We're taking a tour of the most outrageous Republican gerrymanders in the nation. Read why in our introductory post, and click here for the full series.
Ohio’s 9th Congressional District previously centered on Toledo, but after the 2010 Census, Republicans gerrymandered it again to include distant western Cleveland, making it just barely contiguous along the Lake Erie shore. That threw Toledo-based Rep. Marcy Kaptur and Cleveland-based Rep. Dennis Kucinich together, and Kaptur defeated him in the 2012 Democratic primary by 56-40. The current Democratic vote-sink backed President Obama by 68-31, which helped Mitt Romney win the four districts to its south and west. Rep. Kaptur has been in office since 1983 and easily won 69-31 in 2016, even as Hillary Clinton was much weaker in northern Ohio than Obama.
This district was part of a broader Republican gerrymander that gave their party a staggering 12 of 16 congressional districts in the last three election cycles, even when Obama narrowly carried the state 51-48 in 2012. We drew nonpartisan proposals for every state, and our map created a compact Toledo-based seat, a wholly western Cleveland district, and even constructed a third seat situated between the two. The Toledo and West Cleveland districts would have voted for Obama by 17 and 14 points respectively, while the district in between would have backed Obama by 5 percent. That means Ohio’s 9th district alone might have cost Democrats one or two extra seats on average.
Tell us what you think the district looks like in the comments!