Ohio's Clout On Way Out

(Dayton Daily News)Ohio's clout on way out State will lose much in coming years, U.S. Census Bureau predicts By Ken McCall kmcDayton Daily News DAYTON | Ohio will lose another two congressional seats after the next census and two more by 2030 if population projections released today by the U.S. Census Bureau are correct. The state will continue to experience slow growth until the 2020s, when the population will begin to decline, the forecast shows. Meanwhile, Florida, Texas, Arizona and California would pick up another 26 congressional seats by 2030. Ohio, which had 24 seats in 1970, will be down to only 14 following the 2030 census if the predictions pan out. Political analysts say the resulting loss of congressional clout will hurt the state and the entire Midwest as political attention and federal dollars continue flowing toward the Sun Belt. "There are so many bad things it means," said Robert Adams, a political science professor at Wright State University. "It means loss of federal dollars. It means loss of congressional seats. It means loss of electoral college votes. "It's hard to put any kind of good spin on it. We are increasingly in a weakened position, and we're never going to recover." John Green, director of Ray C. Bliss Center for Applied Politics at the University of Akron, said the loss is the continuation of a long-term trend that has to do with the decline in the state's traditional manufacturing economy, along with increased migration — especially of Hispanics — into the South and West. So far, Green said, the loss of political clout has been limited because Ohio has managed to band together with neighboring states to form a "Midwestern block" to influence policy. But because those states are also slow-growing, they are also projected to lose seats. "It's a regionwide phenomenon," Green said. "And that simply means a smaller and smaller voice in Washington." Congressional representation is based on the voting-age population, and are redistributed among the states following each decennial census count. The changes become effective for the second congressional election in each decade, after the states have redrawn their legislative boundaries. The number of congressional seats also sets the size of the electoral vote count for each state in presidential elections. A state's electoral votes are equal to the number of congressional seats plus two for the U.S. Senate seats each state has. The biggest losers by 2030 will be New York, which will lose six seats in the 435-seat House of Representatives, followed by Pennsylvania and Ohio, which will lose four each, the projections show. The state would also slip from seventh in overall population to ninth in the next 25 years, the new data show. The Census Bureau predicts that Ohio's population growth, which amounted to 4.7 percent during the 1990s, will slow to 2 percent this decade, then to 0.6 percent during the 2010s. In the 2020s, however, the Census Bureau predicts that Ohio will lose close to 94,000 people or about 0.8 percent of its population. Meanwhile, the South and Southwest will continue to draw people from the Northeast and Midwest. Florida, California and Texas are expected to account for almost half of the nation's population growth during the first three decades of the new millennium, the Census Bureau predicts. Such growth would mean, by 2030, representatives from those three states would hold 30 percent of the seats in the U.S. House. "It just changes the whole complexion of national politics," Adams said. "The issues that resonate in the South and the West are going to be national issues that presidential candidates will be contesting about." The state won't be dead politically, Adams said, but it's not going to recover its past share of the national population — or political status. "As Americans, we're used to thinking that tomorrow is always better, and it's always upward and onward and progress is inevitable," he said. "This is a whole different view of reality that we're going to have to adjust to." The problem is, Green said, trying to maintain a good standard of living requires continued support — and money — from the federal government. "And if you lose a lot of votes in Congress," he said, "that money may just go to Georgia." Contact Ken McCall at 225-2393.