TAX CUTS ON BALLOT
Ohio race pits Trump backers against Democrats
WESTERVILLE, Ohio — President Donald Trump’s preferred congressional candidate — and the appeal of Trump’s tax cuts — were tested Tuesday in battleground Ohio in the season’s final high-stakes special election.
The Republican president’s shadow also loomed over primary contests in four other states, none bigger than Kansas, where he roiled the governor’s race by opposing the GOP incumbent on the eve of the election.
The day’s races, like dozens before them, pitted the strength of Trump’s fiery supporters against the Democratic Party’s anti-Trump resistance.
The results will help determine the political landscape — and Trump’s standing within his own party — just three months before the GOP defends its House and Senate majorities across the nation.
Voters in Ohio and Kansas joined those in Missouri, Michigan and Washington state. But only Ohio will send someone to Congress immediately.
The script for Ohio’s special election was somewhat familiar: An experienced Trump loyalist, two-term state Sen. Troy Balderson, was fighting off a strong challenge from a fresh-faced Democrat, 31-year-old county official Danny O’Connor, in a congressional district held by the Republican Party for more than three decades. In an election morning tweet, Trump said Balderson would make a “great congressman.”
The winner will fill the seat previously held by Pat Tiberi, a nine-term incumbent who resigned to take a job with an Ohio business group.
Trump himself campaigned at Balderson’s side just 72 hours before Election Day, a weekend appearance to help energize his loyalists in a district the president carried by 11 percentage points.
At times, the race has centred on Trump’s tax cuts as much as the candidates.