Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.
Ohio Democrats will never claw their way out of the party’s slump in this state unless they stow the happy talk.
Recent example: Ballyhooing a gain of two seats in Ohio’s House, boosting the number of Democratic representatives from 32 (of 99) to 34, as well as a two-seat gain in the 33-seat Senate. That will increase the number of Democratic senators to nine, from this session’s seven.
Neither gain is a huge deal.
Let’s take a look at Ohio Democrats’ so-called gains?
Three seats of Democrats’ overall four-seat General Assembly gain came in Franklin County, which is becoming Democratic bedrock in Ohio. (Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris drew 63% of Franklin County’s vote. That’s the Franklin County that cast 60% of its vote for Richard Nixon in 1960 – and 64% of its vote for Ronald Reagan in 1984.)
Democrats’ fourth General Assembly gain last month, albeit a close tally, was in the Dayton area — in a district that state Senate Republicans deliberately drew to hobble an unpopular GOP peer, lame-duck Sen. Niraj Antani, of suburban Dayton.
Ohio Democratic Party members hug after Sen. Sherrod Brown’s concession speech during a party at the Hyatt Regency Downtown Columbus Convention Center Hotel on Wednesday, Nov. 6, 2024.
Of Democrats’ two state Senate gains, Sen.-elect Beth Liston, of Columbus, drew 60% of the vote in her district, and Sen.-elect Willis E. Blackshear, Jr., of Dayton, drew 52% of the vote in his.
Suddes: Tuesday wasn’t just a bad dream. Ohio Democrats need to wake up.
Of the two newly won Democratic seats in Ohio’s House, both are in Franklin County. The victors are Reps.-elect Mark Sigrist, of Grove City, and Crystal Lett, of Columbus, drew 52% of the vote in their respective districts.
Welcome though the four-seat General Assembly gain may be to Democrat’s get-well squad, it’ll hardly hobble the legislature’s Republican super-majority, certainly not in a House ruled — and that is the appropriate term for it — by its next speaker, Lima Republican Matt Huffman.
What about the emergency clause?
As a parliamentary side-note, with Democrats pruning the number of House Republicans to 65, from the current 67, one Democratic claim is that “Republicans can no longer use the emergency clause” — which requires 66 yes votes to OK a bill rather than the usual 50, and bars a referendum on such super-majority measures – “to pass their extreme agenda.”
That may not be open-and-shut, though, because it appears that a bill that includes an appropriation, even if passed by just 50 votes, may — may — be shielded from a referendum. (That’s one for the “legal beagles,” as Republican then-Secretary of State Ted Brown called them in the 1970s, to figure out.)
What about the U.S. House victories?
True, Democrats noted, correctly, that all five of Ohio’s U.S. House members survived Donald Trump’s statewide victory: U.S. Reps. Joyce Beatty, of Columbus; Shontel Brown, of Warrensville Heights; Marcy Kaptur, of Toledo; Greg Landsman, of Cincinnati; and Emilia Sykes of Akron.
But Kaptur won by only the narrowest of margins, drawing 181,098 votes in her northwest Ohio district, compared to Republican Derek Merrin’s 178,716, and Libertarians’ Tom Pruss (15,381 votes), the Toledo Blade reported.
The Democrats’ invisible farm team
Crystal Lett speaks to Ohio Democratic Party members after wining the Ohio District 11 election during a party at the Hyatt Regency Downtown Columbus Convention Center Hotel on Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2024.
The overarching party gap is Ohio Democrats’ seeming lack of a farm team for 2026’s election for statewide executive offices; for the state Supreme Court; and to fill out the two years that will then be remaining is Republican Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s U.S. Senate seat.
Because of term-limits, none of the statewide elected executive officers – Gov. Mike DeWine and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted; Attorney General David Yost, of Columbus; State Auditor Keith Faber, of Celina; Secretary of State Frank LaRose, of Upper Arlington; and State Treasurer Robert Sprague, of Findlay – is eligible to seek a third consecutive term in 2026.
(And it’s worth mentioning that since Ohioans began to directly elect U.S. senators in 1914, Ohio governors have appointed six senators to unexpired terms; five later failed to win election to the seat, and a sixth had already been won a full term and was appointed to serve for several months after then-Sen. Warren Harding resigned in January 1921 to become president.)
Thomas Suddes
True, term-limits have reduced the potential Statehouse experience a possible statewide candidate can gain if thinking about running for, say, secretary of state.
But term-limits didn’t keep Faber, Husted, LaRose or Sprague from running, and winning. And it shouldn’t hold back General Assembly Democrats either – if someone in the party would just get the lead out.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio Democrats need to stop the happy talk and get real | Opinion