Boehner Caught Red handed in a Purple State

Baseball player Mark Grace was famous for saying “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying” to describe how major leaguers will use every advantage they can to get ahead, even if it violates the rules.

The same can be applied to politics: ambitious candidates and parties will always push the envelope as far as they can to get an advantage.

Sometimes however, you push too far and you get caught and it’s game over for everyone. Reports out of Ohio might mean that House Speaker John Boehner might be headed for the showers.

An AP report released today shows that members of John Boehner’s staff, along with Republican political consultants, had private meetings with Ohio state representatives to re-draw state voting districts to their advantage.

Now in and of itself this may not seem shocking, parties in power always attempt to re-draw voting districts in their favor. But, Boehner’s staff got all Tom Delay, going overboard by committing a raft of ethics and election law violations have been committed that might put the Congressmen in front of the House Ethics committee.

The Ohio Campaign for Accountable redistricting has compiled a report that includes emails, correspondence and meeting locations of the Republican Party leaders and consultants that moves way past trying into unadulterated cheating.

According to the AP report:

In one instance, an email chain between Whatman, one of the mapmakers and the redistricting coordinator for the National Republican Congressional Committee shows Whatman making a request a day before the map was introduced to the Ohio House. The report said this resulted in a peninsula added onto the district that contained zero population but the headquarters of a company whose executives and board members have contributed more than $120,000 to Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci in the last two years.”

However the story gets even worse for Speaker Boehner. Non-partisan political staff from his office were not only involved in these meetings but they used over $9,000 of taxpayer money to rent out a

hotel room in the state capitol of Columbus for 90 days to conduct these meetings. State House Minority leader Armond Budish and Senate Minority Leader Capri Cafaro have already filed a complaint with the Joint Legislative Ethics Committee in the state and it’s only a matter of time before Ohio’s Democratic Congressmen start to get involved as well.

Since the Republicans took over the every branch of Government in Ohio in the 2010 elections there has been a bloody fight over voting rights in the state. Republicans in the state house have attempted to limit early voting, increase the documentation needed to vote and re-draw Congressional districts. If the Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting report is found to be valid, and Republicans have blocked Democrats from the process, used tax-payer funds to organize political meetings and used campaign donor lists as a guide to write new districts it’s only a matter of time before this situation escalates. Ohio Democrats have until Christmas to submit enough signatures to challenge and delay any Republican changes to voting districts, but as this new controversy continues to escalate it won’t be long before Attorney General Eric Holder gets involved at a federal level.

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