COLUMBUS – As Ohio’s 134th General Assembly opened its session Monday, newly elected Ohio Senate president Matt Huffman was sworn into office from his home after contracting COVID-19 over the holidays.
Spokesperson John Fortney says the Lima Republican experienced mild symptoms before the new year and is doing well.
Huffman joins a list of more than a dozen Ohio lawmakers who have tested positive for the virus since the pandemic began in March.
Huffman will be sworn in Monday. He was chosen to succeed former Senate President Larry Obhof following a session filled with pandemic-related hurdles, a federal bribery scheme and infighting within the majority party.
A key task for lawmakers in 2021 is congressional redistricting.
Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2018 that creates a multi-step, transparent process for drawing congressional districts.
New maps are made every 10 years, and Catherine Turcer with Common Cause Ohio says the reforms were badly needed to prevent lines from being manipulated to favor one party, a process known as “gerrymandering,” which has been a powerful political tool since 1812.
“Map-making in the past was like the wild, wild West,” Turcer said.
Data from the U.S. Census is used to draw Congressional districts that are equal in population and which are determined by the number of members each state will send the House of Representatives. The last map, drawn following the 2010 census, favored Republicans.
“They created a district that looks like a duck – the beak is in Lorain County, which is on Lake Erie, and the tailfeathers are on the Indiana border. So, there’s these really unusually-shaped districts,” Turcer said.
Ohio is expected to lose one of its 16 congressional seats, 12 of which are currently held by Republicans.
State legislative maps will also be redrawn under a new process this year. Voters in 2015 approved creating the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a bipartisan group focused on creating maps that keep communities together and also increasing transparency. At present, the 33 state legislative districts are held by 21 Republicans and 12 Democrats.
The mapmaking process will be somewhat delayed, since the Census Bureau missed the December 31st deadline to turn in the apportionment numbers used to determine congressional seats, Turcer said.
“We don’t have all the information that we would normally have. As we begin this process, we need to be patient, because we really want the census to do a good job. You want those numbers to be right, so that there’s fair representation across the country.”