TOLEDO, Ohio — There is a pothole on my street. A really bad one.
Somebody needs to do something about it, and I guess it has to be me.
After several complaints to the city of Cleveland went unanswered, I decided to go over their heads by complaining directly to my congressional representative: Marcy Kaptur, whom you might be surprised to learn actually lives in Toledo.
The ninth congressional district is nicknames "The Snake on the Lake" because it stretches nearly a hundred miles from Cleveland to Toledo. Seeing as Kaptur was in her "western" office on this day, I was forced to make that journey.
When I finally got a chance to ask Kaptur why her home city was more than an hour away from mine yet still in my congressional district for some reason, she informed me a little more about the district drawing process.
"[The state legislature] drew us a very convoluted map that politically translates into 16 members of Congress in Ohio, four of which are Democrats and 12 of which are Republicans in a state that goes 50-50," she said, adding that Ohio is "among the top" state in the country when it comes to this type of gerrymandering.
Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in the history of the U.S. House of Representatives, tells me she tries to travel back and forth between Cleveland and Toledo each week depending on her schedule back in Washington. For my estimation, he district represents everything north of the highway and...lighthouses?
"Put-in-Bay, Kelly's Island, Middle Bass Island," she lists. Hey, at least she has the fun parts.
As I was about to leave, I almost forgot about the whole reason I went out there: the pothole.
"I can guarantee you, you have to go to the city for that," she explained.
Well, what an adventure we've had. I don't think this is necessarily going to help my pothole situation, but I did learn quite a bit about congressional redistricting, and that's good.