Columbus, Ohio — For more than half a century, Ohio was one of the key states to watch during presidential election years, a place where both parties competed vigorously for support from voters who were often truly undecided.
Then came Donald Trump.
Beginning in 2016, Ohio became reliably Republican as more and more voters embraced the New York businessman’s brash politics. When Trump won the state in 2020 without capturing the White House, he became the first to win Ohio but has lost the presidency since the state sided with Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy in 1960. This officially revoked the status of Buckeye State. .
Now there are indications that the dynamic is changing again after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down federal constitutional protections for abortion. Ohio voters responded to the 2022 ruling last year by overwhelmingly approving an amendment that enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution. They did this after the polls were swamped to defeat a Republican effort that would have made this more difficult. The state also legalized recreational marijuana.
There is a risk that the 2023 results will be over-interpreted, but the victories have pushed Democrats to defend a crucial U.S. Senate seat this year.
Last August’s Republican Party-backed effort to make it more difficult to amend Ohio’s Constitution showed Ohioans that “Republican politicians were not on their side,” said Ohio Democratic Party Chairwoman Elizabeth Walters .
“The Democratic Party is not getting ahead of itself after just one election, but it does offer some hope that Ohioans can steadily and with a lot of work drift more to the left than to the right in the coming elections,” she said. .
Democrats’ most immediate concern is the re-election of three-term U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. He is unopposed in the March 19 primary as Republicans decide who will run against him, but Brown is seen as one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats in the November general election, when voters will also cast their ballots for the President and Congress.
Delaware County voter Janelle Tucker, 53, said Tuesday, as she perused the floral section of a Kroger, that she can’t predict how Ohio will vote this fall. She is a Democrat and a “huge fan” of Brown, but said she just doesn’t know what will happen.
“Ohio used to be kind of the pulse of the voter, and it’s not anymore,” she said. “It’s fascinating because it seems like the voters have strongly endorsed women’s rights, but the representatives aren’t supporting the voters.”
Since Trump, Tucker said, “I feel like I don’t know my community anymore.”
Brown is a rare Democrat to be elected statewide in Ohio. Republicans control every non-judicial office statewide, both the supermajority chambers of the state legislature and the Ohio Supreme Court — and they have done so for years.
Mark Weaver, an Ohio-based Republican consultant, said: “Anyone suggesting that Ohio has gone purple again will have to provide evidence other than 2023.”
He attributed the resounding success of November’s Issue 1, which guaranteed an individual’s right “to make and exercise his own reproductive decisions,” to abortion rights groups outpacing and outpacing their anti-abortion opponents, bringing more left-wing voters to the ballot box are driven. polls.
Unless those same groups pour similar millions into Brown’s race, Ohio will “return to its reliably red state results,” Weaver said.
That’s what happened in 2022, when then-Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan ran what was widely considered a textbook campaign for the Senate seat vacated by Republican Rob Portman, but lost by more than six points to the Republican venture capitalist and ‘Hillbilly Elegy’. author J.D. Vance. Vance was endorsed by Trump.
But Ryan failed to secure the financial support from national Democrats that Brown receives. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has pledged at least $10 million to reelect him and Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana.
David Niven, an associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, said Brown has a chance of keeping his seat if he focuses on abortion in a way that resonates with voters.
Brown, well aware of the issue’s potential to benefit him, has wasted no time in contrasting his position on abortion with that of his Republican opponents: Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Senator Matt Dolan .
“I have always been clear about where I stand: I support access to abortion for all women,” he wrote in a text to voters the week after the referendum in November. “I also know where my opponents stand: All three would overturn the will of Ohioans by voting for a national abortion ban.”
Moreno, LaRose and Dolan each celebrated the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which returned abortion policy to the states but now supports a 15-week federal abortion limit proposed as a compromise by influential anti-abortion groups. Ohio Republicans’ positions vary on imposing limits earlier and on allowing exceptions later in pregnancy.
Abortion is also a hot topic in three closely watched races for the Ohio Supreme Court, where Democrats are defending two sitting justices and dream of throwing out a third open seat to take control of the seven-member court. The future of Ohio’s abortion law could be shaped there, as well as in the Supreme Courts of other states, as the legal questions surrounding abortion rights are resolved.
Niven’s takeaway from 2023? “If Democrats could hold elections solely on issues, they would win,” he said.
Supporting evidence for that theory can be found in Ohio’s suburbs, which again could be crucial.
In 2018, Brown lost three suburban counties: Butler, outside Cincinnati; and Delaware and Licking, outside Columbus — where the abortion rights issue gained traction last November. In two other counties where No. 1 narrowly lost — Clermont and Warren counties in the Cincinnati area — the abortion issue outperformed Brown’s 2018 percentage by double digits.
All five of these counties voted for Trump in 2020.
At the Keystone Pub & Delaware County Patio Ken Wentworth, 53, said he’s not sure what the future holds. He himself feels conflicted. A moderate Republican, he said he voted to legalize marijuana last year and abstained on the abortion issue.
“My friends who are Democrats are not those kind of Democrats, they are Democrats with all bold capital letters,” he said. “And on the Republican side they are a hundred times right.”
He said he remains undecided in the Senate race and doesn’t like his choices for president either, although he would support Trump over Biden if no other alternative emerges.
Independent voter Michelle Neeld, a 43-year-old factory worker from rural Morrow County, voted yes last year on both abortion rights and marijuana legalization. She does not want to see Trump back in the White House, but says she would not vote for Biden.
She feels like Ohio is moving left. “I think it’s coming to this,” she said.
Christopher McKnight Nichols, a professor of history at Ohio State University, said the roughly 57% support both ballots received in Ohio in November “shows how weak a lot of those conservative issues are among real Republican voters.” He said this will likely lead to a “reconfiguration” within the state GOP.
Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafilou said that given the longstanding success of the Republican Party in the state, he believes some within the party are overconfident – “and I have shared that privately and publicly with our party faithful. ”
“I think anyone who ignores the 2023 results does so at their peril,” he said. “So I’m not an overconfident Republican. I think we’ll do well. I truly believe (if he is the nominee) that President Trump will do well in Ohio. But I think we have work ahead of us.”
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Samantha Hendrickson is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
