The Democratic Party, facing the prospects of a November election with no candidate on Ohio’s ballot, got a lifeline from an expected source Thursday as Republican Governor Mike DeWine called a special session of the state legislature to bail Biden out.
Ohio has a legislatively mandated cutoff date of August 7 for candidates to appear on the November ballot—the Democrats, fully aware of this law, elected to hold their nominating convention on August 22.
Naturally, any time the GOP has the Democrats by the “stack and swivel,” so to speak, inevitably, one of our reasonable Republicans rushes to the rescue.
However, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine said the legislature needs to make the fix.
“I have every confidence that it’s going to get done,” he said Tuesday. “No one should worry, they’re going to be able to vote for the president or the former president, whoever they want to vote for. You know, this is not going to be a situation where the president’s name is not on the ballot. So it’s either going to be done by the court, or it’s going to be done by the legislature.”
When neither the Ohio House nor Senate seemed predisposed to return to session, DeWine called a special session.
Gov. Mike DeWine has taken the rare step of calling a special legislative session, in effect summoning the General Assembly to make sure that President Joe Biden qualifies for the ballot this November.
DeWine announced in a Thursday evening press conference that he would be calling the special session for Tuesday May 28 . It marked the first time a governor has called a special session for 20 years. Otherwise, the legislature wasn’t scheduled to meet again until June 12.
“Ohio is running out of time to get Joe Biden, the sitting president of the United States on the ballot this fall. Failing to do so is simply not acceptable. This is ridiculous. This is an absurd situation,” DeWine said.
He later added: “I have waited. I have been patient. And my patience has run out. And I think the patience of the people of Ohio has run out, too.”
The situation is further complicated by the fact that the Republican Speaker Jason Stephens and Republican Senate Majority Leader Matt Huffman aren’t sending each other Christmas cards.
But House Speaker Jason Stephens, a Republican who is locked in a heated political dispute with Senate President Matt Huffman, told reporters this week a legislative solution was dead in the water.
“It’s a hyper political environment at this at this time of year,” Stephens said. “And there there are some Republicans who just didn’t want to vote on it. And there were some who [did want to]. I think there are other alternatives to it, so why create a stir that’s not necessary.”
If the legislature doesn’t act, and it shouldn’t, the Democrats have two alternatives.
Absent some action from the legislature, national Democrats will have to pursue an alternative path to make sure Biden’s name appears on the ballot in November. The Democratic National Committee potentially could pursue an administrative fix, which some observers have described as a “mini-convention” that might get around the state law, or it could file a lawsuit seeking intervention from the court system.
Ohio Republicans also have said Democrats could sue to force Biden onto the ballot, and have described their case as likely to succeed.
The Ohio GOP should make the Democrats exercise one of the alternatives. The last thing they need to do is pull Biden’s chestnuts out of the fire.
