COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine wants Ohio lawmakers to get it together and has called a special session Tuesday to get them to do their jobs — fix an obscure law so President Joe Biden can be on the November ballot. Now, the two chambers must scramble to compromise on each of their proposals. The House, which has been holding up the progress, said it will compromise with the Senate, but only if the "anti-democratic" provisions are taken out of the bill.
"Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, sitting president of the United States, on the ballot this fall," DeWine said during a Thursday evening surprise press conference. "Failing to do so is simply not acceptable. This is ridiculous; this is an absurd situation."
DeWine has been urging lawmakers to do this since the warning was raised by LaRose, but the GOP leaders have been disagreeing on the way to do it.
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Right now, Biden, the presumptive nominee for the Democratic party, wouldn't be on the ballot. He will "100% be" on the ballot, every lawmaker has said, but this is just a whole mess right now.
Ohio requires parties to confirm their presidential candidates 90 days before the Nov. election, which would be Aug. 7. But Biden won’t be the official nominee until the Democratic National Convention, which is on Aug. 19.
Democratic leaders were unaware of this, and plenty of other lawmakers across the aisle also didn't know. Sec. of State Frank LaRose didn’t remind Dems until April.
In theory, both the House and the Senate have similar fixes to the ballot problem — but they have failed to get the legislation done and signed into law.
The House was a clean bill that changed the nomination deadline to 74 days, which is Aug. 23. This would likely be a permanent fix.
But the Senate passed a separate bill. It changed the nominating deadline from Aug. 7 to Aug. 23 — but only for 2024, so it wasn't a permanent fix.
I have been covering the ongoing debacle in Columbus.
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While the House version simply changes the nominating deadline, state Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) said the Senate’s version has unacceptable additions.
"The Senate Republicans decided, 'You know what? We want to extract a cost to get the president on the ballot,'" Isaacsohn said.
This is "anti-democratic," Isaacsohn, as well as dozens of other Democrats have said.
The lawmakers added in Senate Bill 215, a campaign finance bill. In early March, Republican senators passed legislation meant to stop foreign donations to state and local ballot-issue campaigns. This could be by directly donating from outside the country or by donating to an entity, like a political action committee (PAC).
Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) explains this helps prevent interference.
"Most Ohioans would agree that we shouldn't have foreign dollars affecting our ballot initiatives," Huffman said.
That is a red herring, Isaacsohn argued because the Senate proposal also has provisions that could make it harder for grassroots movements to get on the ballot — even with U.S. dollars.
It would require all groups rallying for a cause that is receiving donations and spending money to register as a PAC. This means that groups would have to file disclosures with the government, and it could make it more difficult to collect signatures to get a proposal on a township ballot.
The bill also prohibits a lawful permanent U.S. resident, also known as a green card holder, from making contributions or expenditures regarding ballot issues or candidates.
"All of it is an attempt to make it harder to pass ballot initiatives in Ohio, which as you know, are the way in which voters — in the most pure sense — make their voice heard because it is direct democracy," Isaacsohn said.
Democrats in both the House and the Senate say that the Republicans who introduced this measure are just mad about their 2023 losses.
All three ballot proposals that passed last year were started because voters weren't happy with the state legislature and didn't feel like their voices were being heard. The August special election was proposed by lawmakers because they didn't want abortion to become legal — a direct result of the angry voices of citizens.
S. B. 215's bill sponsor, state Sen. Rob McColley (R-Napoleon), told me in a previous interview that this wouldn't negatively impact the local advocates trying to get a stop sign.
"If you're going to collect and spend money in support of signature gathering, in support of a ballot initiative, you got to report your money," McColley said.
Legislation like this is already in effect federally, and it also applies to candidates in Ohio — just not ballot initiatives, so this is catching the law up, he added.
DeWine agreed.
"I don't find it a very controversial issue," DeWine said. "We should not have foreign nationals interfering and spending money in Ohio ballot races."
The governor is urging the House to concur on it, seemingly calling them irresponsible for their lack of action in the process.
"The House of Representatives has failed to do this — the legislature had session yesterday and again failed to take any action," the governor said. "This is simply unacceptable."
Huffman also took a shot at the House.
We agree with the Governor. It is time to protect Ohio’s elections by outlawing foreign campaign contributions, while at the same time fixing the Democratic Party’s error that kept Joe Biden off the November ballot. We encourage the Speaker and Minority Leader to allow a vote on House Bill 114 which does both.
Fortney seemingly suggests that Minority Leader Allison Russo is preventing the bill from hitting the floor — despite Stephens having a supermajority of Republicans. Stephens has been accused of being too close with the Democrats and allowing Russo to make decisions. The speaker has denied this, and so has Russo.
