Nostalgia for the past and indifference about the future
In what were were the final few days of legislating before a long, slow, summer off, the Ohio General Assembly was in a frenzy, passing measures, big and small, that by right should have been resolved long ago.
Still, as a pure study of human nature, there’s nothing like watching the legislature try to squeeze what should have been six months of lawmaking into a few frantic late-June sessions. People have sometimes likened the “process” to sausage-making. That’s grossly unfair to sausage-makers, whose products must at least pass inspection.
As others have reported, perhaps no General Assembly in decades has been less productive than the one now in session. Part of that is structural. Although the House is composed of 67 Republicans and 32 Democrats, Democrats have clout out of proportion to their numbers.
Reason: Because of a split among the 67 Republican between intra-GOPcaucus foes and allies of Republican Speaker Jason Stephens, who won the House’s gavel with the help of House Democrats’ votes. And to keep the gavel, and to avoid riling his de facto Democratic allies, Stephens, it appears, has reined in House Republicans’ extreme-right faction.
Meanwhile, the Senate, led by President Matt Huffman, has tended to be more conservative, its Republicans for the most part united. And now Huffman, who’s being term-limited out of the Senate, will be returning to the House in January, vying to wrest its speakership from fellow Republican
Stephens. And anti-Stephens House Republicans have gained control of the House GOP caucus’s campaign fund in a legal fight the House’s anti-faction Stephens faction won, and which he lost.
If you’re Mike DeWine, with 30 months left in your governorship, you can expect to be navigating in at best choppy waters in the state Senate and Ohio’s House in 2025 and 2026, no matter how the Huffman-Stephens contest turns out. At the same time, intra-party clawing and knifing over the 2026 statewide Ohio tickets of both the Republican and Democratic parties will distract Statehouse attention from issues that continue to demand attention — school funding, property taxes and utility rates, gerrymandering of General Assembly districts — and sensation-of-the-day “issues” and policy gimmicks.
As things stand today on Capitol Square, even the most jaded Statehouse bystander likely longs for the era when the aim of the game was to get things done, not just score points to win headlines and attract talkshow invites.
Not to worry, though, before it went home, the General Assembly gave
Ohio’s voters billions of dollars in gifts in the form of local construction projects — “gifts” the recipients, not the donors, will pay for long after today’s General Assembly has retired with nice pensions, and no regrets.
That’s the wonderful world of Ohio politics today: Nostalgia for the past, indifference about the future, and devotion to the status quo. It’s a great life — if you know the right people.