Photo: Personhood USA co-founder Keith Mason (Photo: personhoodusa.com)

Via OneNewsNow:

The group submitted language for the proposal to Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, who rejected it on the basis of it being too vague. Personhood spokesman Keith Riley says that was no shock.

“They discussed several pro-life bills in the Arkansas legislature last year and he [McDaniel] sent somebody from his office to testify in opposition to every single one of them,” says Riley. “So, he’s been described in media circles as blatantly pro-abortion.”

Personhood Arkansas remains undeterred by the decision, and plans to submit a rewritten measure. Should the rewritten version be rejected, the group says it intends to file a lawsuit challenging the decision.

“Well, the next step is, we’re going to go ahead and re-file,” Riley told OneNewsNow. “The Personhood Arkansas group is trying to adopt as many of his recommendations as possible, and basically at this point we’re anticipating a second rejection of the language and what we’ll do then is file a lawsuit to challenge that second rejection.”

In October, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine rejected his state’s personhood initiative, after determining that a summary of the initiative was not “fair and truthful.” Supporters of the amendment addressed those concerns by adding language to clarify that the proposal would neither restrict the use of contraception nor affect in-vitro fertilization and, on Dec. 30, DeWine certified the rewritten ballot language.

But that $15 million may have also cost the state its swing-state soul.

Of the 16 districts created, 12 are Republican and only four Democratic. In the last few days, revelations about the redistricting process, including taxpayer-funded hotel strategy rooms and pony-show public hearings caused an outcry against the process, seemingly lending momentum to the Democrats, who had already mounted a petition to place the first reapportionment bill, House Bill 319, before a public vote through referendum next year.

Redistricting watchdog group Ohio Campaign for Accountable Redistricting brought these revelations to the public’s attention via a report detailing alleged misconduct of senior Republicans, prompting one Democratic lawmaker, Rep. Dennis E. Murray (Sandusky), to request an investigation into the process by the state’s legislative and inspector generals.

Despite the corruption allegations, a vote on the redistricting bill was not postponed, and Ohio will be able to seat Congress in 2012.

The state’s primary is scheduled for March 2012.

Photo of the Ohio state House (Flirkr/OZinOH)

Alongside the family members of both murder victims and death row exonerees, Pfeifer testified before state legislators Wednesday in favor of House Bill 160, which would abolish the death penalty in Ohio. Afterward, Pfeifer told reporters at the Ohio Statehouse that Ohio’s death penalty policy no longer serves the state, and that capital punishment should be abolished.

Pfeifer noted that, while he has a duty to follow the law, he is also obligated to “step forward and advocate for changes that would lead to improvement.”

“I think abolishing the death penalty would be a needed improvement,” Pfeifer said. “It will happen. Will it be today, tomorrow, in this session of the General Assembly? More problematic. … but the day will come when Ohio no longer has a death penalty.”

Pfeifer supported his declaration (an especially bold one, as Ohio has recently pioneered a new, more “humane” single-drug method for lethal injection) by pointing to a national trend away from capital punishment, such as the U.S. Supreme Court’s prohibition on executing the mentally retarded.

“I think the next step will probably be taking a look at those who had a serious mental illness at the time they committed the crime,” he said, offering as example a recent and grisly case in which the murderer was caught after confessing the crime to a priest. In doing so, the deranged man demonstrated that he understood what he had done was wrong, which automatically made him eligible for the death penalty.

Pfeifer also opined that the electric chair was a preferable method of execution, if its value as a deterrent were to be taken seriously.

“If there’s any argument for it as a deterrent, the more unpleasant, the more unspeakable the method of execution, the more likely it would be to be a deterrent,” he said of the electric chair. “But, if you look at the data from states that don’t have [the death penalty], you see roughly the same number of murders, aggravated murders, so it’s impossible to make a case that the death penalty deters anyone.”

When asked whether he regretted his role in the death penalty’s restoration, Pfeifer said he was mostly just surprised at the way the Ohio Supreme Court had broadened its reach.

“’Proper calculation and design’ [premeditation] is about a millisecond, and when we put it in, we were [targeting] people who planned a murder,” he said.  “That’s no longer the case, and that’s the result of a number of Supreme Court decisions, many of which were made before I even arrived at the Court.

