OH-11 There’s an election in Ohio today… sort of

Stephanie Tubbs-Jones was the Representative from OH-11 (in and around Cleveland, basically)until her sudden tragic death in August. The Cuyahoga County Democrats chose her former chief of staff, Marcia Fudge, from a very crowded field, to endorse in a special primary election, which was held on Oct 14.

After the county Party endorsed Fudge, a number of contenders dropped out and Fudge easily won the primary, for the special election to fill the remaining two months of this term. Today is that special election.She is the only candidate on the ballot. Her automatic win means that she will enjoy a two month edge in seniority over the other members of the new class of Reps.

And (of course) she already easily won the General Election on Nov 4 for the new, full term starting in January. It’s an 85% Democratic District.

But there is one big question looming. After the 2010 census, Ohio is going to lose two seats in the U.S. House. And, if they can hang on, the Democrats will control the State General Assembly House of Representatives and the Governorship.

OH-11 is the only U.S. District in Ohio which has a majority of African-American and other minorities. It is also BY FAR the most Democratic in the state under the gerrymandering of the GOP.

In the other urban areas in Ohio, the GOP has tried to carefully slice the suburbs and exurbia with pieces of the inner cities to create House Districts that they can control. (Don’t even talk to me about the General Assembly, especially the Senate…)

That is until 2006 when Zack Space was able to capture an open “scandal” seat in OH-18. And now this year, we have successfully flipped OH-16 and OH-01 and will probably capture OH-15.

So back to reapportionment. The GOP has been able to hold majority control of our “purple” state by creating seats that are solidly but NOT overwhelmingly Republican. On the other hand they have created Democratic seats (OH-09,OH-10, OH-11 and OH-17) which “quarantine” very large numbers of urban Democratic voters.

Will we be able to redraw the map, with two less seats and still be able to maintain Districts with such high concentration of urban Democratic voters?