The Portage County sheriff blasted immigrants on Facebook, and critics are mobilizing against his reelection campaign.

Springfield continues to struggle with the spotlight from political rhetoric over its Haitian immigrant population.

And the Ohio Supreme Court left much of the anti gerrymandering ballot language unchanged.

Ideas is next.

Hello and welcome to IDEAS.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks for joining us.

The Portage County sheriff says he had a First Amendment right to post his views about immigrants and his suggestion that residents write down the addresses of Kamala Harris supporters.

Critics say it amounts to voter intimidation.

Regular bomb sweeps of schools and more cameras for surveillance are among the resources dispatched to Springfield, where threats continue following unsubstantiated claims about Haitian immigrants.

City leaders there say there is no truth to the allegation that immigrants are eating pets.

The group behind the anti gerrymandering amendment proposal is angry that the Ohio Supreme Court left virtually untouched the ballot language written by the Republican dominated ballot board.

The group says the language is biased and unfair.

The court says it's appropriate.

And crime in Cleveland decreased this summer.

Why?

Joining me for the roundtable from Ideastream Public Media education reporter Connor Morris and reporter Abigail Boatner, Statehouse news bureau chief Karen Kasler is in studio with us in Cleveland this week.

Let's get ready to roundtable.

Portage County has become the latest flashpoint in the heated national debate over immigration.

Sheriff Bruce Murkowski posted on his Facebook page that people should write down the addresses of those supporting Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid for the presidency.

The sheriff said that way when immigrants are here illegally.

He called them human locusts in his post.

Come to the county, they will know where to send them.

The comments drew complaints about voter intimidation to the American civil liberties Union of Ohio and other agencies.

But the sheriff also received support from the Portage County Republican Party, which said he was making a point about elections having consequences.

Abigail, you were at the NAACP of Portage County last night in Kent and an emergency meeting.

What did you hear?

I heard a lot of concerns.

That was a super packed meeting.

They ran out of seats and and people got together in groups and discuss their top concerns to share out.

And those included racism, voter intimidation, infringement on First Amendment rights.

And how can you hold an elected sheriff accountable?

So residents brainstormed how they can help fix this issue.

They discussed how they might be able to remove the sheriff from sheriff from office, but he's up for reelection in November.

And so the consensus kind of became that people need to focus on voting him out in November.

And the NAACP says voters who are worried about voter intimidation, who are scared to go to the polls, should do so in groups.

So they're planning a souls to the Polls event in late October.

And we're discussing people who should buddy up and vote early or vote absentee if they're concerned about voter intimidation.

Let's talk about the complaints of voter intimidation here.

So how is this being then seen as intimidating, specifically voters when they say when he says, I want you to write down the addresses of people and apparently in a I would think, a facetious manner, but that's where will send immigrants when they come to town.

How are people seeing that?

That is intimidation for their vote?

Yeah, people are saying that that infringes on their First Amendment right to freedom of speech because they are concerned that they can't put, say, a Harris Wall sign out front in front of their yard or put a Harris bumper sticker on their car because they're worried that the sheriff and his deputies will target them.

They're worried that if they call 911, that the sheriff's deputies will see a small sign outside and not treat them the same as if they didn't have a sign or if there was a Trump sign outside.

So I've certainly heard from people who took down their signs, didn't put a sign up because of of this rhetoric that the sheriff's spewing on Facebook.

And then there's concerns about safety at the polls, that sheriff's deputies will show up and intimidate voters further at polling places.

That was certainly a topic of discussion last night.

Was are sheriff's deputies allowed to come in wearing political merch?

Are they allowed to come in in uniform?

Are they allowed to bring their guns to the polling place?

And there was a representative from the board of elections there answering questions that, yes, they can come in uniform.

No, they shouldn't wear political apparel, but they can't turn them away.

The guns are kind of an iffy subject because kind of various precinct to precinct.

But those are some of the concerns that people are really worried genuinely that they may not be able to vote in November if they're able to be seen as a Democrat or as someone that's going to vote for vice president.

Harris.

One of the impact to beyond the political on people who are not white, people who may be immigrants to be called illegal human scum.