“We clearly meant to get the garden-variety domestic dispute, where murder ends up being the outcome, out of the death penalty,” he continued.  “Some of my colleagues say, ‘You couldn’t have meant that,’ I think they view it as a harsh view toward women, but that is in fact what we were trying to do then,” he said, adding that the definition of kidnapping, which can be used by a prosecutor to qualify a defendant for the death penalty, had been greatly expanded, as well.

“We have a number of cases where, if you point a gun at a person for a few minutes, you are now guilty of kidnapping,” he said.

While not part of his testimony, Pfeifer added that citizens would want to move away from the death penalty as they realize what it means culturally.

“We don’t find ourselves in great company when we look at the countries that still use the death penalty,” he said.  “I think we’re seventh in the world. We follow China, Saudi Arabia, Iran. … That’s the kind of company we’re keeping with the heavy use of the death penalty.  And I think that’s uncomfortable to most citizens, as they begin to recognize that most of what we consider ‘developed countries’ don’t use the death penalty at all.”

Watch Pfeifer talk to reporters:

(Photo: Flickr Getty Images/Dave Delay)

Kasich elaborated, suggesting his displeasure with the news stems partly from its paucity of emotional edification. “Reading newspapers does not give you an uplifting experience — because it never really makes it clear that you won the Irish Sweepstakes,” he continued, referencing the now-defunct hospital benefit lottery that some now suggest was a scam.

“I have found that my life’s a lot better if I don’t get aggravated by what I read in the newspaper,” Kasich said, noting that others occasionally send him important articles and “things I need to know about.”

Kasich’s speech addressed so-called “look-backs,” the process by which the government tracks down Social Security and welfare overpayments (what he called the “ultimate government screw-up”). But his adverse attitude toward newspapers, which often contain public-opinion polls and other useful information, could explain his seemingly near-total inability to champion legislation and other measures that people in Ohio actually like. Kasich is currently competing with Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie for the un-coveted “least popular governor” prize. As many as three of Kasich’s signature agenda items – the state’s census-mandated congressional reapportionment; an elections-reform bill now branded the “voter suppression law”; and his towering failure of a union-reform law, the infamous Senate Bill 5 –will all end up before voters for them to summarily dismiss.

This is not the first time the freshman governor has expressed a disdain for the press and even the very idea of open government, which he seems to find inconvenient at best.

In a somewhat-incoherent diatribe last December, Kasich blamed reporters and “transparency” for the government’s inability to hire “quality” workers:

“I find myself tripping over the anthills on the way to the pyramids. We have so many stupid rules and regulations that prevent us from getting the best people to come in here. You just can’t believe it. And I blame it on all of you [reporters at the press conference] — all this transparency, and NATO conflicts, and all this other stuff. … Our problems in the government are bigger [than those of the private sector], and the quality of people who want to come in is less. Today if you get sick, under the governmental rules and all the political correctness and all the open – sunshine –and all this other stuff, you get a worse doctor.”

Reading between the lines, Kasich wants to run the government like a business. But the government isn’t a business, and anyway, Kasich is not a businessman. A career politician, Kasich worked for a few years at Lehman Brothers as a managing director of its investment-banking arm before it declared bankruptcy during the height of the economic collapse. His anti-union attitude and neutering of the state’s Department of Development in favor of the operationally opaque nonprofit Jobs Ohio demonstrate further his desire to run the state like a business. In his draconian biennial budget, the governor slashed funds for struggling local governments, schools, and even nursing homes, as though he were middle management trying to skimp on office coffee creamers.

Maybe the governor would find newspapers more edifying were he occasionally to humor those voters that do read them.

Watch Kasich’s anti-newspaper rant:

Due to decreased population growth over the last decade, Ohio must lose two congressional districts.

In legislative sessions that range from plaintive to snarling (and including some mild profanity), Democrats in Ohio’s General Assembly have locked horns with the Republican majority over a map they call “ridiculous.”

The redistricting plan has even caused two Democratic legislators to move, in an effort to stay in office.

The map, signed into law as House Bill 319, provides Republicans with 12 strongly-conservative districts and Democrats only four, in a state with nearly equal numbers of both parties and a reputation for swinging between the two. It gerrymanders for the GOP into downtown business districts, and creates the new, snake-like 9^th District, a narrow band that nearly spans Lake Erie’s Ohio shore, from Toledo to Akron, prompting Cleveland-area comedian Mike Polk to joke that its only residents are people who either “live in a rest stop along I-90 or in a f***ing lighthouse.”

