I ran into a few ugly ducks in Piedmont Park yesterday, so let’s look at Ohio’s 4th district today—one shaped like its own ugly duck. If there were a class on Gerrymandering 101, OH-04 would likely be one of the first districts taught. Here’s today’s #DistrictOfTheDay.
The old 4th district that existed from 2003 to 2013 wasn’t quite so hideous. It included some of Ohio’s smaller cities, like Mansfield and Lima. The cities themselves aren’t hugely conservative (Lima has a Democratic mayor), but the counties they reside within are.
OH-04 wasn’t gerrymandered to make the district itself more conservative—the old district already did that. Incumbent Jim Jordan (R–Urbana) was elected by nearly 20% in an open seat during the Democratic wave year of 2006, for reference, and by 30+% in 2008.
Rather, it was designed to take a chunk of more liberal towns along Lake Erie and stuff them in conservative districts so as to prevent another Democratic district. Heavily Democratic parts of Lorain County—including Oberlin—are now within OH-04, helping the GOP keep a 12-4 map.
Lorain County is the biggest player in the district, and it was the only part that voted for Jordan’s Democratic opponent, Janet Garrett, in 2018. Despite that, Jordan has the benefit of several small rural counties to drown the more liberal Lorain County out of the picture.
Some of those smaller counties in the district, like Auglaize and Shelby, gave Jordan more than 80% of the vote in 2018. They’re too Republican to overcome, explaining why he managed a 30% win even in Democratic 2018. He remains popular in that part of his district.
Many people in Oberlin still feel more affiliated with Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of the neighboring 9th district, seeing her as being more in line with their interests. Extreme political gerrymandering by the GOP has prevented any real chance of another Dem flip in north Ohio.
Democrats haven’t made any House pickups in Ohio since 2008. That’s not to be attributed to their decline in the state. In 2018, Democrats still got 47% of Ohio’s U.S. House popular vote. It’s almost entirely a function of some of the most wicked gerrymandering on Earth.
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