Did you get any reaction from people about the impact of that?

That's definitely something that people were worried about perpetuating racism.

Portage County is like 86% white, but there was a good amount of people of color at this NAACP meeting last night who said that racism, they've experienced more racism since former President Donald Trump was elected in 2016.

There was an indigenous woman at the meeting who said that she often is seen as Mexican and has been on the other side of lots of racist comments since President Trump was elected in 2016.

And she's one of these people that says she has Harris Wall signs at her house and she's not putting them up in her yard because she's genuinely terrified that racism is going to increase against her if Trump wins again this year.

If sheriffs Kukowski wins again this year.

So these are real concerns that people people are scared of of giving a bigger voice to this rhetoric that they that they don't like that they say is violent and can lead to bad things.

I misspoke and said he called them human scum.

He called them human locusts.

Is is the quote.

I got a note here from Barb.

She sends an email.

She says, yes, his hateful statements are protected by the First Amendment.

However, what he is also thereby saying is that his First Amendment rights outrank our First Amendment right to put out political signs for our choice.

So that's a thing.

It's a First Amendment issue.

But I've heard people say, what about us?

We want to be able to have free speech.

And that's kind of where lawyers are coming down on this.

There's some people that are saying, yes, this is absolutely voter intimidation.

There's some lawyers who are saying, well, this probably is within his rights to freedom of speech, although it's wrong.

He probably has the right to say this on Facebook.

But then by him claiming First Amendment rights, it does seem to be taking away from the rights of Portage County residents to be politically active, to say that they're supporting a candidate with a with a yard sign to go out and vote.

So it does seem to be having real world impacts on thousands of people's First Amendment rights.

For the sheriff to be saying this on Facebook.

We have another email from Mason who says, forget First Amendment rights.

One has to question how fairly under the law, Portage County residents who the sheriff considers locusts will be treated exactly.

That's definitely a concern.

And they don't have it doesn't have a large immigrant population.

I think this is coming off of the heels of all of this rhetoric we're hearing out of Springfield that they have received an influx of immigrant population in recent years.

I don't think that's a realistic concern in Portage County as of right now, we don't have any indication that there will be a large influx of immigrants.

But there are a lot of people in Portage County that want it to be a welcoming space for immigrants and don't want this rhetoric to be spewed and say that it's going to impact the people of color who already live in the county.

And this is just not something that they agree with.

And the concerns from some voters in Portage County are real.

The NAACP and to League of Women Voters chapters sent a letter to Secretary of State Frank LaRose saying they're concerned about this and they wanted to have a meeting with him.

His office said that he reviewed the post and all the things that have happened and said nothing was violating election laws.

And he declined a meeting with them.

So there is definitely a concern by some of these groups that this is potentially voter intimidation.

This will dampen the vote or tell people that their vote is doesn't count.

And so there's a real I think there's a real concern for some and there's concerns about statewide officials connections to the sheriff that Attorney General Dave Yost has donated to his campaign in the past.

Well, they're all Republicans, so they would.

Sure.

And I would say that the Portage County GOP has doubled down on this language.

But there is certainly a divide in the Republican Party in Portage County.

We've seen to the state representative, House representative has been primaried and she's now a lame duck.

One of the county commissioners has been a lame duck before.

Bruce Sokolowski is people that align with him.

They are going to be running for their seats in November.

And so there's kind of a divide in Republicans in Portage County as well right now.

The city of Springfield between Dayton and Columbus endured another week of bomb threats at schools and other buildings.

The Ohio State Highway Patrol said it plans to do daily bomb sweeps of school buildings and will put up additional cameras for surveillance.

The Haitian immigrants are in Springfield and other Ohio cities under a Homeland Security program that gives them temporary protected status, where sought by the community to fill open jobs as well.

Their arrival in such large numbers so quickly is taxing services like education.

So we have a real disconnect right now, it seems, Karen, between the national rhetoric that we're hearing and the discussion points from particularly from J.D.

Vance and from a fellow Republican, Mike DeWine, who is basically saying we need these people in these communities because the jobs need to be filled.

Yeah, I've been talking to some folks about what Springfield was like before the Haitians arrived.

