The campaign working to pass Ohio’s Issue 1 has a major financial advantage heading into the Nov. 5 election, according to new state disclosures.

Citizens Not Politicians, the main pro-Issue 1 group, raised nearly $11 million and spent nearly $11.2 million on ads and other campaign expenses from July through Oct. 16. Another pro-Issue 1 group that recently formed also spent another $870,000.

Meanwhile, the main anti-Issue 1 campaign group, Ohio Works, raised $5.6 million and spent $4.5 million. It has $1 million left over though, while CNP reported emptying its bank account. The filing is the first chance voters have gotten to see who’s funding the opposition to Issue 1, which would change how Ohio draws its political district maps.

The filings came in ahead of a Thursday state legal deadline. They’re the last disclosure the campaign groups will make before the Nov. 5 election.

The records show the largest contributors to the Issue 1 campaign continue to be labor unions and national liberal advocacy groups. The biggest contributors to the opposition meanwhile are state business groups and donors with ties to local and national congressional Republicans.

The “no” campaign

Ohio Works’ disclosure report shows about $2.7 million of the $5.6 million the group raise came from donors in Ohio. Of the $4.5 million it spent, $3.5 million was for TV ads and $800,000 was for mailed ads.

Matt Dole, a spokesperson for Ohio Works, said his group had expected to be significantly outspent.

“The campaign finance reports are what we anticipated,” Dole said in a statement. “No on Issue 1 is Ohio powered and driven by the confidence that voters will read the ballot language and reject misinformation by voting no.”

The group’s largest contributors include:

• $1.7 million from American Jobs and Growth, a political action committee in Washington D.C. that has the hallmarks of a “dark money” group that’s designed to conceal its donors. In federal filings this year, the group disclosed two donors: The American Jobs and Growth Fund and The Revitalization Project, which together gave $1 million.
• $1 million from Ohioans for a Healthy Economy, a group affiliated with the Ohio Chamber of Commerce
• $300,000 from the Ohio Manufacturers Association
• 55 Green Meadows, a political advocacy arm of Ohio’s nursing home industry, which is a major funder of state Republican campaigns
• $250,000 from Republican U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan’s campaign account
• $200,000 from the Ohio Oil & Gas Association, a trade group
• $100,000 from Jimmy and Dee Haslam, the owners of the Cleveland Browns and Columbus Crew

🗳️For more on this year’s November election, visit our Election Signals 2024 page.

The “yes” campaign

Of the $11 million Citizens Not Politicians raised, all but $271,000 came from out-of-state donors. The group spent $11.1 million, including $8.5 million on ads, $1.2 million on printing and $156,000 on public opinion polling. 

A new group called Ohio Families for Democracy also reported spending $870,000 on Issue 1-related canvassing and literature. The group apparently is pro-Issue 1, since its expenditures include the Elias Law Group, a major Democratic law firm that has represented Citizens Not Politicians. 

CNP’s largest donors in its most recent filings were: 

• $7 million from Article IV, a liberal political nonprofit that’s previously given CNP $3 million. The group’s most recent tax filing lists among its board members Sam Mar, an official at Arnold Ventures, a liberal advocacy group in Texas that has contributed to Signal Ohio. Under the terms of its funding, Signal Ohio has sole editorial control of its news reporting.
• $1 million from the Open Society Policy Center, an advocacy group with close ties to George Soros, the liberal billionaire
• $1 million from Our American Future Action in Washington, D.C.
• $1 million from Voters for the American Center Inc. in Washington D.C.
• $250,000 from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a public-employee trade union

Citizens Not Politicians also received $1.5 million in in-kind contributions – donations of services or supplies rather than money. These include $750,000 worth of digital advertising from the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teacher’s union. 

Another notable contribution: $25,000 from the campaign committee for Hakeem Jeffries, a New York congressman who is the top-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House. He could become U.S. House Speaker if Democrats can re-take the chamber in the November election.

In total, Citizens Not Politicians has spent more than $37.2 million trying to pass Issue 1 since last year. Its largest donors also include the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a liberal dark-money group with ties to Swiss billionaire Hansburg Wyss, the Tides Foundation, a liberal dark-money group in California and the American Civil Liberties Union. 

While its supporters generally are left-leaning, Citizens Not Politicians bills itself as nonpartisan. Its chief spokesperson is Maureen O’Connor, a former Republican Ohio Supreme Court chief justice and lieutenant governor. 

O’Connor cast the pivotal swing vote that rejected seven sets of Republican-drawn maps as unconstitutional in 2021 and 2022 under the state’s current anti-gerrymandering rules, which voters approved in the late 2010s. She got involved with the Issue 1 campaign shortly after she retired at the end of 2022. 

“Yes on 1 has the momentum headed into the final stretch of the campaign,” O’Connor said in a statement on Thursday. “This report shows that Ohioans are ready to place an explicit ban on gerrymandering in the Ohio Constitution and put citizens not politicians in charge of drawing legislative maps, which we will accomplish by voting Yes on Issue 1.”

What will Issue 1 do?

If approved, Issue 1 would amend Ohio’s constitution and change its system of redistricting, or the drawing of state legislative and congressional district maps. 

It would take map-drawing power away from the Ohio Redistricting Commission, a panel of elected officials that’s currently controlled by Republicans, and give it to a newly created citizen’s redistricting commission made up of equal parts Democrats, Republicans and political independents. Elected officials, lobbyists and other politicos would be barred from serving on the new commission.

Issue 1 also would set a tougher standard requiring that state legislative and congressional district maps favor each party to win a share of seats that closely matches their share of the statewide vote.

Republicans believe Issue 1 will cause them to lose seats in Congress and the state legislature, which is mostly why they oppose the measure.

Under the current maps, Republicans hold historic supermajorities in the state House and Senate, and 10 of Ohio’s 15 congressional district seats. That works out to around 67% of all legislative and congressional seats, compared to their average 56% share of the statewide vote.