COLUMBUS, Ohio – Secretary of State Frank LaRose offered an unusually blunt assessment while defending the ballot language he helped write for state Issue 1, the abortion-rights ballot measure that voters approved earlier this month, to a conservative critic at a local Republican Party event.
In doing so, LaRose confirmed something that abortion-rights supporters have suspected all along: Abortion opponents helped him craft the ballot language in a way meant to benefit their campaign to defeat the measure.
LaRose was asked about the ballot language on Nov. 17 at a U.S. Senate candidate forum hosted by the Strongsville GOP, a local Republican club. He appeared there because he’s one of three Republicans, all of whom opposed Issue 1, vying in the March primary election for the chance to face Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November 2024.
LaRose also chairs the Ohio Ballot Board, a state panel tasked with writing the language voters see on their ballots when they decide whether to support or oppose a ballot measure.
In response to a question about specifics in the amendment language, LaRose said his office consulted with three prominent anti-abortion groups that led the anti-Issue 1 campaign – Susan B. Anthony Pro Life America, the Center for Christian Virtue and Ohio Right to Life – as it crafted the ballot language. All three groups played central roles in leading and funding Protect Women Ohio, the main anti-Issue 1 campaign group.
The audience member’s question was about including the term “woman” in the ballot language, a decision that upset abortion-rights supporters backing the amendment. The word didn’t appear in the amendment’s text. But the audience member suggested that LaRose actually helped the measure pass by diffusing opponents’ arguments that Issue 1′s sweeping language affected issues unrelated to abortion.
Part of the feedback LaRose said his office received from anti-abortion groups was to include the word “woman” in place of “pregnant patient,” the gender-neutral term that appeared in the amendment language. LaRose said this was meant to convey his view that only women can get pregnant.
But, LaRose said the anti-Issue 1 groups pushed for the language to benefit their campaign while still also remaining accurate enough to withstand an inevitable court challenge.
“That [writing ‘woman’] was something that the pro-life community felt very strongly should be included in that,” LaRose said. “And they liked that as well, because the name of the ‘no’ campaign was Protect Women Ohio, and the yard signs said: ‘Protect women.’”
“So they wanted that, they thought that was reasonable and would be helpful to them. And they thought it would be honest.”
Asked about LaRose’s comments, Gabriel Mann, a spokesperson for Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights, the main pro-Issue 1 group, said they confirmed what the campaign already knew.
“We knew LaRose’s Issue 1 ballot language re-write was only done to appeal to anti-abortion groups that Ohio voters do not support, but why is he admitting that now?” Mann said. “It’s because he’s STILL trying to appease them. LaRose never cared about American democracy or Ohio values, which makes him wholly unfit for any public office”
In response to questions about whether LaRose had acknowledged putting his finger on the scales in how he crafted the ballot language, Mary Cianciolo, a spokesperson for LaRose’s office, said LaRose “always is going to represent the conservative values on which he was elected.”
“The ballot board is a bipartisan body made up of members with at times differing opinions on how public policy should be defined. It’s common for members to disagree on the language, as you’ve seen at almost every meeting. The language can be true and defensible at the same time. It was also upheld as accurate by the state supreme court,” she said.
When he’s been asked previously about the Issue 1 ballot language, LaRose has described his role as writing truthful and unbiased language.
In a radio interview on Nov. 9, two days after Issue 1 passed, LaRose while defending the language said the Ballot Board’s role isn’t for anyone to “put their thumb on the scales.” In the past, LaRose has described his role as Ohio’s top elections official as an impartial “referee” who merely calls balls and strikes.
In the Nov. 9 radio interview, LaRose also said he doesn’t think the measure would have failed if the ballot language had been written more critically, referencing an October poll from Ohio Northern University that found the measure’s support dropped among those who were shown the ballot summary compared to the amendment language itself.
He also referenced abortion opponents’ role in writing the ballot language, although didn’t identify the groups specifically or describe how they felt the language was to their political benefit.
“The language that was written was the absolute best, most truthful language that could be written,” LaRose said.
When setting the ballot language for a ballot issue, state law allows the Ballot Board either to run the amendment’s language in full, or summarize it.
But the summary must be accurate, can’t omit key information and can’t amount to a persuasive argument for or against the measure, according to state law and numerous state court rulings.
After Ohioans approved the measure 57%-43% earlier this month, the Issue 1 campaign described overcoming efforts by LaRose and other Ohio Republicans who used their elected positions to try to defeat the measure. One of those facets included the ballot language LaRose and other Republicans approved in August, prompting a lawsuit shortly afterward from the pro-Issue 1 campaign.
In its lawsuit, Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights took issue with numerous aspects of the ballot language, including Republicans’ decision to include the phrase “unborn child” in lieu of “fetus” and its omission of other reproductive topics that Issue 1 protects, like contraception and fertility treatment.
The group pushed for the ballot language to contain the full amendment text itself, which was shorter than the summary, but Republican Ballot Board members called the amendment language deceptive and overly broad, leading them to adopt the summary language instead.
The Ohio Supreme Court, where Republicans hold a 4-3 majority, agreed with the “yes” campaign on one thing: that the summary deceptively said Issue 1 would forbid “Ohioans” from restricting abortion access, when the measure actually would prevent the state government from doing so. The court ordered a revisions to that section in September.
But the court upheld the rest of the summary, calling the language accurate while saying it was declining to engage in wordsmithing requested by Issue 1 backers.
LaRose has faced other criticism from across the political spectrum for his role in the chain of events leading to Issue 1′s passage this month. He also was a lead proponent of setting an August vote on a different ballot issue that would have blocked Issue 1 from passing by requiring it to get 60% of the vote in order to pass. Voters rejected that measure by a similar margin to the “yes” vote on Issue 1 in November.
Abortion-rights backers, including Brown, the Democratic senator, have faulted LaRose for pushing the August vote, which included scheduling an unprecedented summer election that cost at least $17.5 million, in addition to saying he abused his power in how he crafted the ballot language for the November vote.
Bernie Moreno, one of LaRose’s Republican opponents, meanwhile has accused LaRose of messing up the Issue 1 campaign by making a public comment explicitly tying the measure to abortion, providing a sound bite that eventually made its way into a campaign commercial from the campaign that defeated the 60% measure in August.
Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer