The Ohio Redistricting Commission will vote today on this map it released Thursday that redraws the state’s congressional lines. The map calls for Mahoning County to be split into two districts and keeps Trumbull whole in the 14th District.

A new congressional map to be adopted today by the Ohio Redistricting Commission would split Mahoning County into two districts, putting part of it into a district that includes all of Trumbull County.

The map, introduced at Thursday’s commission meeting, has bipartisan support with a vote to finalize the congressional lines planned for a 10 a.m. meeting today.

The changes to Mahoning County were needed as part of a compromise agreement between Republicans and Democrats regarding making the toss-up 13th Congressional District, represented by Democrat Emilia Sykes, more Democratic.

The 13th District borders the 14th Congressional District, which includes all of Trumbull County, and the 6th District, which currently includes all of Mahoning County.

The 6th and the 14th, which are currently considered safe Republican districts, would actually become more red with the changes that take effect with the 2026 election.

The split of Mahoning County would move Canfield, Jackson, Milton, Berlin, Ellsworth, Craig Beach and a portion of Austintown out of the 6th and into the 14th District.

The rest of Mahoning County would remain in the 6th District, which is currently represented by Republican Michael Rulli of Salem.

Rulli’s district would see significant changes.

All of Tuscarawas County is being included in the district compared to only a portion currently. Also, more of Stark County is being added along with portions of Wayne and Holmes counties, which are all heavily Republican.

The district would lose Monroe, Noble and Washington counties, which are also strongly Republican.

Besides most of Mahoning County, the district would also keep all of Columbiana, Jefferson, Carroll, Belmont and Harrison — all strong Republican counties.

With the 2026 election, the 6th District would favor Republicans 63.9% to 36.1% for Democrats based on partisan statewide voting results between 2016 and 2024, according to the redistricting commission. The current district favors Republicans 59.1% to 40.9% for Democrats based on partisan statewide voting results from 2014 to 2022.

Mahoning is the most-populous county in the 6th District. With the elimination of parts of Mahoning from the district and the addition of about 50,000 people from Stark, it appears Stark would be the most-populous county starting with the 2026 election. Population estimates show Stark with about 180,600 people in the new 6th District compared with 179,300 in Mahoning County.

Of the 15 counties among Ohio’s 88 that would be split into two congressional districts, the plan for the 6th includes four of those counties — Mahoning, Stark, Wayne and Holmes. The latter county has fewer than 45,000 residents in total.

Rulli said: “I will continue working hard to earn the votes of constituents across any new district. In my nearly 17 months in office, I’ve fought to enact the very policies voters demanded after electing me three separate times. I look forward to the finalized map and to getting to know my new constituents so I can represent them effectively in Washington.”

Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairman Chris Anderson said: “I can’t believe a do-nothing congressman is that concerned with his gerrymandered district that he’s getting a district that’s even more gerrymandered.”

Besides the addition of parts of Mahoning and the reduction of parts of Portage County, the 14th District, currently represented by Republican Dave Joyce of Bainbridge, would remain intact starting with the 2026 election.

The loss of sections of Portage County — most notably Kent, a Democratic stronghold given to strengthen Sykes’ district — required the 14th to add people with the decision made to take them from Mahoning.

Lake would remain the most-populous county in the 14th District with Trumbull the second most-populous. In addition to those two counties, the district would continue to include all of Ashtabula and Geauga counties.

CHANGES IN 14TH

The 14th would also be more Republican starting in 2026.

The district would favor Republicans 58.5% to 41.5% for Democrats based on partisan statewide voting results between 2016 to 2024, according to the commission. It currently favors Republicans 54.8% to 45.2% for Democrats on voting results from 2014 to 2022.

Joyce declined Thursday to comment on the proposed map, wanting to wait until after it was finalized to speak about it.

Before the new map was released by the commission shortly after its 4 p.m. Thursday meeting started, it was provided hours earlier on X, formerly Twitter, by @Opoliticsguru, who has provided reliable and accurate information on the redistricting maps. Blogger D.J. Byrnes, whose handle on X is @rooster_ohio, was the first to report Wednesday on the agreement between Republicans and Democrats on the map.

The agreement comes right before today’s deadline for a bipartisan map.

Anderson said he is disappointed that his fellow Democrats are supporting this redistricting.

“Ohioans overwhelmingly voted that we did not want gerrymandered districts,” he said. “This is the very definition of gerrymandering and not only violates the letter of the constitutional amendment, but the spirit. I find it sad that my own party would vote for this instead of sending it to a referendum when all we need to do is show the map to a voter and it becomes clear this is politicians picking their voters.”

The state currently has 10 Republican members of Congress and five Democrats with three of the latter in competitive districts.Those lines were drawn for the 2022 election without any Democratic support on the redistricting commission. Because of that, the districts were only good for the 2022 and 2024 elections.

Republicans wanted to redraw the map to favor its party 13-2 with the 2026 election. This map would give Republicans the advantage in 12 of the state’s 15 congressional districts.

The agreement helps Sykes, whose district currently favors Democrats by less than 1%. Starting with the 2026 election, it would favor Democrats by 4%.

But the new map would make it much more difficult for two other incumbent Democrats — Greg Landsman of Cincinnati in the 1st District and Marcy Kaptur of Toledo in the 9th District — to get reelected.

Landsman’s district goes from favoring Democrats by 1% to favoring Republicans by 6%.

Kaptur’s district was initially drawn to favor Democrats by less than 1% and based on the 2024 election, it currently favors Republicans by about 6%. With the redrawing for 2026, it would now favor Republicans by 9%.

If a map wasn’t approved today by the redistricting commission, which needed bipartisan support, it would have gone back to the state Legislature. That would have only required a simple majority — and no need for Democratic votes — to put new lines in place for the 2026 election. That vote would have been needed by Nov. 30. Republicans were working toward a 13-2 map that favored its political party.

National Democrats had threatened to gather signatures to put a referendum on the ballot to overturn an unfavorable map.

Besides the districts currently represented by Landsman, Kaptur and Sykes, all of the others would favor either Republicans or Democrats by more than 10%.