Ohio Statehouse in Columbus.
File photo | The Lima News
COLUMBUS – The surprising development this week that saw minority Democrats voting with a block of Republicans to elect Republican Rep. Jason Stephens as Ohio House speaker likely will have major ramifications for groups seeking to change the state constitution.
That could mean that those who want to enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution, raise the state minimum wage and change the way Ohio draws legislative maps have an opening at least this year to pursue amendments under the existing rules.
Stephens, of Lawrence County, opposes abortion, but he also was among the lawmakers who stood in the way of a proposal during the Ohio General Assembly’s lame duck session to raise the voter threshold for amending the state constitution at the end of last year. His win shows why the House speaker job – while obscure to people who don’t closely follow state politics – is so important for everyday Ohioans.
The proposal would have set the voter approval threshold at 60%, up from the current 50% plus-one vote. Republicans had been poised to try to pass the measure this month ahead of an expected future campaign to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Rep. Derek Merrin, who won a secret leadership vote in November, setting a House legislative calendar that could have seen it approved ahead of a key legal deadline on Feb. 1.
But for both practical and political reasons, Stephens’s election makes the 60% measure much less likely to pass.
Republicans have downplayed the effects the higher threshold would have on a future abortion issue, since it would apply equally to any proposal. But the impact is clear – outside deeply liberal California and Vermont, statewide votes either enshrining abortion rights or rejecting new abortion restrictions all passed or failed in the 52% to 59% range. Two separate groups of abortion-rights advocates are organizing constitutional amendment campaigns, with one targeting the November 2023 election, the soonest they can legally make it to the ballot.
The higher threshold would apply to any future ballot issue. But State Rep. Brian Stewart, a Pickaway County Republican who backs the proposal, in a private memo to colleagues in December clearly tied the issue to abortion rights, as well as a possible future campaign to put a citizen’s commission in charge of redistricting, replacing a panel of elected officials on which Republicans hold a majority.
Republicans seemed poised to try to pass the 60% measure this month in what would have been a time crunch. January typically is a slower time of the legislative season, with new members coming on board, but the deadline to to make the May ballot is Feb. 1. Merrin announced an aggressive legislative calendar, and Senate President Matt Huffman set an “as-needed” session on Jan. 31 in case the House approved the measure.
If it were to clear both chambers, it then would to voters in May for approval.
But Stephens’ victory makes it much less likely the 60% will pass before Feb. 1, if at all, for a few different reasons.
Stewart unveiled the proposal last month, with the backing of Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose. And it seemed poised to pass after Huffman, a Lima Republican, announced its support in the Senate.
But it stalled during the lame-duck legislative session last month due to a pocket of opposition within the Republican House caucus. Under legislative rules, it would have to be re-introduced this month, something Stewart he said he planned to do.
But after Stephens won Tuesday’s leadership vote – with all 32 of the chamber’s Democrats joining 22 House Republicans – Stewart tweeted the 60% measure was likely dead. He said in an interview that Stephens and state Rep. Jay Edwards, an Athens County Republican who helped round up Republican votes for Stephens, were among the House Republicans whose opposition caused it to stall in December.
Stephens, who’s now trying to organize a new administration and mend fences with the 43 Republicans who voted against him, was noncommittal about the 60% proposal when asked about it on Tuesday.
He said he needed to quickly develop a legislative calendar, aiming to resume sessions sometime next week.
“We’ll have to look at that. We’ll have to look at all the different things,” Stephens said.
