State’s habitats for moderates vanishing quickly

11:32 PM Saturday, January 29, 2011

Moderates walking around the Ohio Statehouse are a lonely group.

Springfield Republican Ross McGregor is one of them.

Only on Planet Tea Party could McGregor be seen as a liberal. Nevertheless he’s not feeling the love in Columbus as many members of his party see him as betraying the hard-core orthodoxy.

Perhaps it’s the bill he introduced last year to end discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation that passed the House, but failed to get a hearing in the Senate. (He plans to reintroduce it this year. And Gov. John Kasich’s recent edict against such discrimination in hiring for his administration gives McGregor hope of some Republican backing.) But for the most part, McGregor backs a conservative, pro-business agenda.

While Republicans and Democrats famously had a “date night” for the State of the Union speech last Tuesday, when members of opposite parties sought to sit together, even that window-dressing spirit of unity hasn’t hit Columbus.

But McGregor has good reason to be more moderate than a lot of his fellow Republicans. His 72nd House District is one of the few in Ohio that is up for grabs by either party. Neither Republicans nor Democrats can expect an automatic victory. McGregor has had some narrow victories in his three races.

Most Ohioans are moderates, but their representatives live in the polarized world of party politics.

Voters can thank districting shenanigans for un-representative representatives. Gerrymandering by the Republicans 10 years ago created nearly unlosable districts for both parties. They also created the most safe seats for Republicans.

There’s a good chance Democrats would have returned the favor if they had maintained power. They didn’t, so now the GOP can continue the tradition.

Depending on which poll you want to believe, somewhere between 20 and 30 percent of the population say they share the Tea Party’s views.

They are a minority in the general population, but they are among the most active in many local Republican organizations. And they pick a disproportionate share of the candidates.

Both parties have worked against having competitive districts. Politicians like feeling safe.

But here’s the irony. America is a representative democracy. Ideally we would send people who would think like us and vote like us on matters of governance.

That would mean a moderated stance on most issues.

Instead, more and more, we have extreme partisans running things.

Voters who want the parties to work together to solve our many problems are never going to see anything but trench warfare as long as safe districts are the main goal of drawing district boundaries.

This probably was not the democracy the founding fathers had in mind.

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