The U.S. Supreme Court last week took on two issues that will directly affect Ohioans.
One involves the future of Haitians in Ohio with temporary protected status.
The other weakens the decades-old Voting Rights Act, a law intended to ensure more racially-balanced voting districts.
The Ohio Supreme Court says AEP Ohio customers won’t get any money back after paying millions to support two aging coal plants.
Have you voted yet? Tomorrow is Election Day and it's is your chance to select the candidates who will face off in November. Polls open at 6:30 a.m.
Controversial Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. comes to Cleveland on Thursday.
We're discussing all of it on this week's Reporter Roundtable.
Guests:
- Kathryn Mobley, education and politics reporter, WYSO
- Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics reporter, Cleveland.com
- Marty Schladen, reporter, Ohio Capital Journal
- Shane Stegmiller, reporter, Hannah News Service
Transcript
This transcript is generated with AI. To ensure its accuracy, review the audio file.
Amy Juravich: This is the Weekly Reporter Roundtable from All Sides, an hour where we catch up on political news of last week and preview of the week ahead. I'm your host Amy Juravich. The U.S. Supreme Court last week took on two issues that will directly affect Ohioans. One involves the future of Haitians in Ohio with temporary protected status. The justices heard oral arguments for and against. And we're going to start with that development. Joining us now from Yellow Springs Public Media Station WISO is reporter Kathryn Mobley. She's been covering this ongoing story. Welcome back to All Sides Kathryn.
Kathryn Mobley: Aye, thank you, Amy.
Juravich: So Kathryn, estimates show there are more than a million Haitians living in the United States. Can you remind us how many live in Ohio, in the Springfield area where you are, and then in central Ohio? Right.
Mobley: In the Springfield area, we've got roughly 12,000 to 15,000, and that number varies a little bit just because people move around. And across Ohio, it might be up until into the 30,000.
Juravich: Yeah, for central Ohio, I think the estimates are about 30,000. But as you said, people move around. So some Springfield residents went to DC. Vilas Dorsovil has TPS status, and he's one of the lead plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration's move to end the TPS status, And standing outside of the U.S. Supreme Court, he framed the issue this way.
Speaker 4: So the question before the court is not just a legal one, it is a moral one about who we are as a nation and how we treat people.
Juravich: Tell me, Katherine, tell me a little bit more about Vilas. He's been on the show before. You know, what did he say? What's his story? Why is he there at the U.S. Supreme Court?
Mobley: Vilas is Vilas Dorsonville. He is an amazing gentleman. He's also a Moravian pastor. He is from Haiti. His pastoral studies were in Jamaica and they wanted him to stay in Jamaica but he insisted on going back to Haiti because he said he could do his best work and be most effective in Haiti helping the young people. So he has a deep passion for the people of Haiti and especially the younger generation. He truly believes in peace. He is not vengeful or angry. He believes by helping one person, that person then helps another person, that person that helps another, you end up strengthening an entire community.
And he ended up coming over to the United States, specifically to Springfield. He had a nephew who was in Springfield and around 2018, 2019, he was in Haiti. He was doing his ministerial work. Um, he had been to the united States before and he became targeted by the gangs there. They believed because he had worked in the United states and visited here and he was What are you doing? Projects in Haiti. They really believed he had money, personal money, to fund these projects. And so they were asking him for money. They wanted money.
And it got to a point where they were sending him letters. They were overtly threatening him to where his mother finally pulled him aside and said, listen, they're going to kidnap you. And if they kidnap you, they're going to want to ransom. And we don't have this money. And he kept telling them, I don't have any money. It's nonprofits or the Moravian church, national church, which is actually funding these projects, but they would not believe him. And so eventually it just became too, too unsafe for him. And, um, in 2018, he left Haiti. He left his family, his daughter, and he moved to Springfield because he did have a nephew in this community already.
Juravich: And so he has decided to challenge the Trump administration because he's basically saying that it is not safe for him and many others. It is not for the temporary perspective status to end. It's not safe to go back to Haiti. Is that a part of what is being argued before the Supreme Court? Exactly.
Mobley: Exactly what's going on. He said in Haiti, people, especially if any Haitians have visited or lived abroad, the gangs control the main airport in Port-au-Prince. And when people debark, they're looking at the passengers who are coming off. And especially if they're native Haitians, then they're automatically assuming you've got money. So they're targeting those people right away. They are also targeting any visitors who are coming, any Europeans, any Americans.
That's why right now there's a level four travel advisory against Americans traveling to Haiti because it is so violent. You've got the gangs who are running, like I said, Port-au-Prince airport. They're running the main capital, Port of Prince. They're all over. Also, it's very Unstable, there's no stable water system, there's no stable healthcare system, there is no government, no stable government system, transportation is a bit wonky, housing is very difficult, trying to have gainful employment is very difficult, and that's just for the people who are currently living there.