Republicans, who have enjoyed an overwhelming majority since the 2010 election, have found their most ambitious legislative achievements blocked by a provision in Ohio’s constitution that allows Ohioans to veto unpopular laws with ballot referendums, such was the case last week with Issue 2, a referendum on the anti-collective-bargaining law Senate Bill 5, and House Bill 194, which opponents called the “voter suppression bill” and won’t go into effect pending the result of the 2012 referendum.

Now, in a bizarre twist of Ohio jurisprudence, the same thing could happen with the redistricting bill –- in spite of Republican efforts to thwart exactly that possibility. Written in with a referendum-proof appropriations clause, Republican strategists thought they had insulated their map from citizen veto. Republican Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted followed suit, rejecting the initial petition gathered by Democratic activists.

“House Bill 319, as passed by the Ohio General Assembly and signed by the Governor, contained an appropriation and took effect immediately,” he wrote in a statement released October 12. “It is therefore not subject to referendum.”

But the Ohio Supreme Court ruled that, while the appropriations element of the bill was safe, the map was indeed subject to referendum, and signatures may be gathered to achieve that.

Democrats offered a map of their own that included six staunchly Republican districts and four likely to remain Democratic, with another six districts that skew Republican but could generate competitive races; that proposal was thrown out by Ohio Speaker of the House William Batchelder (R-Medina) in favor of beginning debate on new bill, as he said the old bill had run out of time.

No deal could mean non-legislative compromise. While legislators are making medicine behind closed doors, a failure could have consequences both parties would consider undesirable.

“Most likely this would go to the courts, probably a federal district court that would have to make a decision regarding how we elect representatives,” said Herb Asher, Ph. D and professor emeritus with The Ohio State University’s political science department. He said the courts could appoint a “master,” someone with expertise in drawing up congressional districts.

“My guess is both political parties would not like that system, because the master would not be focused on protecting incumbents,” said Asher. “These could be districts that Democratic and Republican incumbents would not like.”

The duration of such court-drawn districts is also uncertain.

“It’s a little premature to say whether it would be a remedy the courts would order for only one election or for the next decade; you know, the next five elections,” said Donald McTigue, a Columbus lawyer who specializes in election and campaign-finance law, in an interview.  “I could see the courts choosing to wait, given that the people will already have a chance to make that decision next November, if the referendum goes through.”

However, it seems as though Democrats would rather work out a deal.

“We continue to welcome Statehouse Republicans to engage in a compromise. If a map is adopted that is fair, that is competitive, that keeps together like communities and that protects minority representation, we will end our petition drive,” said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, in a release.  “After all, our volunteers deserve the break – and all Ohioans deserve fair representation in Congress.”

Seth Bringman, communications director for the Ohio Democratic Party, agreed with his boss: He said a deal was preferable to seeing the bill’s fate decided in a November duel.

“We would like to see a legislative compromise so it doesn’t get to that point,” he said* in an interview with The American Independent.  “We would like to see the Republicans support one that that keeps ‘like’ communities together and protects minority representation, and if Republicans can support such a map, than the legislative and legal process can end and Ohio can have fair representation – but if that outcome is not achieved, then the Ohio Democratic Party will continue to collect signatures to qualify for a referendum.”

Bringman complained the process was opaque from square one.

“These unfair maps were rushed through in just 48 hours, not shown to the public, not shown to Democrats, and that process was very unfair,” he said.  “And because we as Democrats pursued our options to take this map to a referendum, we are actually having a debate, and bipartisan discussion as to what a fair map should look like.  So our ultimate goal is that fair map, that’s competitive and keeps together like communities and protects minority representation.  We think having that debate and achieving a map that fairly represents [the state], is a positive route to take, for the voters of Ohio.”

Bringman also said that the referendum strategy had not been discussed until the GOP revealed its map.

“It was upon seeing this ridiculous gerrymandered map that discussion of a referendum first began,” he said. “If Democrats and the general public had been included in the redistricting process, you would have seen compromise, and we would have today a much fairer map and Democrats would not be pursuing a referendum, but as was the case with SB5 and as was the case with the voter suppression bill, we believe that this map defied the will of the people of Ohio, and that the people should have a voice in the process.”

