Next “Laboratories” Excerpt: Chapter 1 (cont.)
Yesterday’s excerpt described the long descent of public outcomes in Ohio. Today's gets into Ohio’s political descent, and how this is part of a national trend…
Broken Politics, Broken Government
…Ohio’s poor public outcomes have come during an era of deep atrophy in Ohio politics and government.
Back when I was in college, I would never have described Ohio as a state with extremist politics. And when it came to political corruption, I would’ve looked down upon Illinois or New Jersey or Louisiana.
Now Ohio is right there with them. Arguably, we’ve taken the lead.
A USA Today analysis in 2021 concluded as much, ranking Ohio as the most corrupt state in the nation. It’s hard to argue with them. Since 2001, scandal after scandal has erupted in Columbus. The first exploded in the 2000s, when millions of state dollars were invested in rare coins foisted on state government by a well-connected donor—only going public after those coins could not be found. A far bigger scandal followed a few years later, when billions of dollars were siphoned away from public schools to for-profit and online charter schools championed by major political donors. The results of these schools were poor to begin with, but it turns out that the largest of these for-profit schools was a scam— cooking the books to get paid millions for student attendance that never existed. Then in 2018, one Ohio Speaker resigned amid an FBI investigation into pay-to-play corruption with payday lenders. Two years later, months before the 2020 election, the FBI announced the biggest bribery scandal in Ohio history, involving the bailout of one of Ohio’s largest energy companies. In early 2021, the lobbyist at the center of that final scandal was found in a Florida park with a bullet in his head while wearing a blue “DeWine for Governor” T-shirt (Mike DeWine is the incumbent governor here). When I say Jersey has nothing on us, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.
At the same time corruption has exploded here, Ohio’s politics have veered away from their past balance and moderation. Oddly, this is occurring even as the state still has relative balance when it comes to party affiliation. Trump did well here, of course, but so did Obama. In 2018, 50% of the state’s voters voted for a Republican for the statehouse, while 49% voted for a Democrat. 52% of Ohioans voted for a Republican for Congress in that same year; 47%, a Democrat. A Republican won the governorship in 2018 by four points; a Democrat won the Senate seat by close to seven. Yes, some of the old Democratic strongholds in small towns and eastern Ohio have become more Republican. But large and growing suburbs—the prior base of Ohio’s moderate GOP—have become more Democratic, a trend Trumpism accelerated. So, on the surface, the breakdown along party lines remains close to even, with a slight rightward tilt that has existed for decades.
But watching the state’s political activity in recent decades, you wouldn’t know it.
A legislature in a state that voted for Obama twice, and voted 50%-49% Republican/Democrat for the statehouse in 2018,55 legislates like a deep red state. Year after year, name the issue, and extreme policies spew from Columbus that you’d expect in only the most conservative states in the nation. Policies that don’t come close to reflecting the mainstream sentiment of the Ohio electorate.
Just a few examples on hot-button issues:
Guns are now allowed in Ohio day cares, bars (as long as you don’t drink in those bars), sports establishments, shopping malls, airports and other places. The legislature added concealed carry fifteen years ago, requiring fourteen days of firearms training; then reduced that to eight days of classes; and a new bill would remove the need for training entirely. Within a year of a mass shooting in Dayton, amid demands of frustrated citizens to “do something,” the only gun reform the legislature passed was a form of “stand your ground”—broadening the defense of shooting someone to include not just your home or car, but any place you have a legal right to be.
The legislature advocates new ways to ban abortion every few months. A 20-week ban was enacted. Then a six- week ban was passed. Then an outright ban was proposed. Polls show that amid the flurry of all these bills, some believe abortion is simply not legal in the state. The number of clinics in the state halved after the statehouse passed a bill requiring clinics to sign transfer agreements with hospitals, knowing full well few hospitals would do so. In 2020, the legislature passed a law requiring that women who undergo surgical abortions must either cremate or bury their fetus, making their decision beforehand. Then, amid the pandemic, they passed a law banning abortion-related services via telemedicine.
Ohio still allows people to be fired due to their sexual orientation even after the state lost its battle at the U.S. Supreme Court in the Obergefell case, which enshrined marriage equality nationally. And even after Obergefell opened up same-sex couples’ ability to adopt, the Ohio legislature refuses to update the language of Ohio law to reflect that. The wording, they insist, must still say “husband and wife.” In 2021, Ohio added a law that doctors could refuse to treat LBTGQ Ohioans for so-called “moral” reasons.