And he told me, I spoke with him recently, and he said, even for people who're residents, just ordinary average people, The gangs will kidnap them and torture them, demanding ransoms, knowing these people don't have money, knowing their families don't have money and simply kill them just because.
Juravich: All right. Well, in those remarks that he made after the U.S. Supreme Court hearings, they were shared on YouTube and captured by WISO. Vilas talked about his work in Springfield. He works at the Haitian Support Center, and he talked about the uncertainty they feel
Speaker 4: In my office in Ohio, there are so many families come to the office asking questions. What about the tomorrow? What will happen to them? And you can imagine being here in the U.S. But still struggling to know what your tomorrow will be.
Juravich: So, Katherine, do you have a sense from the Haitians living in Springfield? Did they listen to the Supreme Court hearing? Do they have a chance of what's going to happen here?
Mobley: Some listen to bits and pieces, but the reality is for the Haitian people in the Springfield community across Ohio and across our nation, most of them are just simply focused on surviving day-to-day, determining every morning when they wake up, if it's Monday through Friday, deciding whether or not it's safe to send their child to school, deciding whether or not it's safe to go to work. Some are sending their children to school. Some are not simply out of fear of the unknown. Not sure. Are there ice agents who are watching them who are just going to grab them off the street?
Uh, but the less reminded me that he's not worried. He's not about what's going on. He said, Haitians are really resilient people. And he used a metaphor comparing Haitians to a read. He said. Haitians have been through natural disasters, the earthquakes, they've been through shootings, kidnappings, the gangs, hurricanes, and they bend as the storms come. They bend so the storms can wash over them, but then eventually they rise back up.
And that is what he truly believes is going to happen. The Haitians will will stand back up, they will become stronger. All of these, these turbulent things happening to them and all of them, I will say most of them came to the United States to escape the violence and the turbulence and the instability and chaos in their native land. And every Haitian I've spoken with across the Springfield community have said they want to go home. They do not want to stay in the United States.
They don't want to to go to Canada or to Europe or to Spain. They want to go back to Haiti. They miss their food. They missed their dancing, their culture, the vibrancy, the weather. They won't to go back to their friends and families. But it's just too dangerous. They will be killed. And so he believes... This is just another chapter in their journey of resiliency and it will make them stronger and eventually things will work out. He has a deep faith in God and he says he believes in the sovereignty of God and He knows, regardless of what the Supreme Court decides, God is going to protect the Haitians and they'll be okay.
Juravich: Oh, wow. All right. Well, I guess we're expecting a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court sometime in June. So Catherine, we'll probably have you back whenever we know what's going on. But for now, we will leave it there. Thank you to Katherine Mobley, reporter for WISO and Yellow Springs. Thanks for your time so much, Catherine. Thank you, Amy.
You're listening to the All Sides Weekly Reporter Roundtable on 89.7 NPR News. We've When talking about U.S. Supreme Court case to end temporary protected status. A move that would affect thousands of Haitians in the state, many of whom live in central Ohio. We're now going to pivot to our regular Reporter Roundtable. And with us on the Roundtable this week, we have Marty Schladen, Reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal, joining us via Zoom. Welcome back, Marty.
Marty Schladen: Good morning, Amy.
Juravich: And we also have here in the studio with us, Jeremy Pelzer, Chief Politics Reporter for Cleveland.com. Welcome back, Jeremy. And Shane Stegmiller, reporter for Hanna News Service. Welcome back, Shane.
Shane Stegmiller: Thank you. Happy Primary Eve.
Juravich: Primary Eve, yes, there's a primary tomorrow. We will get to that. But first, do any of you have any thoughts regarding what Catherine just said regarding the TPS status of Haitians? Marty, I know you've covered immigration pretty extensively. Did you wanna add anything to what you heard from her?
Schladen: Um, just simply that, you know, what's before the court right now is pretty simple. Um, the, what, uh, a former Homeland security secretary, Christy Noem is accused of doing is canceling temporary protected status without following the provisions of the law, which says, you, know, that you need to certify and it needs to be an interagency process. Apparently you need the certify that it's safe for people to go back to the place they're going to. And as was just described, I don't think anybody believes that Haiti is safe for anybody right now.
Juravich: All right, well, we'll wait and see what happens with that US Supreme Court case. We'll leave it there for now. A ruling is expected this summer, perhaps as early as June. And we'll move on to another US Supreme court case that happened last week. The US Supreme courtroom altered the Voting Rights Act. The court struck down Louisiana's congressional map that included a second majority black district, calling it an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. And Shane, I know you wrote about this. I was hoping you could walk us through the significance. This was a 6-3 ruling. Tell us a little bit about the significance of this ruling.
