Instead of waiting around for his fellow Republicans to stop playing games over putting President Joe Biden on Ohio's ballot, Gov. Mike DeWine is stepping in to force them.
Late Thursday afternoon, DeWine called a press conference to say he was using his executive power to call a special session to fix the mess the MAGA Republicans in the Ohio Statehouse created — something seemingly just to grab a few headlines and mess with Democrats' heads.
"Simply unacceptable," DeWine said of the antics.
He gave them a verbal spanking worthy of people acting childishly, calling their actions "absurd" and "ridiculous."
On Tuesday, DeWine wants the House Republican supermajority to do two things — one they don't like and one they do.
DeWine said the purpose of Tuesday's special session is to pass a temporary law which would allow Biden ballot access. But he also included a vote on a bill banning foreign spending in Ohio campaigns, one of the MAGA movement's pet issues.
Here's what took place in the Republican-led Statehouse that brought us to this sorry state:
Ohio's Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose got the ball rolling on April 5, when he informed Ohio Democrats and the Biden campaign that Ohio law requires candidates to be certified for the ballot 90 days before the election, which, this year, is Aug. 7.
The problem with that is the Democratic National Convention in Chicago won't be gaveled into session until Aug. 19, where the only significant order of business will be to formally nominate Biden and Kamala Harris as the party's presidential and vice presidential candidates.
The same thing happened in ruby-red Alabama with the deadline for ballot access for Biden. The legislature there voted unanimously to fix the problem.
Let that sink in for a moment.
What's more, this happened in Ohio in both 2012 with Republican Mitt Romney and in 2020 with both Biden and Donald Trump. Each time, the Republican-led legislature voted a temporary fix to allow ballot access.
But not this time.
This time, the partisan atmosphere is so poisonous that House Speaker Jason Stephens said he couldn't even get a floor vote on a fix.
"It's a hyper-political environment at this time of year," Stephens told Ohio Public Radio. "There are some Republicans who just did not want to vote on it and there were some who were [open to it]."
The ones who did not want to go along were the ultra-MAGA crowd.
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Two weeks ago, the Republican-dominated Ohio Senate passed legislation to change Ohio's ballot deadline to accommodate Biden, and they added to it a ban on foreign money in Ohio campaigns — both of which DeWine is now forcing on Tuesday. However, they also added new rules that would make it harder for citizens to bring local issues to the ballot, something Democrats called a "poison pill."
Democrats didn't take the bait, but there are only seven of them out of the 33-member Ohio Senate.
Allison Russo, the minority leader of the Ohio House, said she never had any faith the majority Republicans would do the right thing to fix this.
"We've seen the dysfunction here in this place, and I think we've seen that folks have not been able to put aside partisanship and hyper-partisanship and infighting," Russo told Ohio Public Radio.
Now, with DeWine making the naughty children stand in the corner until they say they are sorry on Tuesday, this idiotic situation could be fixed legislatively.
But if that doesn't work, it could be up to the Democrats to fix it themselves.
Democrats could file a lawsuit asking the court to step in and force a resolution to this.
Or the Democratic National Committee could hold a virtual "mini-convention" of its members to certify Biden and Harris as the party's nominees long before the party meets in Chicago for its convention Aug. 19.
That would be a declaration that the Biden-Harris ticket should be on the ballot in all U.S. states and territories.
That would do the trick, as long as the DNC gets it done by Ohio's Aug. 7 deadline.
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Thankfully, though, DeWine has stepped up to play the role of the adult in the room.
In the real world, Mike and Fran DeWine have raised eight children of their own and have 28 grandchildren.
Mike DeWine learned a long time ago that a roomful of children can cause a ruckus.
Now, he has a whole passel of political children in the Ohio House chamber to deal with.
It's time those kids grow up.
