Trump’s likely Ohio victory doesn’t doom all Democrats
As to Ohio, President Biden’s purported strengths and purported weaknesses are beside the point. Absent the unforeseeable, ex-President Donald Trump is going to carry Ohio in November. Ohio’s presidential electors will meet at the Statehouse on Dec. 17. Trump’s slate might as well book its Columbus hotel rooms now.
The critical question for Ohio Democrats is whether and, if yes, how a Trump victory in Ohio might hold down turnout by the state’s Democratic voters and those independents who loathe Trump.
Democrats’ marquee Ohio race is the quest by three-term U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown for a fourth term. Brown’s Republican challenger is Greater Cleveland entrepreneur Bernie Moreno.
The Brown-Moreno contest is already red hot, and sure to get hotter, because for Democrats, holding Brown’s seat is essential to maintaining Democrats’ U.S. Senate majority.
Be it noted that a Trump win in Ohio doesn’t necessarily guarantee Democrat
Brown’s defeat. In 1988, an incumbent Democratic U.S. senator from Ohio, Howard M. Metzenbaum, a full-throttle liberal, won reelection with 57% of the statewide vote, besting his GOP challenger, then-Cleveland Mayor George Voinovich.
Meanwhile, Ohio voters statewide backed GOP presidential nominee George H.W. Bush, who drew 55% of Ohio’s vote to 44% cast for Democrat Michael Dukakis. And Bush captured the White House.
Although some might scoff at the comparison, Ohio Democrats also are waging campaigns arguably as critical as Brown’s in the three statewide contests for Ohio Supreme Court seats also on November’s ballot.
The seven-justice court is composed of four Republicans and three Democrats. On the general election ballot are the seats of two Democratic justices and an open seat held by a Republican.
One of the two Democrats seeking re-election to the high court is Justice Michael P. Donnelly, a Greater Clevelander. Donnelly’s GOP challenger is Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Megan E. Shanahan.
The other Democrat seeking re-election to the state Supreme Court is Justice
Melody J. Stewart, also a Greater Clevelander. Stewart is being challenged by another justice already on the court, Republican Justice Joseph T. Deters, once Hamilton County’s prosecuting attorney, earlier Ohio’s state treasurer, and a close ally of GOP Gov. Mike DeWine.
The third Supreme
Court matchup on Ohio’s November ballot (for the seat that the GOP’s Deters now holds) is between a Greater Cleveland Democrat, Judge Lisa Forbes, of the Ohio Court of Appeals (8th District), and a Columbus Republican, Judge
Dan Hawkins, of Franklin County Common Pleas
Court.
The court’s 2025 caseload could be crucial: It’s likely to include challenges to Ohioans’ statewide 2023 vote to guarantee a right to abortion, and GOP moves to gut a pending voter-initiated anti-gerrymandering plan.
If, despite Trump’s perceived strength in Ohio, Democrats and independents do turn out on Election Day, they’d have a good shot at deciding the (Democrat) Brown vs. (Republican) Moreno and Supreme Court contests.