No One is Coming to Save Us

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During a lunch break in downtown Cincinnati, I came across hundreds of flyers scattered across the sidewalks and blowing in the wind. I picked one up. It was a KKK flyer.

I spent the rest of my lunch break picking up as many as I could and throwing them away.

I have a wife and three daughters, and we are a multiracial family. I had served eight years in the Ohio Army National Guard, with one deployment that took me to both Iraq and Afghanistan, and I was enjoying civilian life. But standing on that sidewalk, I realized that people were willing to spend their time making our communities worse for families like mine. I needed to be willing to work at least as hard to make our community better.

That conviction eventually led me to run for the Ohio House in District 62. I’m running as a Libertarian and have also been endorsed by the Forward Party. I wanted to give voters another option. Running showed me just how much our political system discourages voters from considering one.

I chose to run outside the two major parties because I wanted to give voters another option. This spring’s District 62 Republican primary illustrated why that matters. As the Clermont Guardian reported, the Ohio House Republican Organizational Committee paid for mailers attacking Jean Schmidt’s challenger, Dillon Blevins, including one that labeled him “dangerous” beneath a “voter fraud” headline.

The party organization had chosen its preferred candidate and spent money telling voters how to view her challenger. Voters still made the final decision, but they did so after a party organization had spent money trying to shape it.

Political parties should take their cues from their voters. When party organizations pour money into attacking their own challengers, they tell voters which choices are acceptable before asking what voters actually want. The electorate should set the party’s direction. Party leadership should have to listen.

We tell people to participate. Then we tell them that supporting a candidate outside the two major parties is wasting their vote. We complain about polarization while asking voters to choose whichever party frightens them less. We demand different results while defending the rules that keep producing the same choices.

At some point, “we tried nothing, and nothing changed” becomes a fair description of our approach to political reform.

I work as a programmer. When a system keeps producing a result we dislike, I look at how it is built. When winning a partisan primary matters more than earning broad support in November, candidates have more reason to appeal to their most partisan supporters than to find common ground. We should not be surprised when a system that rewards polarization keeps producing it.

We can change those incentives. Political parties do not own the ballot.

I support a primary where every voter receives the same ballot and every candidate competes together, regardless of party. The top four would advance to a general election using ranked-choice voting. This isn’t just an idea. Alaska is using this system now.

Voters would rank candidates in order of preference. If no one receives a majority of first choices, the last-place candidate is eliminated and those ballots transfer to their next remaining choice. That continues until someone has a majority of the continuing ballots. Voters can leave candidates they oppose unranked.

This gives people more room to support their preferred candidate while naming a backup. It can also give candidates a reason to seek support beyond their own base.

Ohio moved in the opposite direction this year. Senate Bill 63 generally prohibits ranked-choice voting and financially penalizes municipalities or chartered counties that adopt it under their home-rule authority by withholding Local Government Fund distributions. Columbus is using local funding to discourage local voters from trying a different election system.

I want that prohibition and funding penalty repealed. Loveland residents should be able to debate how they elect their own local government without the state threatening their community’s funding.

You should not have to agree with my party label to believe that voters deserve meaningful competition.

What stayed with me that afternoon was how easily I could have kept walking. I could have gone back to work, told someone how disgusting those flyers were, and let that be the end of my involvement. But I have three daughters who will inherit the community we leave them. I could not keep hoping someone else would make it better.

That is why I’m running. Whatever your politics, ask yourself this. What have you come to accept simply because you were told it could not change?

If my campaign accomplishes anything, I hope it inspires more people to get involved. No one is coming to save us. We have to be willing to do the work and save each other.

Ron Grethel

Libertarian candidate for Ohio House District 62 neighborsforgrethel.com