It’s impossible to discuss Ohio politics without mentioning gerrymandering. Since Republican lawmakers rewrote the district maps in 2011, giving themselves a comfortable majority, hyper-partisan gerrymandering has become a growing concern.
According to the Brennan Center, 77 percent of Ohio’s population lives in districts where the election for state representative lacks electoral competition. Of those, half featured no primary contest. Redistricting maps drawn by the Ohio Redistricting Commission have been declared unconstitutional — and have been rejected — by the state Supreme Court on several occasions.
CityBeat spoke with State Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati) about this electoral reality, his re-election campaign against Republican challenger John Sess and more.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CityBeat: You’re a Democrat — a member of the minority caucus in a statehouse controlled by Republicans. Could you talk about what bipartisanship looks like in an environment like that?
Dani Isaacsohn: I’ve worked really hard on the bills that I’ve introduced to find bipartisan, Republican sponsors. So I’ve introduced multiple property tax reform bills that are bipartisan. In fact, the most comprehensive property tax bills that have been introduced in this General Assembly have come from myself and Representative Thomas Hall. We introduced the only sweeping housing bill in the House that’s a bipartisan bill with Representative Adam Mathews and introduced the only bill that would address the issue of chronic absenteeism in this General Assembly with Bill Seitz. So I have tried on some of these major issues to find areas of agreement.
CB: Tell me more about the housing bill, and how you intend to continue working on the subject of affordable housing if re-elected.
DI: It’s based on the reality that we have a housing crisis at all levels. In almost every community, there’s just not enough places for people to live. That is true of apartments and big buildings. It’s true of single-family homes. It’s true for renters, it’s true for owners. It’s true for young people and older people. And so we introduced a bill that is intended to transfer housing development at all levels, and it gives local governments the flexibility to identify the pro-housing policies that are the best fit for them. Representative Mathews and I represent very different types of districts. I represent urban Cincinnati, he represents suburban, but we crafted a bill that would allow local governments to choose the pro-household policies that make the most sense and then provide state funds to incentivize the adoption and development of pro-household policies.
CB: There are two sections on your campaign website dedicated to education, one about K-12 education, and another about universal pre-k. Why is that an important issue for you?
DI: To me, there’s no more important issue and more fundamental issue for us to work on than how we are educating the next generation, and as a baseline principle for me, every kid in Ohio deserves a world-class education. But at the moment, we are not providing to our public education system and we are under-investing. I have been focused on: how do we build a coalition across rural, Appalachian and urban districts, so that we can guarantee that the students that we are representing get the education they deserve? And so I organized the inaugural Urban Appalachian Education Summit to try and foster that coalition. Because while I’m proud we fought hard to get a historic increase in public education, there is still so much more to go.
CB: Ohio lawmakers have been in the news recently for targeting the LGBTQ+ community and anti-abortion measures. How much extremism do you see in the statehouse?
DI: The Ohio legislature is a clear example of what happens when a small group of people have far too much power for far too long, and what they’ve done with that power is they’ve created a system where we have gerrymandered districts where voters actually don’t get to choose the politicians. Politicians choose their voters. And when you have a situation like that, it leads to political extremism. People running to the extremes, while most Ohioans are not in extremes. The only way we can get back to having a representative legislature is if we change the way we draw our legislative districts, which is why Issue 1 is so important.
CB: You worked as a legal intern for the Obama administration legal counsel, and as a field organizer for the Obama presidential campaign. How has that influenced your understanding of what it means to be an effective political leader?
DI: On the Obama campaign in particular, it just taught me the power and the value of bringing people together in their neighborhood for a common cause to make big change, and the principle that we need to listen and learn from people who live the issues every day. I need to listen to my constituents, what they need and what they’re going through. The two biggest costs for people across Ohio, certainly in my district, are housing and childcare. And so that has been my focus. How do we invest in our public education? It’s the job of the representative out in the community, learning from people, building relationships with people and then doing the work in the legislature.
CB: What would you say to young Ohioans who feel pessimistic about the ability of their lawmakers to steer the state in a positive direction?
DI: I have this conversation with young people regularly: voter registration. If we don’t show up, if people who care about others and the community don’t show up, all we’re doing is ceding power to folks who are willing to serve special interests. I actually think it’s an incredible opportunity here in Ohio to change our future. We can change how things are going. We can do that in small ways. We have a responsibility and obligation to do it for the next generation. We need them. We’re counting on them.
CityBeat reached out to John Sess for an interview but did not receive a response by the time of publication.
This story is featured in CityBeat’s Oct. 30 print edition.
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This article appears in Oct 30 – Nov 12, 2024.