This would be pretty tricky. Ohio in recent years has liked electing Catholics to Congress more often than we "should" based only on Catholics as a percentage of the population for some reason. It would be an interesting exercise to gerrymander Ohio trying to maximize the number of Catholics in Congress (and one I may try
). Still, the southeast is pretty much a Catholic dead zone so it probably isn't possible. The only chance of getting a Catholic in that area is to try and gerrymander Charlie Wilson back into office, so it would be an Ohio River ConservaDem pack. It may require a slice of Youngstown just for good measure. Does it count if I just try and get rid of Protestants while trying to put Eastern Orthodox Zack Space back in?
Then we also run into the problem of several incumbent Protestants who would be difficult to gerrymander out: Mike Turner (though the Ohio GOP tried to give him the boot anyway), Jim Jordan, Steve LaTourette, and Marcia Fudge. LaTourrette is packed into his own little corner so I wouldn't know what to do with him. And what to do with the VRA black seat? That’s not going to elect a Catholic! I guess the best chance would be to try and slice it up so Kucinich wins it. OH-10 is probably the most Catholic district in the state so if we could draw Kucinich into an OH-11 primary white enough for him to win, while keeping the bulk of OH-10 intact, that could be ripe for an unnamed Catholic. It’s been a while since either party has nominated a Protestant for that seat and it might be majority Catholic. Stivers would be easy to eliminate by simply creating a pack seat for Kilroy, who’s Catholic.
On the other hand, trying to draw a map to minimize the number of Catholics would be rather difficult since so many of Ohio’s influential representatives are Catholic. Where would we even begin with Cincinnati? All three current reps in the area are Catholic, as is the Democrat waiting in the wings to unseat one if a Dem-friendly map is drawn. The northwest would be awfully hard too, since Kaptur and Latta have districts that are difficult to mess with. You could try pairing Latta and Jordan, but what can you do with Kaptur besides combining her with Kucinich? A follow-the-lake seat is pretty likely to elect a Catholic, so you’d have to draw some nasty arm into Amish Country or something.