And again, they are legal alien legal immigrants under this temporary protected status, which is extended to about 16 other countries as well.

Venezuela actually has the most people in the United States with Temporary protected status, which, by the way, it's from an act from 1990.

Yeah.

So these folks are here legally.

They're here to work.

And I know in the crush of media coverage that's happened out there, that NewsHour, for instance, talked to one of the folks at a manufacturing plant about his Haitian employees.

He said they're great.

We wish we had more of them.

They show up to work.

They aren't on drugs.

They're just doing a great job.

And that's an important point that they did show up to work.

Springfield was really in decline in terms of businesses moving out and that sort of thing.

So to start talking about how this 15,000 or so Haitian immigrants has brought illegal people to Springfield is not true at all.

And it diminishes the work that these folks have been doing for themselves as well as for that community.

What may be true, though, is that an influx of that size relative to the size of the community does present a whole lot of pressure on a whole lot of services that then people who lived there for a long time might start losing out on.

And that's how this started, was the discussion of how can the federal government, the state, help Springfield absorb all these people at the same time?

It's a strain on the health care resources, the strain on education, all that.

And then, of course, there was concern about making sure that everybody got a driver's license and a lot of this started a year ago when there was a terrible bus crash, school bus crash involving a Haitian immigrant who didn't have a driver's license.

But the father of the 11 year old who was killed in that has said, do not use my son as your talking point for why Haitian immigrants should not be here, that he doesn't want the father does not want that hate attached to his son's name.

And all of this keeps getting cycled over again.

I mean, just yesterday, J.D.

Vance was saying he's going to continue to call these people illegal, even though they are illegal.

Yeah, he made a point where he said, I'm calling them illegal because the Biden administration and he's tying Kamala Harris to that allowed this to happen.

And he believes that is the wrong choice.

That's an illegal thing to do is to is to create legal status for this particular group of people.

And the people in Springfield, the city officials in Springfield have said, we want these people here.

This has been helpful to us to have people here to work, though there has been a stress on some of these other areas and the idea of being let's just get some more help, let's get some more translate, here's some more help for health care, access, that sort of thing.

What that community does not need is bomb threats every day and international media descending on that community, trying to figure out, quote, what's going on.

When city officials have made it clear what's going on here is a lot of people have moved to our community and we're dealing with that.

The other stuff is not true on the Sunday talk shows.

J.D.

Vance said a lot of things, but one particularly about that.

He said it was disgusting for the media to suggest that any of the threats were there as a result of him or Trump's comments.

Well, you do the timeline, and the city officials have said we didn't have bomb threats.

Then these comments were made.

Now we have bomb threats.

So, yeah, but the bomb threats are a serious concern.

Just this week, Governor Mike DeWine sent 36 state troopers out to do daily bomb sweeps at 17 Springfield school buildings.

And I believe there's at least one therapy dog, if not more.

There's also observation towers with cameras.

I mean, the city has potentially there's parts of the city that have changed here because of this, because people feel unsafe.

And these bomb threats don't seem to have any sign of ending.

What what do you make of this in those talk shows?

When on CNN, Vance said, If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do.

Yeah.

What do you make that sounds like they that he knows this is not true, but at least it suggests that he is listening to city officials who are saying there's no evidence of this.

But to continue to use this as a campaign talking point is just perpetuating this false rumor, this false and racist rumor that's out there.

And I mean, the rallies continue for Trump and Vance, and these talking points are still being brought up.

So it's so hard to prove that something didn't happen and there's no evidence of this.

There's no police reports.

There's no anything that shows that this may have happened.

And you've got some right wing bloggers and social media personalities who are out in Springfield, again, along with all the other people who are out there creating content that suggests that the city officials are lying, which there's just no evidence of that.

Yeah, I have a note from Tim who says, By the way, the subject line is Libs.

You people on this station better wake up.

Our veterans need the help, not these non-citizens.

Why?

Why not both?

I mean, that's.

Well, that's the governor, right?

Yes.

And Duane is actually asked yesterday why he doesn't call Trump and say, please stop saying these things.

And he basically said it wouldn't do any good.