Stegmiller: Well, this pretty much rewrites a huge part of the Civil Rights Act of the mid-60s. A lot of, especially in the southern states, one of the provisions was, you know, if your area is majority, the population is a majority of one particular racial group, in this case a lot of cases, it's African Americans. That you they have the right to be represented by their people somebody from their race. It's kind of was a way to fight off any kind of gerrymandering where you know you draw a lot of them you know, you split them all up into different other districts kind of weakening their voting power. And so this kind of the Civil Rights Act gave them the ability to create these majority minority districts, where a minority you know, racial group that has the majority of the population could be represented by somebody of their own population.
Juravich: I guess, Jeremy, the question that people would be asking is why does a ruling that related to Louisiana's congressional map impact Ohio?
Jeremy Pelzer: Well, obviously, U.S. Supreme Court rulings affect every state because it's about federal law. The argument made, especially by critics of this ruling, is that it shifts responsibility to enforce protections, voting protections, to the states. And I know a number of Democrats have been critical of what the Republican majority in the Ohio legislature has done in terms of voting, especially in terms early voting. Which Democrats argue, rolling that back, tends to hurt Democratic voters, especially voters of color.
So that's the argument made. Obviously, there's been an argument made that there's a need to revise these standards that have been in place since the mid-'60s. And overall, the argument by proponents of shifting this ruling is that these are You know, we're in a very different country. That we were in the mid-1960s, and that if you're drawing these gerrymandered districts, as they would say, to protect just one class of people, that that is unfair to the rest of the population.
Juravich: In your story, Shane, you quote, there's a sentence in there that quotes Justice Samuel Alito. It says, "discrimination that occurred some time ago, as well as present day disparities that are characterized as the ongoing effects of societal discrimination, are entitled to much less weight." So is he saying there that discrimination isn't as big of a deal anymore as it was when the Voting Rights Act passed decades ago?
Stegmiller: That's exactly what he's saying. And I think one of the things he points to is just the voting patterns, especially over the last few federal elections, especially the presidential elections. However, one of those criticisms is that some of the data that he has pulled out of and is using for his decision includes the 2008-2012 presidential elections when you had the first major black candidate running for president in Barack Obama so that turned out more black people And now that he's not on the ballot anymore, that's kind of gone back to the historical kind of turnout models.
Juravich: Justice Elena Kagan, who dissented, wrote that under the court's new view, quote, "a state can, without legal consequence, systemically dilute minority citizens' voting power." Marty, tell me more about that worry that Justice Kagan is expressing there. So this ruling, she says, will dilute the minority power of voting.
Schladen: Well, what Justice Alito basically wrote was that the court couldn't do anything about political gerrymandering by already gerrymander state legislatures, but it violated the constitution to create these majority option districts where these minority populations, I mean, could select the candidate of their own choice. And really the only thing that he left. The door open to in terms of not discriminating against racial groups was that you couldn't do it explicitly.
But let's say black voters tend to vote Democratic. So if in Ohio Republicans draw districts, intentionally drawing blacks out of the district, but for political reasons, Justice Alito seemed to say that's okay. And the concern is that it's going to minority groups. Out of power, but also like Heather Cox Richardson, who's like this public historian, she's saying it's also entrenching minority power. This is a way to keep a minority group in power regardless of what the voters want.
Juravich: Hmm. All right. Well, we're going to leave it there because we have. Do you want to add something else, Shane? Sorry. Shane, sorry.
Stegmiller: I'm sorry. I just, to kind of get back to how it affects Ohio. It likely won't affect Ohio right away, because as you recall, we just drew maps, redrew maps last year.
Juravich: Well, we drew maps left and right, but go ahead. We did. But this got by.
Stegmiller: We did, but this got bipartisan support, so this will take them out to the end of the decade. So you're not going to see this race to redraw Ohio's maps as you're starting to see in some of these southern states.
Juravich: In theory, it'll take the map to the end of the decade, but we're redrawing maps all willy-nilly all over the United States now.
Stegmiller: Right, in theory. I mean, I guess if you can get a court to go along with whatever you want, it's possible. There aren't any of these majority minority districts per se in Ohio, but there are two districts that have large black populations that are very urban and tend to vote Democratic, and that's the 11th in the Cleveland area with Chantel Brown, and then you also have Joyce Beatty's district here in Columbus, the third district. Those could be, when you get up to the next drawing, maybe those are gonna get a little bit more taken a look at by whoever's holding the pen then, and you might see their districts get more diluted.
Pelzer: Just because there was when they draw these districts, there's always the fear of a lawsuit stemming from it. And now that that fear is going to be reduced, as Shane said exactly, that there they will be less, that will be lesser of a concern when they're drawing these districts going forward. And the next one will be after the 2030 census in Ohio.
Juravich: Yes, that's what it's supposed to be. Yes, we're back on track. Yes, back on the track. I'm being cynical about the maps. But yes, I'm sorry. All right. Well, we are going to leave it there. Do you want to talk about me being cynical? I'm Sorry.
