ICYMI: BREAKING Ohio elections chief Frank LaRose would ‘be fine with’ the chief justice’s impeachment over redistricting rulings
April 1, 2022
For Immediate Release:
Friday, April 1, 2022
Columbus, OH — Today, Frank LaRose showed Ohio his true partisan colors. In case you missed it, Marty Schladen from the Ohio Capital Journal reports that LaRose is the first statewide Republican to support the impeachment of Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor for doing her job and upholding the Ohio Constitution. LaRose is looking for anyone to blame but himself for the election chaos he’s created by voting for several iterations of GOP-gerrymandered maps that could cost Ohioans tens of millions of dollars in the weeks and months ahead.
This is yet another example of Frank LaRose’s willingness to do or say anything because he wants to run for Senate in two years. Rather than go after the chief justice and the rule of law, he should do his job and pass fair maps.
“The secretary of state’s sharp partisan tone is a stark departure from the bipartisan one LaRose struck when he initially ran for office in 2018. At the time, he told The Columbus Dispatch that he wanted to ‘bring a sense of civility and bipartisanship to how we conduct elections,’” writes Marty Schladen for the Ohio Capital Journal.
Read more from the Ohio Capital Journal HERE and below:
- Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Friday said he “certainly wouldn’t oppose it” if the legislature impeached Ohio Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor over her joining in rulings rejecting GOP-generated maps for Congress and the legislature, according to a recording of a breakfast meeting with Union County Republicans.
- Such calls to effectively end the career of a judge because her rulings didn’t go the GOP’s way have been too extreme for at least one other Republican on the commission — Gov. Mike DeWine.
- “This is an extraordinary measure to take,” he said when the idea was floated earlier this month. “I think we don’t want to go down that pathway, because we disagree with a decision by a court, because we disagree with a decision by an individual judge or justice. Not a good idea.”
- He was referring to repeated rulings in which O’Connor sided with the court’s Democrats in saying that maps passed by the Republican majority on the redistricting commission were illegally gerrymandered.
- In recent statewide elections, voters have supported Republicans by roughly a 54-46 margin. But the maps produced by Republicans favor the party to have much greater representation in the legislature and Congress.
- They violate constitutional amendments overwhelmingly passed by Ohio voters requiring that the partisan makeup of the state legislature and congressional delegation resemble the general partisan makeup of the state, O’Connor has ruled.
- LaRose didn’t explain how O’Connor misinterpreted the law, much less how such a misinterpretation would violate a justice’s oath of office.
- The secretary of state’s sharp partisan tone is a stark departure from the bipartisan one LaRose struck when he initially ran for office in 2018.
- At the time, he told The Columbus Dispatch that he wanted to “bring a sense of civility and bipartisanship to how we conduct elections.”
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