Black vote may be key for Our City Our Say

How will the Columbus Black community vote in November regarding district representation? This question has become significantly consequential to the future of Columbus. 

Some argue their vote will be the deciding factor in determining whether activist candidates will ever have serious influence in the community – or if the “Columbus Way” maintains its control on policy and development. Siphoning tens-of-millions from Columbus City Schools via tax-abatements to ultra-rich developers and landlords, for example. 

Two Similar Issues on the Ballot

The grassroots activists from Our City Our Say (OCOS) have forced Columbus’s traditional power structure to end the last at-large council system in a major U.S. city. 

Currently Columbus City Council uses a 9-district “hybrid at-large system” where candidates for City Council must live in the specific district they hope to represent, but all eligible voters citywide vote on every seat (at-large voting). 

The OCOS amendment allows for no at-large voting for Columbus City Council. The City counter-proposed the same, but added on four at-large candidates.

Two district charter amendments are on the upcoming ballot: 

• Issue 8 - OCOS’s citizen-led amendment to create 9 district-only voting councilmembers
• Issue 9 - City Council’s hybrid 9 district-only councilmembers with 4 at-large members, thus 13 total councilmembers 

What voters also need to be aware of is how the issues will be presented on the ballot. According to the Franklin County Board of Elections, both issues will have a “YES” and “NO” box. And voters can vote for both issues “YES” or “NO.” But here’s one bottom line: If City Council’s Issue 9 receives more “YES” votes than “NO” votes, Issue 9 wins even if Issue 8 receives more “YES” votes than Issue 9. 

Either way, true district representation is coming to Columbus as neighborhoods will have a City Council representative elected directly by, and only by the people of that district. District-only candidates will not have to campaign citywide, making it easier for grassroots candidates to win elections. 

Throughout the years, several citizen-led initiatives attempted to change the City’s electoral process but failed to overcome the “Columbus Way” that was historically dominated by at-large seats only and a small 7-member council. Under the “Columbus Way,” deals for who wins council seats are cut from above, including elected public officials and their unelected “partners” including private businesses and nonprofits.  

But what City Council’s hybrid 13 councilmember system ultimately means, say sources who cite historical precedent, is that the “Columbus Way” must win only three districts to have a 7-6 majority because no grassroots candidate has ever won an at-large vote in Columbus. 

Why the Black Vote Matters

While many Columbus Black voters may not support the “Columbus Way’s” stranglehold on power and how they’ve neglected Columbus City Schools, it appears a large number of Black voters have already been swayed to vote for City Council’s hybrid 9 district-only and 4 at-large representation. 

Jonathan Beard, the son of a Tuskegee Airman, twice led a grassroots effort to create true districts or what he has referred to as “appropriate political representation.” In 2015 with the ballot issue committee Represent Columbus, and in 2017 with Everyday People for Positive Change, which never made it on the ballot. The 2015 issue did make the ballot but lost after the City of Columbus spent $1.3 million to defeat it. 

“This proposal [OCOS] was poorly thought out with respect to the Black community,” stated Beard in a recent social media post. “OCOS was given feedback timely and elected to move forward with a proposal that disenfranchises Black Columbus. We can, should, and must do better.”

Beard and others believe OCOS’s Issue 8 may even violate the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Beard has argued the 9 districts were deliberately mapped by City Council to not be Black majority and if OCOS’s amendment were to win, “Would enshrine racially gerrymandered districts in law.” (City Council has stated the district maps will most likely be re-drawn in the near future.) 

Columbus NAACP president Sean Walton has also expressed concerns on social media from what he is hearing from the community but stated they are not a “formal position of the NAACP Columbus Executive Committee.” 

“Our City, Our Say believes it speaks for the people. I believe they believe that. In many ways, they do. But ‘the people’ is not one voice,” stated Walton. “Speak for the whole, and the minority inside it can be overlooked, outvoted, or simply assumed into a consensus it never joined. Often no one means any harm by it. The majority votes its own view, sincerely, and the math does the rest. Speaking for the people and speaking for Black people are not one and the same.”

He added, “This is not a voice against Our City, Our Say. They gathered tens of thousands of signatures. That is real, it matters, and it is collective power I respect with all of my heart. But no proposal is above reproach, and raising a concern is not an attack.”

The Free Press asked Walton whether the NAACP would make an official endorsement of either issue, but we did not hear back before publication. 

“Move to district-only voting on the maps as they are drawn today,” continued Walton his social media post, “and we trade the one tool that has actually been electing Black-preferred candidates in this city, the citywide vote, for nine separate contests.” 

As for the Columbus Urban League, President Stephanie Hightower, “was staunchly opposed to OCOS at the last meeting I attended. But you’d have to get an official statement because [Nick] Bankston might have made a case in the meantime,” said a reliable source who wishes to go unnamed. 

OCOS remains undeterred and is gaining endorsements each week. The League of Women Voters of Metropolitan Columbus, National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Buckeye Branch 78, the Far East Area Commission and the Far West Area Commission, for example. 

“This isn’t about whose team gets to point to a scoreboard and say, ‘I won.’ This is bigger than any candidate, election cycle, and even Our City Our Say,” stated an OCOS spokesperson in an email to the Free Press. “We’re just the most recent group to have the honor of engaging in this fight for the people to have a meaningful say at City Hall and the ability to hold elected officials accountable. This is our city, and all of us deserve a say in how we move forward as a city. Our City, Our Say is proud of our role, building on a legacy of activism for real districts going back decades, in getting to this point, and plans to continue the work to win 9 real districts in 2027.”

On Thursday September 24th, from 6:30 pm to 8 pm, the Trinity Baptist Church at 461 St. Clair Avenue, OCOS representative Morgan Harper and City Council President Pro Tem Rob Dorans are scheduled to have a community conversation on Issue 8 and Issue 9.