The Ohio House is expected to vote on the Republican-drawn Congressional map, which some experts say will result in 12 districts for the GOP and 3 for Democrats. But there were apparently some members of the majority who wanted to attach another controversial proposal to the map’s movement.
House Speaker Bob Cupp has shelved bills to ban all mandatory vaccines and to broaden COVID vaccine exemptions so anyone who wants one can get one. But a group of Republicans continues to push for those bills. Fellow conservative Republican Rep. Jon Cross has signed onto an Ohio House resolution urging Congress to oppose COVID vaccine mandates but isn’t co-sponsoring the other bills. He says he was aware of efforts to tie support for the map to a promise to push a vaccine mandate related effort, but he’s opposed.
“The vaccine mandate is an important issue to our caucus. I don’t think we should be mixing the two. We shouldn’t be horsetrading one for the other.”
And Cross says the map isn’t just a political issue but an economic one, saying Ohio needs to enact policies that grow its population. 14 of the House’s 64 Republicans have signed a petition to force a vote on the ban on all mandatory vaccines.