Schladen: Being cynical. I'm sorry. Why don't you say, you know, like Heather Cox Richardson's worried about entrenching a minority group in power. I mean, conservatives who are pushing ideas about abortion that are obviously not the opinion of the majority of the population fracking in state parks. That's what she's talking about. Entrenching minority rule.
Juravich: OK, all right, well, we're going to leave it there and coming up, we are going to talk about the primary election, Election Day is tomorrow. That is when the Reporter Roundtable from All Sides continues on 89.7 NPR News.
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Juravich: You're listening to All Sides in the Weekly Reporter Roundtable, an hour where we talk all things Ohio politics. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. Still with us, we have Jeremy Pelzer, Chief Politics Reporter for Cleveland.com, Shane Stegmiller, reporter for Hanna News Service, and Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capitol Journal.
There is an election tomorrow. The polls open tomorrow morning at 6.30 a.m. And close at 7.30 p.m.. You can go to the Secretary of State's website to find your polling location and Check what's on your ballot. Um, absentee ballots must be received by your county board of elections by seven 30 PM tomorrow night in their hand. There's no longer a four day grace period. So don't be late. Um, Shane, since you wrote about how the League of Women Voters is stressing the importance of voting in primaries, what was their central message there? Because primaries always have low turnout.
Stegmiller: The central message is don't skip the primary. A lot of people do because they look at the, there's a large majority of people who don't identify with either party. And under Ohio law, you know, if you go out and you ask, it's an open primary in terms of you can go out ask for a ballot for either party and vote on it. But then that also kind of attaches you is considered a voter registration for that party. And so a lot of just, they don't want to be connected to any party so they don't Come out and vote.
The question the issue is though there's also a lot of local issues and some of these local issues may pass or fail by Just a few votes. So if you skip the primary Your fire department could go without funding because it lost by two votes or one vote and your vote might have made a difference your school district might Not get its levy through or any if you're opposed to it. They might get a levy threw and it might be by only a couple of votes. They talked a lot about various other reforms to try and maybe encourage more people, more kind of these open, everybody's in the primary and so many candidates move on to the general election.
You have like California has a top two, Alaska has a Top Four, but then when you get to the General Election, they also start involving rank choice voting, which as you recall, we just banned in the state. All of them have pluses and minuses. I think Senator Blessing's introduced like a top three. I don't think any, I think they mentioned through the League of Women Voters, nobody's tried that yet, but there's always an opportunity to explore that.
Juravich: Jeremy, did you want to add something about primary voting versus other elections?
Pelzer: Yeah, here's my spiel for going out to vote tomorrow. Everyone, there's a saying in politics that the lower the more local the level of government, the more it affects your day-to-day life. So your local school district, which puts property taxes, is in charge of that. That overall might have more of an effect on your day to day life than who is your US senator or president, even though those get most people's attention.
And so, especially as people are moving into areas, and it's not just in Ohio, they tend to cluster by their own people of their own political persuasion that you tend to have, especially for those lower level offices, people, districts where these are decided in the primary because there's not a competitive race in the general election because People tend to live in areas that are either very, very Republican or very, very Democratic, like in parts of Columbus, for example.
So, but it's, so if you look at, for example, state legislature, so roughly half of the districts, it doesn't really matter because it's already kind of decided because the districts are already favoring Republicans or Democrats, but in the 43 legislative races where there is a competitive primary, two thirds of them are in for districts where It's already either for that party, it's already there's so many voters in that district that the winner of the primary is basically guaranteed to win the general election. So if you see a competitive race on your ballot for, say, state legislature, you need to cast a ballot because it matters because the winner of that primary is two-thirds, you know, they have a 66% chance that the winner that race will take office next January.
Stegmiller: And primaries tend to have very low turnout. I think they did the numbers for the last midterms and presidential elections and it's averaged about 20% turnout on each of those elections. In presidential elections we could get like 60, 70% even, so a lot, lot lower.
Pelzer: Like the average legislative race, you'll be lucky if you get 10,000 voters in any given race so even a swing of a few hundred votes can really make a difference.
Juravich: Marty, do you want to give a pitch as to why people should go vote tomorrow too?
Schladen: Well, just, you know, shorter version of what Jeremy just said, the way you lose your small d democratic rights is by not exercising.
Juravich: Hmm. All right. So I wanted to talk about a few races on the ballot and a few interesting like anomalies that are happening right now. So, Jeremy, Republican long shot gubernatorial candidate Heather Hill. She's from Morgan County. She was one of two challengers facing the front runner, Vivek Ramaswamy. She has taken legal action. Her running mate, Stuart notes dropped out of the race, and therefore that made her ticket invalid. What is she asking the Ohio Supreme Court to decide right now, because as of right now a vote for Heather Hill doesn't count, correct?
