Ohio is primed to become the latest Republican-led state to redraw its congressional map to boost the party’s chances of keeping control of the House of Representative in next year’s midterm elections.
Republicans, who currently hold 10 of Ohio’s 15 seats in Congress, appeared to have struck an 11th-hour deal with Democrats that would give the Republican Party much — but not all — of what it wanted: an electoral map that tilts red in 12 of the state’s 15 districts. The map is expected to be approved Friday morning by the Ohio Redistricting Commission, the last day it can approve a map before state law requires the issue to be kicked back to the Legislature.
The map was presented on Thursday afternoon at a hastily called commission meeting, during which members of the commission offered no response to more than a dozen speakers who excoriated both Republicans and Democrats for backroom dealing that produced a map they considered rigged.
“You are like foxes guarding the hen houses and Ohio voters continue to be the hens,” said Michael Ahern, who spoke to the commission wearing a baseball cap bearing the first three words of the Constitution, “We The People.” The meeting took place without Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, who holds one of the seven seats on the commission.
The map — which was not made public until after the meeting started — improves Republicans’ odds of picking up two more seats, though not the three they had set out to capture.
For the new map to pass, the two Democrats on the commission — Nickie Antonio, the Senate minority leader, and Dani Isaacsohn, the House minority leader — would have to vote in favor of it when the commission reconvenes on Friday.
The Republicans could have pushed a more aggressively redrawn map through the Legislature, where they hold a super majority. But if the commission signs off on an agreement by Friday, the new maps will carry a stamp of bipartisan legitimacy that would insulate Republicans from court challenges and neutralize criticism that Democrats might have raised in statewide elections for governor and the U.S. senate next year.
With Republicans in control of Congress by just a few seats, President Trump has been urging allies in state capitals to redraw congressional maps earlier than normal to try to diminish Democrats’ chances of flipping the House.
Texas, North Carolina and Missouri have already passed new maps, while the state Legislature in Indiana will hold a special session for redistricting next week, all of them acting at the president’s behest.
Ohio did not have a choice. Its Constitution requires state legislators to enact a new map because the current one, drawn in 2021 after the most recent census, did not have bipartisan backing and so was valid for only four years, not for 10 years, as it would have been with bipartisan support.
Efforts to curb partisan redistricting, known as gerrymandering, have been ongoing in Ohio for a decade, most notably in 2018 when a ballot measure supported by leaders of both parties passed with 71 percent of the vote.
But the state, once competitive and consequential in presidential elections, has turned solidly red in recent years. Republicans control the Legislature and the State Supreme Court and hold the governor’s office, along with both U.S. Senate seats and 10 of the state’s 15 House seats. It has also become a cradle of vocal Trump allies, such as Vice President JD Vance, Representative Jim Jordan and Senator Bernie Moreno.
In recent years, Republicans have made annual efforts to stack the map in their favor — plowing past requirements that ban partisan mapmaking and ignoring unfavorable court rulings. In a state that Mr. Trump carried with 55 percent of the vote, Republicans control 73 percent of the state Senate and 66 percent of the House.
“The Republican Party is more powerful than it is popular,” said David Niven, a professor at the University of Cincinnati’s School of Public and International Affairs who has studied redistricting.
Until this week, it appeared the state was headed for another map with no Democratic support.
After the state Legislature was unable to come up with a bipartisan map in September, the responsibility was kicked to the seven-member redistricting commission to take up in October. When the commission finally convened last week at the statehouse, the meeting lasted 28 minutes with the five Republicans on the committee — including Gov. Mike DeWine — not offering any comments or presenting a map of their own.
When one of the commission’s co-chairs, State Representative Brian Stewart, a Republican, banged his gavel, catcalls rained in from a couple of dozen spectators in the gallery.
Though the sides pledged to continue talking, neither side expressed optimism about the prospects for an agreement. But the talks continued, and by Wednesday night, there was talk of a possible deal.
Republicans had identified three seats that are held by Democrats near Toledo, Akron and Cincinnati.
Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat who is the longest-serving woman in Congress, has survived redistricting twice before, including last November when she won by fewer than 2,400 votes (less than 1 percent) in a district that Mr. Trump won by seven points. The proposed new district leaned toward Mr. Trump by 10 ½ points.
Emelia Sykes, a Democrat near Akron, may be securing something of a buffer, with more registered Democrats being drawn into the district that she won last year by a 51 percent-to-49-percent margin. Ms. Sykes is the daughter of a retired legislator, Vernon Sykes, who coauthored the 2018 anti-gerrymandering measure with the current state House leader, Matt Huffman, who is directing the Republicans redistricting efforts.
The other seat being redrawn belongs to Greg Landsman, whose district includes Cincinnati. The district will have a nearly 8-point swing with additional Republican voters, though Democrats have generally performed well.
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