Ohio Republicans are eagerly watching as a state redistricting commission runs up against a deadline to design a new congressional district map by the end of the month. If it fails, as looks increasingly likely, Republicans will have an easier path to drawing one that’s friendlier to their party.
That would mean Republicans could make up to three Democrat-held seats more competitive, as the national party is pushing to protect and even grow the majority they currently have in the House of Representatives at the request of President Donald Trump.
While the redistricting battle has been playing out nationally for months, the Ohio redistricting fight precedes it because of a citizen-led ballot initiative passed in 2018 aimed at combating gerrymandering. The state redistricting commission is currently in charge of coming up with a new map ahead of 2026 that would last until after the next census.
But the commission, made up of five Republicans and two Democrats, has struggled to do anything ahead of its deadline. Maps made by the commission must receive both votes from the minority party members to pass, which is increasingly unlikely, and Republicans are content to run out the clock.
Democrats are starting to cry foul.
Rep. Emilia Sykes, a Democrat representing Ohio’s 13th Congressional District, told NOTUS that Republicans are looking to make gains because of how closely split some of the House races were in 2024, and that Republicans believed the map would already have 13 Republicans instead of the 10 they hold after the last election.
“What they didn’t anticipate and I guess what they forgot is that Ohio is a lot more purple. They did not bill good candidates, they didn’t put people forth that voters connected to, and they weren’t able to win in districts they drew with a Republican advantage,” Sykes said. “Now they’re coming back to say, ‘We didn’t get enough.’”
Sykes won her last election by just two percentage points in 2024. It was a contentious race, with more than $13 million spent by various political action committees, according to OpenSecrets. Republicans, including Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno, are thinking of her seat as the first to flip.
The top Democrat in the House of Representatives, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, committed to fighting a Republican-passed map with a voter referendum, as first reported by Punchbowl News. That would require gathering about 250,000 signatures before the map passed by the Legislature would be put on the ballot, and then voters would have to approve it before it could be used in 2026. Jeffries’ office did not respond to an inquiry from NOTUS.
That the Ohio state redistricting commission is currently in charge of the map design at all is because the state Legislature failed to act. The commission is intended to be a backup if the state Legislature doesn’t come up with a new map that is approved by 60% in both chambers and would last for a decade. Democrats in the Legislature introduced a map that was not voted on in the Republican-controlled Legislature, and Republicans never introduced an option.
If the state redistricting commission also fails to act, Republicans will be able to pass a map with a simple majority that would be in place for four years.
Erin Covey, an editor who focuses on redistricting for the Cook Political Report, said this redistricting battle has gotten lost in the national spotlight as other states have taken prominence in the redistricting conversation, but Ohio’s fight is unique, as it started well before the second Trump administration.
“Because Ohio trended increasingly toward Republicans in the past nine years, they no longer have the incentive to do this, because they can just redraw the maps every four years without any sort of Democratic support,” Covey said, of passing a bipartisan map.
On Tuesday, the commission convened for the first time in a 28-minute meeting and did not produce a map.
“We have yet to receive any alternative map or any substantive suggestions to the proposal we’ve put forward,” Dani Isaacson, Ohio state House minority leader and member of the commission, said in his testimony on Tuesday.
The meeting was adjourned quickly after testimony from the committee’s two Democratic members. While there are no set dates for when the commission will convene again, the commission’s co-chair and Republican state Rep. Brian Stewart said plans for the next meeting are being discussed.
“I think we have penciled in, informally, some dates that will work,” Stewart said about a future commission meeting.
Gov. Mike DeWine, who is a member of the commission and whose office gets to appoint members to the commission, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that private discussions about a map were happening, but didn’t say whether any map could get bipartisan support in the commission. DeWine said he hoped that a bipartisan map could be approved before the clock runs out.
“It always gives the public more confidence, if there could be something worked out between the parties,” DeWine told The Statehouse News Bureau on Tuesday.
Republicans currently control 10 of the House seats in Ohio, and Democrats control five. Since the constitutional amendment took effect in 2018, the state redistricting commission hasn’t successfully produced a map.
Democrats and some voting rights groups are advocating for a map that would give the state eight Republican seats and seven Democratic seats, based on the state’s result in the 2024 presidential election, when 55% of voters cast their ballots for President Donald Trump and 44% for former Vice President Kamala Harris.
When asked by NOTUS how Republicans should strategize around the map, Sen. Jon Husted deferred.
“I’m not in that game anymore,” Husted said. “That’s for the House members.”