Anti-gerrymandering campaign drawing big cash from inside, outside Ohio

COLUMBUS — The massive effort to dramatically change how Ohio redraws congressional and legislative districts raked in a whopping $23 million during the first half of this year and spent every dollar to qualify for the ballot and lock up advertising time.

And as the opposition has frequently predicted, it is drawing millions from national organizations from outside Ohio. The largest single check, $6 million, was cut by the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a left-leaning, Washington-based non-profit “dark money” corporation.

Article IV, a Virginia-based non-profit corporation, gave just under $3 million; the Tides Foundation, of San Francisco, $2 million; the Our American Future Foundation, of Washington, just under $2.5 million; the Movement Voter Project, of Massachusetts, just over $1 million; and the National Education Association, of Washington, $1 million.

From within the state, the Ohio Education Association has given $1.55 million and the Ohio Progressive Collaboration, $1.5 million.

“This is a truly impressive show of support from Ohioans across the political spectrum,” said former Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, who is the face of the reform effort.

“Our coalition continues to expand for one simple reason: People of all political persuasions hate gerrymandering because it is fundamentally unfair, and it only helps elite political insiders maintain power at the expense of the interests of everyday citizens,” she said.

The former chief justice, forced from the bench last year because of her age, was the sole Republican vote in multiple 4-3 decisions that struck down maps drawn by the Republican-controlled Ohio Redistricting Commission as unconstitutionally partisan.

Voters will be asked on Nov. 5 whether they want to amend the Ohio Constitution to take the power to redraw congressional and state legislative districts out of the hands of politicians and give it to a new 15-member commission equally divided among Republicans, Democrats, and independents.

Elected officials, other politicians, their family members, lobbyists, staffers, and major campaign contributors could not serve.

The Citizens Not Politicians campaign points to more than 750 contributions from individuals of less than $200 each.

“These are fellow citizens who are giving what they can because they care about fairness and are sick and tired of politicians rigging the game so they can grow old in office and benefit themselves and their lobbyist friends,” the former chief justice said.

Republicans, including at the party's national convention in Milwaukee last month, have made it clear they intend to make the source of cash for the ballot issue a part of the campaign to convince voters to defeat it. They've done the same with prior ballot issues, including last year's successful amendment etching a right to abortion access into the constitution.

“The other side is going to have a lot of money,” Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said on Wednesday when he urged voters to reject the proposed amendment.

“Most of this money is coming from outside the state,’ he said. “I would just ask voters to question why all this money is coming into the state of Ohio once again. It's just massive amounts of money.”

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, in particular, became legislative Republicans' poster child earlier this year for a new state law that bars issue campaigns from accepting assistance from foreign nationals because money from a Swiss billionaire had made its way into that Washington fund.

The question, as with all “dark money” sources that do not have to be publicly disclosed, is how to prove that the foreign money is the money that made its way to an Ohio campaign.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund was a major contributor to the reproductive rights campaign last November as well as the August, 2023 campaign that defeated the General Assembly's attempt to raise the bar for passing constitutional amendments in advance of that abortion vote.

In a statement, the fund said its contributions to the campaign comply with all regulations.

In all, Citizens Not Politicians has raised about $25 million since launching last fall. Its semi-annual report filed Wednesday with the Secretary of State's office shows that it is already buying up media time for the fall campaign.

The coalition filed far more signatures of registered voters needed to qualify for the ballot. The next step is for the Republican-majority Ohio Ballot Board to write the language that voters will see on the ballot.