Pelzer: Correct. So Heather Hill is a Morgan County businesswoman and she was, as you said, a long shot to win regardless. But she and her running mate got into a pretty public feud on social media a couple of weeks ago. She claimed that Motes referred to her using a racial slur, Hill is black, and just disparaged her and then Moats shot back. With his own string of insults.
Juravich: Moat's put up a video of him declaring that he was pulling himself out of the race and like just ruining it. Right. And then, yeah.
Pelzer: But then he actually did. He went to the Ohio Secretary of State's office and submitted his letter of resignation or withdrawing from the race. And under the way that Franklin Rose, the Secretary of State, has interpreted this, it's if you that the governor and lieutenant governor run together and if you don't have a running mate, you are not eligible to run because it's it's a two-person it's either you have two people or you're done.
And so Hill is going to court to contest that. Now, this isn't the first time LaRose has done that. If you remember back in 2024, Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, there was a whole hullabaloo over the withdrawal of her vice presidential nominee in Ohio. And there was whole flap about whether that was allowed and the federal court ultimately ruled that that was okay for LaRosa to do it. Hill is not going to federal court. She's going to the Ohio Supreme Court, which is not ruled, even though it's the day before the primary. So to be clear, if you go in to your polling place, you will see Hill and Moats, her original running mate's name on the ballot, but there will also be signs posted saying that any votes cast for her will be ineligible and will be thrown out.
Juravich: So.
Stegmiller: All of this centers on timing. If you withdraw 70 days before the primary, or before that, you can replace a Lieutenant Governor candidate on the ballot. But because he, Stuart Moats, withdrew two weeks
Speaker 9: A go. A go?
Stegmiller: That means that he's withdrawn within that time frame. The only thing that Ohio law allows you to replace a candidate within this time frame, this close, is if the candidate happens to die. So Heather Hill's going to the Supreme Court saying, no, this is not right. This is creating an irrational, arbitrary, unreasonable, and unconstitutional distinction is her words. It's a lot of adjectives, yeah. Between death and just withdrawing from the race or dropping out of the race.
So she's like, even though both events are resulting in the same thing, you don't have a lieutenant governor candidate, for some reason, Ohio law is only allowing you to do this. Now LaRose is arguing, lawmakers purposely did this. If they wanted to address this, they would have put it in the law. They only decided to address death but so close to the primary. So that means they intentionally wanted it this way.
Juravich: So, Marty, does the Ohio Supreme Court have to make a decision or, I mean, they would have to do it today, I guess, before active voting starts? Well, active voting has already started. It's been early voting for a while. So I guess the Ohio supreme court can do nothing.
Schladen: Well, I don't want to stay with certainty because I haven't reported this, but I am under the strong impression that the Ohio Supreme Court can do whatever it wants, including that.
Juravich: Jeremy, do you do you agree with that? Can they do whatever they want?
Pelzer: They can interpret the law the way that they see fit and I would say it's unlikely that Heather Hill would win just because a federal court has ruled that in a similar situation two years ago. They ruled that LaRose was right. But as Marty said, they could. They could do it and there's nothing quote unquote illegal about them interpreting it that way.
Juravich: So All Sides producer Erin Esmott-Marinovitz went early voting on Sunday. And when she was there, she said that there was a note posted on the voting machine. And it listed five candidates. And it said that those five candidates, if you vote for them, your vote will not count. And there were various reasons. Each one had a different reason. So we just talked about Heather Hill's reason. But there's a judicial candidate, a US Senate candidate, congressional candidate. And Jeremy, is it unusual to have like a list of a little list of names that says that, you know, if you vote for these people, it's not going to count.
Pelzer: It's required. You have to put, every polling place has to, which is reasonable, right? If you're going in and you're ready to cast your ballot for someone and your ballot, your vote for them is gonna be thrown out. Now, I should add to make sure if you vote for Heather Hill. Your votes in other races will still be counted. It's not like your whole ballot's thrown in the trash, but just your vote for Heather Hill would not count unless the Supreme Court changes that. But yeah, it's reasonable to put, let people know exactly which votes will count and which votes not count.
Juravich: So Shane, these other names that are on this little list that'll be on every voting machine, did they also not meet that 70 day, like things changed for them in less than 70 days? Is that why they couldn't change the ballots?
Stegmiller: No, these are all actually different various reasons. Some of them, they just dropped out. Some of him involved their petitions were challenged and they were found to be invalid in the US Senate race involving a candidate, a libertarian candidate, cancer. It was an administrative thing. He didn't do some of the things that you're to do as when you're signing petitions, you have to have, you know, certain. People have to meet certain qualifications when they're circulating your petitions and all that. So a bunch of Libertarian voters challenged his candidacy on that basis and it was ruled that he didn't have enough signatures.