Too close to the edge?

“One way or another, we will elect members of the U.S. House,” said Asher, on whether playing too close to the edge could result in districts not being prepared in time. “The real question is who’s going to end up drawing the districts. I think there is maybe a little brinkmanship going on here; I think the Republicans are waiting to see how successful the drive to gather signatures for the referendum is going.”

According to State Senator William Seitz (R-Cincinnati), that is definitely part of it.

“We’ll see if they are able to pull that off or not,” he told The American Independent in an interview. “The problem is very simple: we went from 18 seats to 16 seats, so it’s like musical chairs.”

Seitz said he voted for the first map because it satisfied all the requirements of a constitutional legal reapportionment: the number of districts was reduced, the map met the Voting Rights Act standards for minority representation and the number of people in each district was equal –- all required by law.

“So I favored the first map, because it hit all three of those bogies together,” he said, adding, “It pit two incumbent Republicans [against each other] and two incumbent Democrats against each other, which also seemed fair.  That’s why I voted for it.”

Seitz said he would be in favor of another improved map as well, and hoped for a compromise, calling a map drawn by the courts “the worst case scenario.”

“Failing [a compromise], I think we are in for a very long climate of uncertainty as to what our congressional lines will be, and whether you are a Republican or Democrat, that can’t be in the best interest of the people of Ohio,” said Seitz, who also believes too many referendums would undermine voters’ confidence in lawmakers.

“To my friends on the other side of the aisle, I would caution them: you can’t take everything to referendum without causing appreciable damage to the state,” he said.  “These things are expensive, time-consuming, and make it seems as thoughOhio is unable to govern through the legislative process. As much fun as it may be to take significant legislation to referendum, you’ve got to think of the countervailing damage this causes to people’s confidence in the legislative process.

“Let’s just look at SB5: by the time it’s all said and done, I’d bet you a Krispy Kreme that this thing cost $50 million, and the ad men and pollsters got rich while the rest of us still languish in the throes of a deep recession.”

Drastic times

Regardless of fault, the clock is ticking for both parties to strike a deal to avoid having the task of redistricting taken from their hands, which could make Ohio politically unpredictable.

“The other thing we are trying to avoid is having two separate primaries, a $15 million expense, which folks would just as soon avoid, if possible,” said Seitz.  “I’m told that, if something doesn’t happen this week, due to the various timelines extant, than we are almost obligated to have a two-date primary, or to push it back. I think both for political reasons and the expense we wouldn’t want to do that.

“If the primary is moved back to June, we wouldn’t have the same effect on the presidential elections.”

National influence aside, Ohioans will elect members of Congress, but that could take on a strange shape, especially for incumbents up for re-election in 2012.

“There is that threat out there, that if the Legislature doesn’t resolve it, someone else will have to resolve it,” said Asher, noting that, without a compromise, even more drastic plans could be implemented.

“Could you conceivably elect people ‘at-large’?” he asked.  “Yes, I suppose you could. Basically, the entire state of Ohio is one large congressional district, and you could have people voting from all over the state on representatives.

“Then you could really get into it,” he said.

*Update: Quotes from Mr. Bringman were clarified and amended in this story. We apologize for any confusion.

Photo: Flickr/samantha celera

“[M]aybe they tried to get too much and as a result it failed,” he told the Journal Sentinel.

Cain added that he believed public employees had the right to collective bargaining but not “collective hijacking.”

“… If [public-employee unions] have gotten so much for so many years and it’s going to bankrupt the state,” he told the newspaper’s editorial board.  “I don’t think that’s good. It appears that in some instances, they really don’t care.”

Wisconsin passed its own collective-bargaining reform law, drawing tens of thousands of protesters to the state’s Capitol and sparking a movement to recall Governor Scott Walker and several state legislators.  Unlike Ohio’s law, however, Wisconsin’s excluded public safety unions, such as firefighters and police, from the measures; Ohio’s law, spearheaded by Governor John Kasich, did not.

Cain told the Journal Sentinel Ohio lawmakers “may have tried to get too much in one bill.”

Cain, formerly the CEO of Godfather’s Pizza, Inc., also fielded questions about President Obama’s handling of the Libyan civil war; he said he would have handled it differently at the planning level, but didn’t provide details of how.

