As Ohio’s considerably convoluted and patently partisan process of drawing new maps for its 15 congressional districts shifts into high gear this month, we steadfastly remain committed to our longstanding appeal that the Mahoning Valley deserves its own coherent and united U.S. House of Representatives district.

Yes, it’s that time again this late summer and fall when Ohio must once again chart new boundary lines for its federal lawmakers in the lower chamber of Congress. Because the redistricting that took place for 2022 did not receive Democratic Party support, the maps created then had a shelf life of only four years, not the 10-year standard that would have been in place with bipartisan backing.

Between now and Sept. 30, state legislators in the General Assembly are charged with redrawing congressional district boundaries to ensure the proportion of districts favoring each party generally reflects the statewide preferences of Ohio voters, which is roughly 55 percent Republican and 45 percent Democrat.

If that mapmaking by a state Legislature with a supermajority of Republicans fails to garner a three-fifths majority of all state lawmakers, the process inevitably will start anew under the direction of the Ohio Redistricting Commission, which itself is politically unbalanced with Republicans on it outnumbering Democrats 5-2.

In the end, chances are strong that the goal of some ardent Republican Party backers to increase the Republican share of the U.S. House delegation from Ohio from 66% to 80% — totally out of whack with contemporary voting trends statewide – could well result.

Given those realities, however, our appeal to unite Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties — the Youngstown-Warren-Salem Combined Statistical Area as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau — this time around comes with a new but promising political wrinkle.

In recent years, thanks to the Trumpification of America, the Mahoning Valley no longer stands as a reliably Democratic Party stronghold, a defining demographic of the region that dated back to the New Deal era of the 1930s. In recent national, state and local elections, a remarkable Republican resurgence has revamped the political landscape of the Valley into a relatively reliable safe space for Grand Old Party candidates for virtually all elected offices with the possible exception of candidates in the Valley’s larger urban centers.

Politically speaking then, reuniting the Valley into one cohesive district makes sense — even for those hellbent on fattening Republicans’ oversized and arguably unfair share of the Ohio’s delegation to the U.S. Capitol. In addition to the three defining counties of the Mahoning Valley, an adjoining county or slivers of other counties would be needed to reach the average population threshold of 750,000 constituents per district. Most of those neighboring areas tend to swing more heavily Republican than Mahoning and Trumbull, so their inclusion would only help preserve the district’s dominant GOP identity and fall in line with President Donald Trump’s marching orders to increase Republican representation in Congress and thereby widen the GOP’s majority status among lawmakers next year.

But putting all politics aside, we have more practical reasons for renewing our call to redistricting mapmakers to carve out a solidly unified Mahoning Valley district.

In fact, there are 532,468 good reasons to do so.

That figure represents the number of men, women and children residing in Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties, according to our metro area’s official 2020 Census population. All of those individuals have shared common bonds that date back to the region’s explosive growth during and after the Industrial Revolution of the 19th century. Certainly, few communities have as many common interests — economic development, blue-collar dominance, transportation and infrastructure, along with struggles against joblessness and poverty and even cultural, athletic and social engagement — as the townships, villages, cities and counties within the Youngstown-Warren-Salem CSA.

We again point out that our counties have too many shared agencies, initiatives and projects, as well as common obstacles, benefits and visions for our region to end up splintered into separate districts. Frankly, that common ground would be too much to lose should the Valley remain fractured slices of other regions’ sociopolitical pies.

We therefore urge the entire delegation of state representatives and senators from Trumbull, Mahoning and Columbiana counties to exert any and all influence they can muster on mapmakers to reunite the Mahoning Valley into one robust congressional district on behalf of their best interests — all 532,468 of them