A new two-year term of the state legislature began this week, and it’s possibly the most conservative General Assembly in history.
Ohio Public Radio’s Karen Kasler talked with a progressive and conservative activist about what might be ahead.
A historic 65 member Republican majority in the Ohio House isn’t being received positively on the far left – or on the far right. Tom Zawistowski is the executive director of the Portage County Tea Party.
“The state’s not controlled by Republicans. There’s only about 12 conservatives in the Ohio House out of the 65 and there’s only one in the Ohio Senate – Kris Jordan. And the governor’s not a conservative. So there’s this misconception that they’re ruling like Republicans or they’re voting like Republicans.”
But Democrats are trying to think positive as they attempt to navigate a legislature that’s more conservative than ever. Sandy Theis is the executive director of Progress Ohio, a coalition of progressive activist groups and labor unions.
“I think it’s going to be a wild ride, and I’m somewhat hopeful. One of the things we keep hearing form the Republicans is that we want to spend our money more wisely and we want limited government, and I think one of the biggest fights we’re going to see is over charter school accountability.”
And both Zawistowski and Theis predict that bills and battles that they didn’t like in previous legislatures will be back again. Zawistowski largely opposes Gov. John Kasich’s income tax cuts, because he says they don’t do much to help average taxpayers and because of the way Kasich wants to pay for them – with increases in other taxes.
“He’ll tell you himself – he never gives up. So he’s basically going to push for a severance tax increase because of course we want to punish the people who are being successful in our society.”
Theis says she thinks Republicans will stay active in social issues, especially abortion. She expects that will include the third incarnation of the so-called Heartbeat Bill, which would ban abortion at the first detectable fetal heartbeat. It came up for a vote on the House floor last month and failed.
“I think it’ll come forward and it’ll get swatted down again. It’s the boomerang bill. You throw it away and it keeps coming back.”
Zawistowski says he and other Tea Party activists will spend this year recruiting people to run in the 2016 primaries at all levels, and he says rather that set up a third party, they’ll work within the existing Republican and Democratic Party structures. While Theis doesn’t see too much opportunity for Tea Party candidates running as Democrats, she notes that the two sides have teamed up on several issues in the last few years, including working for changes in the way lawmakers’ district boundaries are drawn and suing over the creation of JobsOhio. Conservatives and liberals scored a win last month when state lawmakers passed redistricting reform at the end of the lame duck session. But the team from Progress Ohio and the 1851 Center for Constitutional Law that brought the JobsOhio lawsuit lost that case before the Ohio Supreme Court.