And so these these rumors, these lies, whatever you want to call them, but you need to call them false.

Keep circulating.

And it keeps bringing more attention to Springfield, not the way that they are hoping for attention, which is where are welcoming community.

But we have we're getting we're getting crushed here.

But as a community where terrible things are happening.

Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb says crime was down 13% this summer compared to the last three summers, crediting a push to tamp down seasonal crime.

But the mayor said there's still much more work to do.

CONNER What factors did Mayor Bibb cite for the reduced crime numbers over the summer?

They've kind of had a multi-pronged approach to address high crime rates in recent summers, And typically crime is a little bit higher during the summer in Cleveland and elsewhere.

They've got like this $10 million neighborhood safety fund.

They're providing grants to grassroots organizations doing what's called violence prevention work.

There was that partnership with Ohio State Highway Patrol as well, to crack down on traffic enforcement.

The city is still short on on police officers, but 200 less than the 1300 or so that are budgeted.

Studies are kind of conflicting on the impact of does more police actually reduce violent crime.

But Bibb and his team are also arguing they're doing an all of the above approach.

Jobs programs, affordable housing, you know, working more closely with the school district to improve educational outcomes.

So the idea there is that, you know, improving society as a whole will reduce crime.

Yeah, the root causes of crime, of course, not just going and catching somebody doing something, but it's creating an environment where a child has a young person has something to do instead of committing a crime, or people have housing or they have a meal, you're less likely to do that.

That's the theory is sure.

And the city used some of its ARPA, you know, American Rescue Plan funds, pandemic relief funds to to fund some programs around that, you know, increased summer programing with the school districts and things of that nature.

So the city's crime numbers reflect really a nationwide trend.

And the whole nation hasn't had this kind of a summer surge push.

But yeah, but what we're seeing here, a lot of other communities are also seeing, yeah, whenever I talk about crime on the show, I always like to just remind people that violent crime is down.

It's been a long trend downward for literally three decades or more.

And, you know, there are some issues with the FBI's data on this.

The FBI, you know, in 2022 received data from like 83% of police throughout the country.

So folks who are a critic of that statistic usually will point says, well, the data isn't exactly, you know, what you'd want it to be.

But everything else that's tracking this suggests that it's down over the long term.

For a long time now, You know, the FBI numbers say that more than 15% January to March as compared to the same period in 2023.

So some data that you can take a look at.

But if you're comparing apples to apples, which the same skill at the same set of data from 2023 to 2024, you're seeing a reduction in Cleveland specifically?

Yeah, absolutely.

The Ohio ballot board tweaked the language that voters will see when they cast ballots on state issue one in November, but most of it remains unchanged.

Issue one is the anti gerrymandering amendment that would remove politicians from the state's political map making process.

citizens, not politicians.

The group that's behind issue one sued over the original language approved by the ballot board, saying it was biased and unfair.

For one thing, it says the new commission that's formed from this amendment would be required to gerrymander districts.

It's an anti gerrymandering issue, Karen.

And yet the Supreme Court, when it looked at it, said, yeah, technically fits the definition of gerrymandering.

I know that there were a couple of justices that dissented and Mike Donnelly particularly saying, how can you call it basically was saying if this is the same majority that says boneless means, watch out for bones, then of course they would say anti gerrymandering means gerrymandering.

Yeah.

And Democrat Jennifer Brunner said this was possibly the most stilted ballot language that Ohio voters have ever seen.

And so Democrats definitely were on the side of citizens, not politicians, suing over this language, because this language is is it's something I mean, it's difficult to take a 26 page amendment and boil it down to a summary that voters can read while they are casting their ballot.

So the group citizens, not politicians, did boil it down to I think it was about a page long the ballot board using language that was written by Republican Secretary of State Frank Barros boiled down to three pages right and wrong.

And that's a long that's light, that's very long.

And there are ten bullet points.

Citizens, not politicians, sued over eight of them.

The two that the ballot board was ordered to rewrite were more technical.

They were about lawsuits and about public input When when people could talk to the 15 members of this commission that would be created by this amendment.

But they did not win on that gerrymandering issue where and the whole the way that the map would be drawn is it would be drawn with a proportionality based on results from statewide elections over the last six years.

