Following the death of long time U.S. Representative Stephanie Tubbs-Jones, Democrat Marcia L. Fudge, (mayor of Warrensville Heights) won a special election primary on Tuesday. Fudge had previously served as Tubbs-Jones chief of staff. She defeated a field of eight other candidates (not counted four who dropped out.) This means that she will serve out the remaining few weeks of Tubbs-Jones term in the House, thereby giving her seniority over anyone else elected to the House next month.
Located in the Cleveland area, OH-11 has the greatest concentration of urban minority voters of any present Ohio U.S. House seat.
In recent years, the GOP has completely controlled state government in Ohio, including having veto proof majorities in both chambers of the General Assembly. This has allowed them to gerrymander both the Ohio U.S. House Districts and the seats in the state legislature. In some cases (Cincinnati and Dayton, for example) the GOP was able to carefully split up urban areas and mix them in with upscale suburban and rural populations in order to produce U.S. House Districts that are securely but not overwhelmingly Republican.
As a result, eight of our Districts usually vote somewhere between 55 to 65% Republican, assuming a sitting, breathing and un-indicted incumbent. In 2006, the highest vote percentage for a Republican congresscritter was in OH-08 where tanning aficionado John Boehner took 63.80% of the vote. On the other hand, we have three House Districts where the GOP has tried to “quarantine” as many Democratic voters as possible. This means that effectively, whoever gets the Democratic nomination is essentially unbeatable.
In 2006, in OH-09 Kaptur took 73.63%, in OH-17, Ryan got in 80.25%, and despite a serious primary challenge in OH-10, Kucinich got 66.41%. But the big winner was in OH-11 where Tubbs-Jones who took a whopping 83.44% of the vote.
But following the 2010 census, reapportionment is going to hit Ohio HARD. We are on track to lose two U.S. House sets out of our present eighteen.
If that process were held today, Democrats would have a one vote majority on the board that draws the districts for the state General Assembly . GOP legislative leaders have bragged that under the present layout, if Ohio votes an even 50-50 split, the GOP would control over 60% of the seats. However, with a swing of just four seats this year, Democrats could gain control of the Ohio House which would vastly improve the functional balance of power in this state. At this point, the Ohio senate is hopeless both because of gerrymandering and an incompetent state campaign organization.
This is critical and has national implications, because the General Assembly draws the U.S. House districts, and the governor only has veto power over the plan.
IF, somehow, the Democrats are able to control the U.S. reapportionment process, I don’t see how we can afford to have three completely whopperjawed Districts. This is particularly true given that two seats will have to be eliminated.
Which brings us back to the special election primary in OH-11, where just over 10,000 voters elected Ms. Fudge, out of 175,973 voters in the 2006 general election. Will her “seniority” result in special consideration during reapportionment? Will this House seat retain it’s present population make-up?
Local politics — national implications.
Best wishes to the newest member of Congress, and hopefully the newest progressive Democrat. She has huge shoes to fill.