Turnout key to Columbus special election Other views
Tuesday’s special congressional election in the Columbus region’s 12th District may or may not amount to a referendum on Donald Trump. The blinder a partisan is, the more clearly he or she will claim to see.
Still, if the Democratic candidate wins Tuesday, that’ll amount to an earthquake in what, for much of Ohio’s history, been unshakable Republican bedrock. The district is composed of Delaware, Licking (Newark) and Morrow (Mount Gilead) counties, plus parts of Franklin, Marion, Muskingum (Zanesville) and Richland (Mansfield) counties
The major-party candidates on Tuesday’s 12th District congressional ballot are state Sen. Troy Balderson, a Zanesville Republican, and Franklin County Recorder Danny O’Connor, of Columbus. The Green Party’s candidate is Joe Manchik, of Reynoldsburg.
The 12th District’s 17-year Republican incumbent, Pat (Patrick) Tiberi, of Delaware County’s Genoa Twp., resigned Jan. 15 to become president of the Ohio Business Roundtable. Before Tiberi, Republican Gov. John R. Kasich represented the 12th District from 1983 through 2000.
Given how many votes were cast districtwide in 2016’s general election for the 12th District seat, it appears Tuesday’s contest may be decided in Delaware County (27.1 percent of 2016’s vote); in the portion of northern Franklin County in the 12th (32.4 percent of 2016’s vote); and in Licking County (21.2 percent). The district’s other counties, and their respective shares of 2016’s vote for the 12th District seat — when the district last re-elected Tiberi — are Morrow (4.1 percent), and parts of Marion (1.2 percent), Muskingum (6.1 percent) and Richland (7.9 percent) counties.
Franklin County has voted for Democrats for president since 1992 (Bill Clinton), although its relatively affluent northern neighborhoods lean Republican. As for Licking County, it last voted for a Democrat for president in 1964 (when Lyndon Johnson swamped the GOP’s Barry Goldwater).
Delaware County, though, last voted for a Democrat for president 102 years ago (in 1916, for Woodrow Wilson — another Democrat “who kept us out of war,” then promptly got us into one).
And Delaware was one of just five Ohio counties (of 88) that Goldwater carried in 1964. (The others: Allen; Fulton; Hancock; and Union.) Earlier, in 1958, only 16 counties supported that year’s Right to Work (for Less) ballot issue; Delaware was one of them.
And in 1983, when the late Thomas A. Van Meter, the conservative Ashland Republican, promoted a ballot issue to roll back Democratic Gov. Richard F. Celeste’s steep tax increases, voters in 10 counties rallied to Van Meter’s banner. Delaware was one of those counties.
Based on per capita personal income ($64,634), Delaware is No. 1 among Ohio’s counties, the Ohio Development Services Agency report. (Runner-up: Geauga, at $61,323). Given Delaware’s relative affluence, the Trump-Ryan-McConnell tax cut (aka deficit-booster) may be a GOP plus Tuesday.
Still, the president’s self-damaging rhetoric, especially his offensive comments about women, can’t be a plus in an affluent, well-educated county, no matter how statistically Republican it usually is.
Turnout is the key to special elections. They draw fewer voters than general elections. The other side of that coin: Voters who vote in special elections tend to be motivated voters.
And there’s this. Delaware County, like the rest of the Columbus region, is growing because of newcomers and business relocations. Meanwhile, though, Delaware has historic ties to Methodism, such as Ohio Wesleyan University and the Methodist Theological School in Ohio.
That fact plus Trump’s rhetoric, and congressional Republicans’ survival-of-the-fittest perspective on the poor, call to mind John Wesley’s “The Use of Money” sermon: “Having, First, gained all you can, and, Secondly saved all you can, Then give” — not grab — “all you can.”
If the Democratic candidate wins Tuesday, that’ll amount to an earthquake in what, for much of Ohio’s history, has been unshakable Republican bedrock.