The House leaders — both Democrats like Isaacsohn and Republicans like House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) — continue to say that it isn’t the foreign interference ban that they are rejecting; it is the new restrictions to access to the ballot for citizens.
Speaker Jason Stephens says he is willing to compromise — by making sure that a bill doesn't "limit the rights of citizens to have their voices heard."
"For weeks, we have been pushing to find a legislative solution to having President Biden on the ballot. Ultimately, the will to do so wasn’t there in the Republican caucus.
Everyone agrees that we need to ban foreign political contributions from ballot issue campaigns in Ohio, and we have been driving towards a solution.
We have language that has input from campaign finance experts and important interested parties to deal with the issue. This is language that squarely and directly bans foreign influence in Ohio’s issue campaigns, while not also inadvertently limiting the rights of citizens to have their voices heard.
We look forward to real solutions that will actually pass both chambers next week and solve problems.”
The speaker is referencing H.B. 609, a new bill regarding foreign money, one without significant negative impacts on local community members, Isaacsohn said.
Introduced by state Reps. Brett Hillyer (R-Uhrichsville) and Adam Holmes (R-Nashport), the bill prohibits the committee in charge of a statewide initiative or referendum petition from asking for or knowingly accepting money from a foreign entity or person. It also declares the bill as an emergency.
I found a problem in the lawmakers' original plans for passing legislation, noting the only way they could get this done on time was by passing a bill with an emergency clause.
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In a conference call with state Rep. Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati), who seems to be the negotiating entity between the House and the Senate, he said that DeWine gave an hour and a half heads up to him about the special session order.
"These are snap decisions that have to be made sort of in a big hurry," Seitz said. "Our original plan in the House was to have session on June 12 — We wanted to give everybody plenty of notice so that they could rearrange their plans and rearranged to be in Columbus on June 12."
For an emergency clause, two-thirds of the representatives must vote yes. That is easily done in the Senate, considering that there would be 22 members and there are 26 Republicans in the chamber. In the House, one in which the GOP is fractured, an emergency would need 66 votes. There are 67 Republicans, and at least four refuse to vote for anything that helps Biden at all, according to Seitz. He doesn't think the Democrats would vote in favor of the foreign money ban, so he has to make sure that 66 Republicans not only show up but also support the bill.
"A number of our colleagues, quite a number of our colleagues, said that they would categorically refuse to vote for a bill that simply put Mr. Biden's name on the ballot," Seitz said. "They're afraid of being tarred and feathered as loving Democrats if they do so."
But there are significant challenges with this. Bills must be heard on three separate days, and with the governor calling the session on Tuesday, that means the bill needs to be done and in committee the same day and then continued on Wednesday and Thursday. They must be done by then when their legal team advises them they must be done by Wednesday, and they don't even have the vehicle to get this done.
There is no way to suspend House rules since that would also require a two-thirds vote from the chambers, the lawmaker said.
"The fundamental difference between so far what the Senate wants to do and what we want to do is with the amount of words that the Senate is taking to do it, as opposed to a simpler strategy that that our legal counsel is recommending," he said. "I keep urging both sides, 'Let's get past this argument over who gets to draft the bill.'"
It is an understatement to say that Stephens and Huffman are political foes. Click here to learn more about the GOP infighting.
I asked if the rivalry was playing into the debacle. Seitz said no. All the Democrats and every Republican I have spoken to, other than Seitz, Stephens and Huffman, said it is.
"Wouldn't it make more sense politically for the Republicans to want Biden to be on the ballot because if Biden isn't on the ballot, that could slow turnout for Trump?" I asked Seitz.
"You're 100% correct," the Republican responded, noting that former President Donald Trump, U.S. Senator J.D. Vance, U.S. Senate candidate Bernie Moreno and all Ohio GOP leaders want Biden to be on the ballot.
The special session should begin in the afternoon on Tuesday.
How can Biden be on the ballot?
The DNC can announce early. Or the lawmakers can do something within a tight time frame that even Seitz seems nervous about.
Lawmakers have been suggesting Democrats can go to court to get the president on the ballot.
Case Western Reserve University law professor Jonathan Entin said no court case would work. Learn more about his analysis here.
"What seems to be going on reflects yet again how dysfunctional the Ohio government is," Entin said. "There's plenty of faults to be laid on just about everybody."
You can fault the Democrats for not knowing the law, the entire legislative leadership for being uncooperative and constantly bickering and LaRose for "waiting until virtually the last minute to raise the issue," the professor added.
"It's hard to imagine that anybody could go broke underestimating the irresponsibility of Ohio officials dealing with this situation," Entin sighed.
Follow WEWS statehouse reporter Morgan Trau on Twitter and Facebook.