And amid the pandemic, the legislature in the state which is home to the Cleveland Clinic launched an all-out war on a science-based response. Despite a Republican governor advocating the opposite, statehouse politicians were among the first in the nation to attack testing, masks, vaccines and other measures to keep Ohioans safe. Even as the state’s health director, appointed by that Republican governor, earned stratospheric approval ratings from Ohioans, the legislature personally attacked her repeatedly (spurring armed men to protest outside her home). They rushed through legislation stripping the governor’s and her ability to issue emergency health orders—amid an emergency. The governor vetoed the bill, but the GOP supermajority overrode the veto. When the vaccine rollout began in 2021, GOP legislators invited anti-vaxxers to testify on the risks of the vaccines—one witness went viral when she claimed the vaccines were making people magnetic. Not their personalities, mind you, but their actual, physical bodies. Another nurse stuck a metal key against her chest and neck to prove the case—apparently, she wasn’t vaccinated enough because it kept falling from her neck.
As one might imagine, those behind all this extremism comprise quite the cast of characters. Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan may be famous for his tantrums and antics on Capitol Hill. His nonsense stands out there. But he’d face stiff competition to stand out amid his old comrades at the Ohio legislature.
One house member from the eastern suburbs of Cincinnati not only tried to impeach the Republican governor for his efforts to battle COVID, but wrote a bill requiring a specific surgical procedure to correct an ectopic pregnancy (which threatens a mother’s life), as opposed to terminating the pregnancy to save the mother’s life. Only one problem: obstetricians explained the procedure was physiologically impossible. (Oh, that legislator is not a doctor, but he said he came across his mandated procedure in a 1917 medical journal.)
Another statehouse member justified his war against masks in Biblical terms: “We are all created in the image and likeness of God. That image is seen the most by our face . . . That’s the image of God right there, and I want to see it in my brothers and sisters.” He also attacked vaccines and testing.
We have a state senator from the northern suburbs of Columbus (blessed with some of the state’s best public schools) who declared that “public education is socialism.” And we have a state senator from Lima who speculated during the COVID crisis that “colored people” were more susceptible to COVID because they “do not wash their hands as well as other groups.”
These aren’t just back benchers, by the way.
The guy who thinks public education is socialism? He chairs the Ohio Senate’s Education Committee.
The guy who speculated about Black Ohioans not washing their hands? He’s not only a doctor, which should scare all of us. He chairs the senate’s Health Committee. He was handed that role after his comments.
One long-time statehouse member was investigated by the FBI for money laundering, but was term limited while the investigation was still pending. He ran again a few years later, got himself reelected, and was promptly investigated again. This time, he was indicted after the FBI caught him on tape allegedly undertaking the largest bribery scandal in Ohio history. The man’s name was Larry Householder, and he was serving as Ohio’s Speaker on both occasions, the state’s single most powerful political figure. He stepped into the Speakership after another Speaker had stepped aside due to an entirely different FBI investigation.
To put it mildly, the state that gave the world John Glenn and Neil Armstrong and Toni Morrison is not sending its best to state politics. And amid those who arrive in Ohio’s capital, the best are not rising to be the leaders of the two branches of the legislature. And by the way, all these people always get reelected, unless they’re indicted. And sometimes, not even that stops them.
Importantly, those paying attention to Ohio’s statehouse— and one of the problems we’ll explore in this book is that too few do—understand that there is a connection between the political atrophy in Columbus and the anemic public outcomes described above. These aren’t parallel, unrelated tracks. There’s direct causation between the corrupt and extreme politics of the statehouse and poor public outcomes.
Remember, Ohio still has strong natural, public and private assets. The Lake and the Ohio River and the natural resources and the manufacturing base and all those national caliber institutions are all still here. We’re still a day’s drive to most of the country’s population. If state government exhibited basic competence and effectiveness, you’d expect public outcomes to reflect those natural and private strengths. But in Ohio, despite strengths that are superior to the average state, our outcomes are worse than the average state on issue after issue.
So, you can’t blame the natural strengths of Ohio for the decline. And there’s not some innate weakness in the people of Ohio leading to the poor outcomes.
If you’re failing at everything, something is more deeply wrong than an errant policy or two.
Broken government lies at the heart of it all.
