(Via The Campaign Spot) And… it’s subtle. Executive summary:
- Ohio loses two districts, overall.
- Republicans Steve Austria and Mike Turner end up competing with each other in the same district.
- Democrats Marcy Kaptur & Dennis Kuchinich, ditto.
- Democrat Nancy Sutton loses her district and gets thrown into a district that heavily favors her new Republican opponent Jim Renacci – and she doesn’t get to bring her power base with her. Or she could compete with Democrat Tim Ryan in yet another district.
- Columbus (Democratic stronghold) metropolitan area gets a shiny-new, presumably Democratic-leading, district.
- Everybody else more or less stands pat, or gets strengthened.
So, on first glance… not too awful, right? They redrew districts to give both sides legitimate primary battles, and there’s going to be turnover, and, hey, the minority party in Ohio got a favorable district from the majority Republicans, so that was nice of them and everything. So why are the Democrats scowling? Well, it’s probably because the current map for Ohio is 13 Republican, 5 Democratic (it was 8R/10D last year); that the next map looks like it’s going to be … hold on, this is complicated… somewhere around 12R/4D (11R/5D if the Democrats catch a break); and sets up a potential brawl between two prominent Ohio Democrats (Kaptur & Kuchinich). And – because of that free Democratic district – there’s not much in the way of complaining that the opposition party can do about it, or the fact that most of the GOP incumbents have had their gains more securely locked in. Lastly, the risks for the Republicans overall are minimized: one Red-on-Red primary and a Red-on-Blue general election that has had the risks minimized. But other than that, there’s not much for Democrats to complain about.
As I said. Subtle.
Moe Lane (crosspost)