That's why he was. And then in the Congressional District. For a Mike Carey seat. Mike Careys seat, the candidate that was running as a Republican seeking to challenge him. Uh, it was challenged that he was in federal court, that he was not a true Republican. He had run for DNC previously as the DNC chair. Um, and he had made some public comments that, you know, the way to change is you run as a Republican. If you're a Democrat, you run in Republican districts as a Republican and then attempt to change the Republican platform from the inside. So he was challenged on the basis that he's not a true Republican who you know, believes in all the ideals of the Republican Party. And a federal court and an appeals court agreed with the challenge, and they tossed him off the ballot for that case.
Juravich: So I guess rather we don't need like, we don't need to overly harp on, you know, the list of five candidates who's if you vote for them, it doesn't count. But I think I just wanted to bring it up for the fact that anyone who goes to vote tomorrow, there will be this little sign, you don't pay attention.
Pelzer: It's kind of weird to go in and be like, oh, by the way, here's all the people you can vote for even though they're
Juravich: Even though their name is right there on the list.
Pelzer: Yeah, it's gonna be disqualified just FYI. It's a little notable.
Juravich: All right. Before we run out of time, I wanted to talk about, well, I guess we'll talk about one race and then we'll take a break and talk about more races. But the Ohio Supreme Court has a contested race. Four Republicans are vying to be the GOP candidate in November for the Ohio supreme court. They're hoping whoever wins the primary will unseat Democrat Jennifer Brunner and achieve a Republican sweep. Occupying all seven seats of the high court, which is significant. Marty, you've covered politics for a long time. How has the court evolved now that we're down to, there's four Republicans who all wanna unseat the one statewide Democrat that Ohio has.
Schladen: I think it's important to note that this new Republican domination is coincident with the candidates running as explicit members of parties, Democrat or Republican. It's a big change from what we had very recently. We had a pretty centrist Republican Chief Justice and there were a lot of rulings that were kind of swing rulings and. It seemed to operate more from the center. Now, if it's gonna be all Republicans, I don't know what, I think that you're gonna see more partisan tilts of what they do.
Juravich: Mm-hmm, and does that has anyone been covering the can you talk a little bit about the four Republicans or can you I guess You could just name them. I don't know. We don't have time to get into details others
Pelzer: So there's three state appeals court judges on the ballot. Andrew King of Licking County, Jill Lanzinger of Selma County, Ron Lewis of Greene County, and then a former Franklin County Common Pleads judge named Colleen O'Donnell, who lives, I believe in Grandview Heights, or maybe Columbus, you know, somewhere where she lives in that nebulous area between Columbus and Grandview.
Juravich: Do you know if any of them are endorsed by like the state party?
Pelzer: So funny story, this has been a soap opera of a race. And this involved an incumbent justice, Pat Fisher, briefly entering the race. And then the state party screening committee backed Lewis. But then Lewis withdrew his name not from the race, but just from the endorsement because there was some stuff about something in his record from like 10 years ago. And then the party decided not to endorse and then Fischer withdrew his name from the race.
And now after all this soap opera, these are the four people left standing. There's some, it's probably my scuttlebutt is that O'Donnell might have the advantage in the race, but as Shane said, these are primaries where not a lot of people endorse and especially when you have four people running, It can be kind of a toss-up, and so we'll see what happens in that.
Juravich: Are you saying O'Donnell has the most name recognition, maybe, of the four names, or?
Pelzer: Uh, she's been out, I'm just from people I've talked to, she seems to have it. I mean, but again, uh, there's, I mean these people could easily be wrong. So I don't want to call the race before it's. No, no, we're not calling any.
Juravich: No, no, we're not calling any races. I mean, this is this is the most dramatic of the races.
Pelzer: And the reason it's become it's so so many people are in it. This is the only statewide office, elected office currently held by Democrats anywhere in Ohio. It's the winner will go on to face Jennifer Brunner, a Columbus Democrat. And she's the only Democrat left on in statewide office. And so there's kind of been a feeding frenzy among Republicans to get into the last to go after the last Democrat on the statewide ballot.
Juravich: All right, well, we're gonna leave it there and take a quick break. And then we're going to come back. We're gonna talk about the treasurer's race, secretary of state race, and any other races that my wonderful Reporter Roundtable panel want to talk about. That is when the Reporter Round Table continues from All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.
You're listening to All Sides. This is the Weekly Reporter Roundtable. I'm your host, Amy Juravich. And still with us, we have Shane Stegmiller, reporter for Hanna News Service, Jeremy Pelzer, chief politics reporter at cleveland.com, and Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. And tomorrow is the primary election. Polls are open from 6.30 a.m. To 7.30 p.m., and there are a lot of contested races. So I thought that we should just run through. For people listening who maybe are heading to the polls tomorrow and haven't done their research. Maybe we could give them a little rundown Jeremy The big races everyone's thinking about is governor and US senator. Are these contested?
