House Republicans voted “no”: Reps. Jamie Callender, of Lake County; Jay Edwards, of Nelsonville; Brett Hudson Hillyer, of Uhrichsville; Jeff LaRe, of Canal Winchester; and Thomas Patton, of Strongsville.

Arguably, it may do LaRose some partisan good in his Republican U.S. Senate primary fight with Greater Clevelanders Bernie Moreno and Matt Dolan that LaRose led cheers statewide for Issue 1.

All in all, what stymied Issue 1 was, despite voters’ justified cynicism about the Statehouse, belief in fairness by most Ohioans: Issue 1, trying to change the rules mid-game, was seen as a bid to cheat voters out of a constitutional right they’d enjoyed and properly deployed for 110 years.

The next task facing Ohio’s pro-choice majority is to win in November — a possibility that Tuesday’s victory immensely strengthened.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Thomas Suddes: What does failure of Issue 1 tells us about fight for abortion in Ohio