“By resoundingly rejecting the Republican-backed push to rewrite labor rules for public employees, Buckeye State voters helped set the table for the 2012 presidential election,” wrote Henry Gomez, politics writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “Without question the results will be viewed as a momentum-builder for Democrats nationwide and should encourage President Barack Obama.”

In the same column, he quoted John Green, director of the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron. “Unions and their allies have done a lot of things transferable to next year,” said Green.  “In some respects, the campaign was a trial run for the presidential.”

Both parties are making dangerous long guesses on Ohio’s political will, however.

After Ohio’s independent voters, reacting to high unemployment and limited recovery from the recession, helped Republican candidates sweep most Democrats from the statewide positions in 2010, freshly elected Governor John Kasich introduced some sweeping changes for the state, from so-called reforms in the biennial budget, to the establishment of an opaque non-profit — JobsOhio — to take the helm for the state’s economic development and keep behind the scenes machinations away from pesky media scrutiny. Finally, Kasich and the state GOP attempted to end public unions’ rights to bargain, eliminating third-party arbitration and public employees’ right to strike.

But the Governor was elected in 2010, when Democrats were purged nationwide, the result of a massive effort by the Republican Party to place blame on the Obama administration and cast every Democrat as guilty by association.  Even so, Kasich was only elected by a 2-percent margin, or roughly 77,000 votes, over incumbent Ted Strickland, who was elected by nearly 50 percent more votes than his Republican challenger J. Kenneth Blackwell in 2006.

Kasich, however, seemed to think he was bestowed with a popular mandate to fulfill a conservative agenda, and sought extremely aggressive reforms that proved to be far from what Ohioans actually wanted. The referendum on SB5, Issue 2, was one of three laws of which the public took umbrage. The other two are on the ballot for 2012: Republicans’ redistricting plan for Congress, passed in an emergency appropriations bill to insulate it against a referendum effort. Ohio’s Supreme Court disagreed, ruling the reapportionment part of the bill was indeed subject to citizen’s veto referendum.

The other law, H.B. 194, is an election-reform law that liberal opponents freely refer to as the “Voter Suppression Bill,” a law the would make permanent Secretary of State Jon Husted’s decision this year to prohibit county boards of elections from mailing out unsolicited absentee ballot applications to voters. Ohio residents will decide its fate next November, as well.

Even the union-sympathetic message sent by voters last Tuesday hasn’t stalled Ohio conservatives from announcing a petition to amend the state’s constitution to prohibit unions from forcing employees to join against their will. If passed, Ohio would join 22 other “Right to Work” states, cutting in on labor’s ability to raise funds. SB5 was voted down by 792,676 votes -– more than ten times the number of votes by which Kasich beat Strickland.

Does this mean Ohioans will now embrace Democratic initiatives? Not necessarily. While SB5 was widely perceived as unfair and over-broad, many elements within the bill were consistently embraced by voters.

And on Tuesday, Ohio voters easily approved Issue 3, a tea party-led effort to “block” the individual mandate in the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act.

In fact, it passed at almost the exact same margin as Issue 2 failed, according to unofficial election results. While Issue 3 was campaigned much less aggressively, both for and against, the tea party’s referendum on “Obamacare” and, in effect, President Obama himself, shows that Ohioans don’t completely align with him or his party.

In fact, they don’t seem to have any allegiances to anyone.

Accessible judicial bypass provisions provide young women with an effective way to bypass the law if they fear they will be abused or kicked out of their homes if a parent finds out they were seeking an abortion.

Florida — and now Ohio — have made these services less accessible.

RH Reality Check reports:

Late last week, Ohio Governor John Kasich signed yet another anti-choice bill into law, this time restricting a teen’s ability to get an abortion with a judicial bypass versus informing her parents.  Judges now have new questions to ask, need to check to see if a teen was “coached” on her answers, and the teen can only go to a judge in her home district. Considering the amount a girl would need to then travel to have the procedure done, as well as the waiting period involved, the new restrictions will make them wait even longer to get an abortion if approved.

…

Also to be determined by the judge? Whether a teen is emotionally mature enough to handle an abortion. Not to be determined by the judge? Whether she is emotionally mature enough to have to continue a pregnancy she doesn’t want.

