Kuttner on TAP: The Ohio Vote as a Turning Point

The Republican grand strategy, quite apart from Trump’s efforts to become dictator, has been to push issues that are at odds with the views of most voters, and then prevail by destroying democracy. They have done this via voter suppression, extreme gerrymandering, rigging courts, having red-state governors countermand the preferences of citizens in blue cities, and by restricting reproductive rights.

But that strategy may have just reached its limits. In Ohio, the Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, a candidate for U.S. Senate, cooked up an August ballot initiative requiring all future ballot initiatives to amend the state constitution to pass by a supermajority of 60 percent. With a referendum expected on the normal Election Day in November to protect abortion, the supermajority initiative was deliberately held in August in order to hold down turnout.

But the move backfired in every respect. In a state that lately has voted Republican by at least 55-45, the measure went down in flames by 13 percentage points, or 56.5 to 43.5 percent. And the turnout strategy also backfired. The measure was a magnet for abortion rights organizing.

Ohioans cast about 2.8 million votes, far in excess of the 1.66 million ballots counted in the state’s 2022 primaries, which featured contests for governor, U.S. senator, and U.S. House seats. Several former Republican officials were embarrassed by the raw power grab and opposed the initiative.

The outcome shows two things. Even in red-leaning states, at least outside the Deep South, a majority of voters don’t want the state messing with their bodies or their doctors. And some nontrivial fraction of Republican voters and leaders draw the line at grotesque efforts to stifle democracy.

LaRose put out a pathetic statement blaming the defeat on out-of-state money. In fact, reports by Ballotpedia indicate that the roughly $32 million spent on the initiative, about 80 percent of which was from out-of-state sources, was divided about equally between both sides. And the biggest single donation was $4 million from right-winger Richard Uihlein.

All this is of course very good news for Democrats nationally and bad news for Republicans. This conundrum for the GOP was triggered by the June 2022 Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. But the opportunity for progressives now goes far beyond Dobbs.

While the Democrats’ strategy is coherent and unified—sponsor as many initiatives and legislative votes as possible to rally supporters of abortion rights and embarrass Republicans—the GOP is divided. In as many as 20 hardcore anti-abortion states, Republican true believers want to push anti-abortion sanctions to ever greater extremes that offend most citizens. Other Republicans, mindful of the consequences in swing states, want the ultras to tone it down. But no compromise between the two factions is in the offing.

All this is a kind of poetic justice. Despite decades of pummeling, the instruments of democracy have just enough resilience that public sentiment can be defied only to a point. Bring it on.