For more than half a century, Ohio has been one of the most interesting states during presidential elections, with both parties competing fiercely for support from voters who are often truly undecided.
Then along came Donald Trump.
In 2016, Ohio became firmly Republican as more voters embraced the New York businessman’s brash brand of politics. When Trump won the state in 2020 without winning the White House, it was his first win in Ohio since he sided with Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy in 1960. This was the first time that the president had lost his position. With this, his status as flag bearer for the Buckeye State was officially lifted. .
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Now, there are signs that this dynamic may be shifting again after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal constitutional protections for abortion. Ohio voters last year overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the 2022 ruling that would enshrine the right to abortion in the state constitution. They did so after polling flocked to defeat Republican efforts to make voting more difficult. The state has also legalized recreational marijuana.
At the risk of overstating the 2023 results, the victory helped Democrats defend key U.S. Senate seats this year.
A Republican-backed effort last August to make it harder to amend the Ohio Constitution showed Ohioans that “Republican politicians are not on our side,” said Elizabeth Walters, chair of the Ohio Democratic Party. Ta.
Nikko Griffin (left) and Tyra Patterson (left) address arriving voters on several issues, including the legalization of recreational marijuana, in the parking lot during early voting in Cincinnati on Nov. 2, 2023. right). Ohio voters overwhelmingly supported legalizing abortion. That emboldened Democrats, who are defending a Senate seat in a state that twice supported Donald Trump by wide margins. (AP Photo/Carolyn Custer, File)
“Democrats aren’t making progress in just one election, but with steady, hard work, it gives us hope that Ohioans can lean more to the left than to the right in future elections.” “I’ll give it to you,” she said. .
Democrats’ immediate concern is the reelection of three-term Sen. Sherrod Brown. Mr. Brown is unopposed in the March 19 primary as Republicans scramble to decide who will run, but Mr. Brown has the highest ranking in the nation in the November general election, when voters will also vote for president and Congress. He is seen as one of the most vulnerable Democrats.
Janelle Tucker, a 53-year-old Delaware County voter, said Tuesday as she looked in the flower aisle at Kroger that she couldn’t predict how Ohioans would vote this fall. Although she is a Democrat and a “huge fan” of Mr. Brown, she said she doesn’t know what will happen.
“Ohio used to be kind of the heartbeat of voters, but that’s not the case anymore,” she says. “It’s interesting because even though voters seem to strongly approve of women’s rights, their representatives don’t seem to support them.”
Since President Trump, Tucker said, “I feel like I don’t know my community anymore.”
Mr. Brown is a rare Democrat to be elected statewide in Ohio. Republicans control every non-judicial body across the state, including both chambers of the state Legislature and the Ohio Supreme Court, and have held that position for years.
“Anyone who suggests Ohio is purple again will have to provide evidence other than 2023,” said Mark Weaver, a longtime Ohio-based Republican consultant.
He cited the huge success of November’s first issue, which guaranteed individuals the right to “make and carry out their own reproductive decisions,” as abortion rights groups defeated abortion opponents and outspent them. He emphasized that as a result, more left-wing voters were forced to seek abortions. poll.
Unless these same groups pour similar millions of dollars into Mr. Brown’s election, Mr. Weaver said, Ohio “will return to reliably red state results.”
That’s what happened in 2022. Then-Democratic U.S. Representative Tim Ryan ran a wide-ranging, textbook campaign for the Senate seat vacated by Republican Rob Portman, but Republican venture capitalist and “Hillbilly Elegy” They lost by more than 6 points. Author: JD Vance. Mr. Vance was supported by Mr. Trump.
But Mr. Ryan was unable to secure the financial support that Mr. Brown received from the national Democratic Party. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has pledged at least $10 million to re-elect him and Sen. Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana.
David Niven, an associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, said Brown could retain his seat if he focuses on abortion in a way that connects with voters.
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Brown is keenly aware that the issue could help him, sharing his stance on abortion with Republicans like Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan. He spent time contrasting his position with that of the opposition.
“I have always made my position clear: I support access to abortion for all women,” he wrote in a text to voters the week after the November referendum. “I also know where my opponents stand. All three of us will be subverting the will of the people of Ohio by voting for a nationwide abortion ban.”
Mr. Moreno, Mr. LaRose and Mr. Dolan each celebrated the overturn of Roe v. Wade, which returned abortion policy to the states, but now the federal abortion restrictions that influential anti-abortion groups have offered as a compromise. I support 15 weeks. Ohio Republicans’ positions differ on whether to impose restrictions even earlier or make exceptions for later stages of pregnancy.
Abortion is also a hot topic in three closely watched Ohio Supreme Court races. Democrats hope to take control of the seven-member court by defending two sitting justices and flipping the vacant third seat. The future of Ohio’s abortion law could be forged in high courts here and in other states as the legal issues surrounding abortion rights become clearer.
What can Niven take away from 2023? “If Democrats can run elections that are strictly on issue, they will win,” he said.
Evidence supporting that theory has been found in rural Ohio, and it could once again become a major piece of evidence.
In 2018, Brown lost three suburban counties: Butler, a suburb of Cincinnati; And in the Columbus suburbs of Delaware and Licking, abortion rights won victories last November. The other two counties where Issue 1 narrowly lost, Clermont and Warren counties in the Cincinnati area, had double-digit percentages on abortion issues compared to Brown County’s 2018 rates.
All five of those counties voted for Trump in 2020.
At Keystone Pub & Patio in Delaware County, Ken Wentworth, 53, said he doesn’t know what the future holds. He feels conflicted himself. A moderate Republican, he said he voted to legalize marijuana last year but abstained on the abortion issue because he was “no.”
“My Democratic friends, they’re not just Democrats, they’re Democrats in all caps,” he said. “And on the Republican side, they’re 100 times more right-wing.”
He said he was still undecided about the Senate race and didn’t like his choice as president, but said he would support Trump over Biden if no other option presented itself.
Michelle Nield, a 43-year-old independent voter who lives in rural Morrow County, voted for both abortion rights and marijuana legalization last year. She doesn’t want to see Trump return to the White House, but she won’t vote for Biden, she said.
She feels Ohio State is moving to the left. “I think we’re getting there,” she said.
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Christopher McKnight Nichols, a professor of history at Ohio State University, said the roughly 57% support for both Ohio ballot issues in November means that “many of these conservative issues are “It shows how weak it is among Republican voters.” He said it would likely prompt a “realignment” within the state Republican Party.
Ohio Republican Party Chairman Alex Triantafillou said he believes some in the party are overconfident given the party’s long history of success in the state. He shared this privately and publicly with party members.”
“I think anyone who ignores the 2023 results is doing so at their own peril,” he said. “So I’m not an overconfident Republican. I believe we’ll do well. I believe (if the candidate) President Trump will do well in Ohio. But we… I think we are given a job to do.” ”