Bottom line: Ohio finds itself on a downward spiral. Its public outcomes are dropping across the board. But its political system, with its calcified corruption and extremism, does nothing to alter that fall. And those poor outcomes only engender the type of deterioration—more population loss, especially of young people; poorer education; etc.—that only enhances the political prospects of those in power.
The downward spiral only continues.
So how does a state with Ohio’s storied history, a history of moderation, and an electorate in 2018 that still voted 50%- 49%, tumble down this deep hole of extremism, corruption and decline?
It’s a painful story, and I’ll tell it over the course of the book.
But here’s a hint: while the quality of our governors and other statewide officials has varied over the years, the heart of the problem is the state legislature, which we call our General Assembly. The 99-person house and the 33-person senate are where the action is. They set the tone for everything else. And they have enough power and sway to force the hands of statewide officials while exerting major influence over both the funding and policies of local government.
For a host of reasons which we’ll explore, the Ohio General Assembly is a fundamentally broken institution. And it has become a deeply undemocratic institution. Those afflictions don’t just drive down public outcomes in Ohio but also carry dramatic consequences beyond the state when it comes to democracy itself.
The Biggest Problem? It’s Not Just Ohio
At my theoretical reunion, if asked about my home state, I wouldn’t bother reciting these depressing developments. Not the type of conversation you’d want to have catching up with an old friend over a beer. And I wouldn’t want to risk my Cincinnati Board of Tourism title. But it would be in the back of my mind if they asked about Ohio.
A college student on a campus today, out of state like I was, would likely not bring any of this up either. But for too many, judging from the numbers cited above, it will be the reason why they never return after graduating.
A truly sad and sobering story for the Buckeye State, right?
But here’s the thing. It’s not the full story. We need to take one more step back.
The final step.
At my theoretical reunion, if I were to explain how broken things were in the great state of Ohio, the person with whom I was having the conversation would, as often as not, have one reply.
“Wow. That sounds just like my state.”
If I was speaking to a friend from Georgia, or Wisconsin, or Missouri, and they were watching their state capital closely, they would say that. And they’d be right.
Alabama, or Florida, or Texas. Same response.
Out West—Arizona, Montana, or Wyoming. Same answer. Iowa, Louisiana, Florida. Similar story.
When you take a step back and scan the country, the dynamics afflicting Ohio’s statehouse and broader body politic aren’t unique. They’re playing out in state after state.
Sure, some public outcomes may be better in some places, worse in others, for a variety of reasons.
But the fundamental problem of broken government and broken democracy looks the same. Cesspools of corruption and dysfunction. Extreme policies way out of step with the popular will of these states. Lack of results combined with lack of accountability. And an unrelenting focus on cementing an anti-democratic bulwark into place to allow all that work to continue with no end in sight. Absolute immunity from political consequences. And like Ohio’s did in 2021, all of these legislatures kicked off the year with a wave of assaults on basic notions of democracy for the future.
Just as the collapse in Ohio is disconcerting, this trend across our country is profoundly disturbing. Plunging health, increased poverty and extremism that is out of touch with the mainstream are all deeply problematic as a matter of the common good, and America’s competitiveness.
But at this moment in our nation’s history, following the Trump presidency, January 6, and the dangers of the Big Lie, the state of America’s statehouses has made them especially dangerous.
Dangerous to democracy itself—their own, and America’s writ large.
In the coming chapters, I will explain how a fundamental breakdown in democracy has taken place at statehouses in Ohio and elsewhere, and how this has converted these state legislatures into nearly unstoppable “laboratories of autocracy.” If unaddressed, they threaten the heart of American democracy in the near- and long-term.
But in addition to alarming readers to this reality, I’ll also present an agenda of how this perilous direction can be reversed.
It won’t be easy, but it’s essential.
And there are clear and practical examples where wins have already occurred and can be repeated.
Even in the great state of Ohio.
Thank you, Mr. Pepper, for shining this light. But I will submit the true reason for Ohio's demise, and that of state governments nationally, is the loss of local newspapers. Accountability was maintained through education, and We The People received our education through our newspapers. And the powers-that-be saw that. We now have scant few investigative reporters digging into the corruption and lies, which is exactly how the rich and powerful want it. With those few reporters lacking outlets, they've turned to the internet, where the average user is more interested in pictures of a cat wearing ridiculous booties. With no newspapers, most people get no education, and the corrupt politicians get no accountability. And the merry-go-round continues to go round, and we continue to get bamboozled. Sorry to say, I see no viable ending to this mess that bodes well for America.
Amazing talent! Thanks for sharing these.