Pelzer: So it's funny, these are the top tier races, the marquee races, and they're expected to be at least among the least competitive. So John Husted, incumbent Republican U.S. Senator has no primary opponent. Neither does the presumptive gubernatorial nominee for the Democrats, former state health director Amy Acton. She doesn't have any primary opponents. Vivek Ramaswamy, who's the front runner to be Acton's opponent this fall. He has two primary opponents when we talked about Heather Hill.
Well, I mean, we'll find out if he has two primary opponents. But the one who we know he's going to face is Casey Push, who's a YouTuber and car affectionato from Perrysburg, who's been running far to Ramaswamy's right, almost on a nationalist platform. And then for US Senate on the Democratic side, Sherrod Brown is running to return to the US Senate. He lost his seat in 2024, if you remember. And then he is being faced by Ron Kincaid of Suburban Columbus, who is a software developer who has both pushed in Kincaide and maybe Heather Hill. They are considered long shots to beat Ramaswamy and Sherrod Brown.
Juravich: And Marty, is there any race in particular, Jeremy just kind of ran down the two big races, Governor and U.S. Senator. Is there any raise in particular that you're watching closely that is happening tomorrow?
Schladen: This is going to sound really lame to say, but not particularly. I don't, I just don't know of any primaries that are really closely contested, unfortunately.
Juravich: Well, OK. So let's talk about the ones that we feel are contested. There's a contested race for Republican, for state treasurer. There is a former Ohio representative, Jay Edwards, and a current state senator, Christina Rogner. This race is shaping up interestingly just because the two candidates got high profile endorsements but they each got different endorsements, right Shane?
So that was like the interesting part. Like I don't know whether everyone cares about endorsements but if you do in the treasurer's race the endorsement is different than what you would expect.
Stegmiller: I mean, endorsements can be helpful or hurtful. In this case, it's interesting because Rogner's getting the backing of Ramaswamy. And she joined on and was a big supporter of his very early when he started seeking the Republican nomination. So he, in turn, has backed her in the race. Edwards has the backing a vice president JD Vance. And so he's been out. And Bernie Moreno too. And Bernie Moreno. So he's
Juravich: And he's been touting that. I saw some ads pop up on social media, yeah.
Stegmiller: So it's, I mean, those are both very big endorsements. So he might be counting on those to kind of push them over the top, especially in a down ballot race where there's not a sitting incumbent and you don't really, unless you're like a politics wonk like we are, you probably haven't really heard of these two candidates before.
Juravich: So, I guess if you're heading to the polls to decide who to vote for, if you want to, you can agree with JD Vance or you can agree with Vivek Ramaswamy, those are your choices if you look at it that way.
Pelzer: Yeah, so in addition to US Senate, besides US Senate where Husted's the incumbent, all these top tier races are open. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, Treasurer, Auditor, they all don't have incumbents because of term limits. So Mike DeWine can't run again, and there's some musical chairs among the lower Republicans trying to run for different offices, but these are all technically open seats.
With Treasurer, which is, it's funny because it might be the. The quote unquote sexiest primary for one of the least sexy offices in Ohio, state treasurer, where it's really hard to, basically, the only way to do a good job as state treasurer is to not draw headlines because you're in charge of managing state investments, so.
Juravich: So do a good job.
Pelzer: You know, do a good job, you know, the less attention brought to you, probably the better. The other perhaps most watched at least primary on the statewide ballot is on the Democratic side for Secretary of State, I'm sorry, yeah, for Secretary, Alison Russo, who's a state rep and former House Minority Leader from Arlington. And she's running against Brianne Hambly, who is a Warren County cancer doctor and first-time political candidate.
Juravich: And I thought, speaking of random endorsements, I thought it was interesting though, that state Senator Nikki Antonio, who's the current Senate minority leader is endorsing Hambly. And Hambly also talked about recently that he has the endorsement of former governor Celeste. So Hambly is picking up steam there and the state democratic party decided not to endorse in that race. So this is a contested primary for the Democrat secretary of state, right, Shane? Yeah.
Stegmiller: Yeah, it's a I mean it's notable that they didn't endorse in it, but it's also it's a very competitive race to kind of first wide statewide ballot candidates and with you know neither of them has like huge name recognition. So, you know, there's a lot of times parties like to not, you know, it's a If it's a competitive race, they may not decide to step into it. Russo has been touting, though. She's been picking up a number of union endorsements, so that may help her. She's run for Congress before, so she's been on the ballot that might help her, but Hambly's raised a lot of money, and he's done a lot of these small, almost kind of grassroots kind of events, so his name might be out there a little bit more.
You also have one on the Republican side that may not be as Competitive that involves current treasurer Robert Sprague. He's running against a US Air Force veteran
Pelzer: A retired Air Force intelligence officer.