And so there is a formula, whether that's gerrymandering or not.

That's the real question.

Republicans, though, are saying that's a formula that that doesn't take into account compact districts, that there are a number of reasons they're opposed to this.

And Frank Lareau says that language that he wrote is necessary because he wants people to know exactly what this really does.

That's his point of view.

And what he's saying is that it's creating a commission.

And this is one of the other points of contention.

It's creating an appointed commission that does not answer to the electorate.

And he wants people not so in the language.

I think it says something like not subject to removal from from voters or something of that nature.

And the question of accountability is part of the reason why previous attempts to pass a independent commission that would draw maps were rejected by voters.

But there are a lot of voters who were very frustrated with what happened in 2021 and 2022 when the seven member Ohio Redistricting Commission drew maps that were seven times ruled unconstitutional by the Ohio Supreme Court.

And one of the things that you hear people talk about with redistricting is why doesn't the state look more like the presidential vote?

Because the House and Senate, for instance, are supermajority Republican, whereas Donald Trump won Ohio by eight points.

That's not a super majority.

It's a lot.

It's a lot, but it's not a supermajority.

Right.

And so that's been the complaint from people who are concerned about these maps is that the legislature does not accurately represent the voters of Ohio who can best potentially be seen in maps for the presidential race, the U.S. Senate race.

Those are that would be used in this proportionality formula.

People are saying that this is really important because there's research that suggests that ballot language does factor into voters decisions at polls.

However, the ballot language for last year's issue didn't win the day.

Yeah, and the ballot board has been around for 50 years and never had any sort of action against it except once back in the seventies and the last three times that they've met on ballot language, they've had lawsuits because the Republicans on the ballot board have written language that those who are bringing these amendments or oppose these amendments really find objectionable.

And one from last fall is a good example, because that was the reproductive rights amendment and the language was rewritten to the point where some of that there was the replacement of the word a fetus with unborn child and things like that.

But the advocates for issue one are citizens, not politicians.

Kind of look at that and think, well, voters did not we're not swayed by that language.

They won't be swayed by this language this time.

But voters have also said last fall they were confused by that language.

Confusion is tough.

And if you are going to prevail with this kind of language, it's going to cost you a lot of money.

This is going to be a campaign that's going to be expensive as well.

And citizens, not politicians, is already on the air with digital ads.

And they raised I think it was last report was $25 million.

No, the no on one side has not booked any ads that I'm aware of, and I'm not sure there's an organized group against it, though.

Republican officeholders starting at Governor Mike DeWine and going down have spoken out against issue one.

In fact, DeWine had a press conference where he said, if you don't pass issue one, I'll work with lawmakers to pass something that looks more like what happened in Iowa, which is considered a good example of how to do redistricting.

But you could note that he also said the same thing last fall to voters.

If you don't pass ISSUE one, I will work with lawmakers to come up with exceptions for the six week abortion ban.

I don't know if you guys were watching Jeopardy last week on Friday night and Monday, I was playing cards with some guys and we all stopped football to watch the Jeopardy because Evan Sotelo was on.

He's a 2017 Lakewood High grad.

His dad has got to tell, everybody knows this guy.

He's a top editor over at Crain's Cleveland business person, his buttons.

But on Friday night, Evan won.

Evan won Jeopardy, which was pretty cool.

And then Monday, it was we all watched.

He did not win, but he definitely acquitted himself by answering the final Jeopardy question properly.

And the answer to it is a 1976 report initiated by Admiral Rickover found it was an internal, not external explosion that caused the destruction of this cafe.

Mike stares from everybody.

Sorry, the audience.

Okay, I would I'll give you a quick clue.

Remember it.

Remember the Alamo?

Remember the main main.

Oh, my God.

You ask me.

Oh, didn't blow up.

What do I say?

Anyway, Thanks for making us proud, Evan.

And.

And really great job.

Really fun to watch it.

Monday on the Sound of Ideas on 89 seven.

KSU will discuss in depth the new feasibility studies on closing Burke Lakefront Airport.

I'm Mike McIntyre.

Thanks so much for watching and stay safe.