Florida’s law similarly requires judges to lecture women. According to the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, the law requires that judges “ask questions of the applicant that determine if she ‘has the ability to assess both the immediate and long-range consequences of [her] choices.’”

Another provision limits the way in which judges and courts consider each possible bypass — barring judges from considering the financial implications of delivering, caring for and raising a child, should the woman choose not to terminate her pregnancy. The ACLU argues that this particular provision “ties judges’ hands” because it restricts them from considering “any inability to adequately or safely provide for a child as a reason to grant a waiver of parental notice.”

Samantha Gordon of NARAL Pro-Choice America has told The Florida Independent that judicial bypasses are “pretty standard provisions.”

“Of the 44 states that have a law on the books,” she says, “all but two have judicial bypass provisions.”

However, until recently, very few states placed such onerous restrictions on their access.

The law, known as Senate Bill 5, would have stripped public-employee unions’ ability to negotiate, giving the ultimate decision-making power to state and local employers, ostensibly in an attempt by Ohio Republicans to stem government spending.

Fitch’s report suggested that, while local municipalities may have stood to save on employee expenses such as pensions and health care, the state would have seen little effect had the law remained on the books, “since state employees already contribute 15% toward their health insurance, the state had not incorporated any savings in its current biennial budget from the changes to collective bargaining rights, and historically, the state has not included pension pick-ups as part of its labor negotiations.”

The report says the state could have picked up some savings from the requirement for employees to pay 15 percent of health-care costs, but it called the $45-million savings “modest,” with respect to the state’s $27-billion budget.

Another hotly contested element of the bill, a requirement for the establishment of a merit-based promotion system for teachers, was not affected by the law’s repeal, as the budget, which passed earlier this year, already provided for such a system.

Fitch, while not expecting the repeal to have an immediate impact on local budgets, did acknowledge that local governments would have a difficult time off-setting the massive cuts the state made to the Local Government Fund, Ohio’s disbursal of sales tax revenues to local municipalities. The cuts, about half of what the state had been paying out before, seem to pose the greatest challenge for Ohioans after SB5, although it is difficult to determine whether the law would have had the effect on employers the administration desired.

Fitch, on the other hand, said its credit ratings did not rely on collective-bargaining laws or even employee costs, but rather governments’ “willingness and ability”  to address fiscal challenges, however they choose to do so.

“Whether solutions are developed through management powers or collective bargaining negotiations is not material to Fitch’s credit analysis; the key is that timely and effective results are consistently achieved,” read the report.

The ratings agency also assigned a “AA+” rating to Ohio’s $146 million in new general-obligation bonds, and reaffirmed its standing ratings of previous bonds, calling Ohio’s rating outlook “stable.”

A group of tea party activists have formed a group called Ohioans for Workplace Freedom, and plan to put a measure on the 2012 ballot that would amend the state constitution by making Ohio a right-to-work state, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

“Currently, Ohio is not among one of 22 right-to-work states in the U.S. In those states, unions may not reach agreements with employers that require union membership or payment of union dues as a condition of employment,” The Dispatch reports.

A similar measure was on the ballot in 1958. Ohio voters rejected the proposed constitutional amendment by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent, and, in the process, propelled Democrats to victories in both the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate race that year. At the time, it was the largest defeat of a statewide ballot issue in Ohio’s history.

On Tuesday, Ohio voters rejected Issue 2, a statewide referendum on union-busting legislation known as Senate Bill 5, by a margin of 61 percent to 39 percent.

SB5 would have ended the practice of “fair share payments,” which public employees that choose to be non-union members are currently required to pay for the costs of negotiating and administering a contract from which they derive benefits.

Gov. John Kasich, who after watching his signature piece of legislation go down in flames on election night, declared “the people have spoken,” did not entirely rule out getting behind this latest effort.

“Kasich, the primary pitchman for Senate Bill 5 and Issue 2, has previously stated that he did not believe Ohio needed to become a right-to-work state. This morning, Kasich spokesman Rob Nichols said ‘job creation is Gov. Kasich’s top priority and we need to continue to work hard to create a jobs-friendly climate in Ohio,’” The Dispatch reports.

Before going on the ballot, likely in time for the 2012 presidential election, the group would have to get the language approved and collect 386,000 valid signatures in support.