Stegmiller: Named Marcel Stribich. Now in this case Sprague did get the statewide endorsement of the Ohio Republican Party.
Pelzer: This is for the Republican nomination for Secretary of State. The winner of that will face Russo or Hambly.
Juravich: Yeah, and you know, Marty, for the past few years, democratic statewide candidates have struggled. There's, I mean, we're talking about there's a competitive secretary of state race, but there's not much of a, there's always talk that there's not much a democratic bench here in Ohio. So what do you make of the fact that we're, you know the most competitive race is the former minority leader versus a cancer doctor?
Schladen: Well, it says something about what's happened to the Democratic Party in Ohio. I think that, you know, when you lose cycle after cycle, there's some demoralization. And, you, know, it's important not to forget how heavily gerrymandered Ohio is, you know, and a lot of congressional and state legislative races, the way the maps are drawn, Democrats just don't have much of a chance.
Pelzer: Well, I would also add that I don't know if I agree with Democrats don't have a bench. They do have a Bench. If you look at Columbus Democrats or even Northeast Ohio Democrats, there are a number of people, I could name off the top of my head, Justin Bibb, the mayor of Cleveland.
Juravich: But they're not running for any big-
Pelzer: But here's the thing, that there's, imagine, I liken it to rising up through minor league baseball. And if you're, if these lower level statewide offices are seen as very hard to win because of the Republican trend that Ohio's seen during the past 10 years. So if you are rising up through the ranks for these local offices, you're are you willing to risk your political career on running for state auditor? Or something to move up to the next level.
So for the Democrats, you have people like, say, Justin Bibb or Zach Klein, you know, the Columbus City attorney who was talked about running for attorney general a while back. He's not. But would you rather risk your political career running for these down-ballot offices or do you stay where it's pretty safe in Columbus and you run for reelection or you run mayor, as Klein might, or? Do you then make the jump and try to go from, say, double A ball all the way to the majors and run for governor or US Senate? And that's pretty tough by itself because you don't have the name, recognition, or money to play on that level, perhaps, yet. So there's this problem that the Democrats have, not that they don't qualify bench people rising. You hit this certain level and it's really hard for them to make the jumps.
Juravich: Well, we are running out of time, so are there any other races that will be on people's primary ballots tomorrow that you want to let people know about while we're here?
Stegmiller: There are a lot of, half of the Ohio Senate and all of the Ohio House of Representatives are on the ballot.
Juravich: So check your district.
Stegmiller: So check your district and some of those are interesting like Jeremy was talking about before The next representative from that district may very well be determined tomorrow just because you know, they're so Democratic or so Republican that whoever wins tomorrow and it's an open seat. You don't have an incumbent
Some of these races are kind of interesting too Just seeing the amount of spending that you're seeing in some of these race even though it's You know a small district that's, you know, along the Ohio River and Eastern Ohio and Belmont County and that, but it's seeing a lot of spending because, you know either some political wind fighting, you're getting a lot outside money, there's an outside group related to DraftKings that's pumping a lot money into some of these races, so some of this have some intrigue too.
Pelzer: There's also a really interesting congressional race in the Republican field for to run against Marcy Kaptur in Toledo. There's a number of Republicans running for that from a couple of Josh Williams, state rep, Derek Marin, a former state rep who lost to Kaptur narrowly, former ICE deputy director Madison Sheehan and Aliya Nadeem who's an Air Force. Officer and there's Anthony Campbell who's running there. So it's a very crowded race for the right to face Kaptur who's in a, thanks to redistricting, an even more Republican-leaning district than she was before.
Stegmiller: And related to that, you have the first congressional district down in Cincinnati that you have a bunch of Republicans who want to take on US Rep Greg Landsman, who is now in a very competitive after redistricting, although there's a Republican Eric Conroy got the Trump endorsement, so he might be the favorite in that race.
Juravich: Well, listeners, you can tell that our reporters on our Reporter Roundtable are excited for primaries. And I think they hope that you are, too. So tomorrow is primary election day. And so if you did not vote early or you do not have an absentee ballot, make sure that you go out and vote. 6.30 a.m. To 7.30 p.m., the polls are open. If you have that absentees ballot and haven't turned it in yet, you're gonna have to drive it down to your county board of elections and hand it in in person because there's no more grace period.
Pelzer: Or a Dropbox.
Juravich: Or a Dropbox. We're going to end it there. Thank you to Jeremy Pelzer, Chief Politics Reporter for Cleveland.com. Thanks, Jeremy. Thank you. And thank you to Marty Schladen, reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal. Thanks, Marty.
Stegmiller: Sure, Amy.
Juravich: And Shane Stegmiller, reporter for Hanna News Service. Thanks, Shane.
Stegmiller: Always a pleasure.
Juravich: And this has been the Reporter Roundtable on All Sides on 89.7 NPR News.
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