Suddes: Matt Huffman, Jason Stephens battle shaking 'Big Frat House on Capitol Square'

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

There are circles inside of circles at the Statehouse as the Republican-run Ohio House of Representatives demonstrated in a May 10 rollcall on an anti-abortion constitutional amendment.

That was when, with 60 votes required, representatives voted 62-37 (62 Republicans vs. 32 Democrats and five Republicans) to ask voters to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution at the ballot box. But unofficially, and way below the surface, the vote reinforced House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Kitts Hill Republican, in a way that bears some explaining.

More:Ohio to hold August election on proposal to make it harder to amend constitution

Aim of the measure, Senate Joint Resolution 2:  To require a “yes” vote of at least 60% of the voters to OK a separate amendment to be proposed by voter petition — if it makes Nov. 7’s general election ballot —establishing a woman’s right to choose abortion.

For 111 years, Ohio has required a statewide vote of 50% plus one to amend the state constitution. Reason for the proposed 60% change: The anti-abortion movement, which owns Statehouse Republicans lock, stock, and barrel, knows that when voters in other have states passed pro-abortion amendments, the “yes” percentage in those states has usually been less than 60%.

Thomas Suddes:Frank LaRose wants to rewrite history to hijack your century-old right

That is, a 60% rule in Ohio — if voters approve it a special, pricey Aug. 8 election — might block an abortion-rights measure, if such a measure makes November’s ballot, even if 59.99% of the voters favor it. That’s “democracy,” Ohio-style. But arguably something else was happening subsurface in the House that day -- something bolstering Republican Speaker Stephens.

On Jan. 3, bystanders will recall, Stephens, because of a split in the House GOP caucus, was elected speaker only because the House’s 32 Democrats joined 22 House Republicans to vote for Stephens rather than Rep. Derek Merrin, a suburban Toledo Republican backed by the hard right.

But on May 10, while all House Democrats voted against Senate Joint Resolution 2 as did five Republicans — thus, in effect, against Stephens — the 62 other members of the House GOP caucus (including Stephens himself) voted with Stephens.

And while that hardly suggests all is forgiven inside the GOP caucus — after all, the vote really was an IOU repaid to the anti-abortion movement — it certainly left Stephens in what looks like a stronger position that he’d had before May 10: That is, he delivered to a powerful pro-GOP interest group. (The May 10 vote also inspired questions about what House Democrats were thinking in January.)

Stephens’s passage of the anti-abortion amendment also matters because of what looks like legislative competition between Stephens and a fellow Republican, Senate President Matt Huffman, of Lima, who got the anti-abortion amendment passed first — and with 100% of his Senate Republican caucus on board.

More:Who is Jason Stephens? The new Republican speaker of the Ohio House

More:Who's Matt Huffman? The Lima man running the show at the Ohio Statehouse

Huffman is term-limited out of the Senate in 18 months, but Stephens can run again for the House (hence the speakership) in 2024 and 2026.

And, The Columbus Dispatch’s Laura Bischoff recently reported, “[Huffman] said he wants to run for the Ohio House in 2024 and ‘maybe, someday’ be speaker.” (Huffman was deputy speaker during the 2011-2014 House speakership of the late William G. Batchelder, of Medina.)

Of course, if Huffman is elected to the House next year, “maybe, someday,” could be anytime in a legislature that will meet from 2025 through 2031, with Stephens likely to be running for speaker in 2025 and 2027 (assuming GOP gerrymandering continues to keep Democrats a besieged minority). In a term-limited legislature, two years is a long time, four years an eternity

.

True, for the rank-and-file Ohioan, this may seem like just another day at the Big Frat House on Capitol Square, where the guys just want to have fun without hometown voters hearing too much about that.

But with a new governor being elected in 2026, and the Statehouse ever-churned by term-limits, the interplay between Messrs. Huffman and Stephens will be a key factor in this year’s state budget debate —and in the policy debates to come in the next 18 months: The Ohio of 2025 and 2026 is being fashioned today.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com