Trump, GOP pushing to save Ohio House seat
Democrat pulls even in district president won easily in 2016.
COLUMBUS — It was a muggy Thursday morning when Drew Niccum, a rising sophomore at Ohio State University, drove 40 miles from campus to his hometown of Newark to conduct a rather unusual summer activity for central Ohio: cast a ballot for a Democratic congressional candidate — who just might win.
“It’s been a pretty safe Republican district for a pretty long time,” Niccum said. “I’m just excited that my district is actually competitive this year.”
Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, which spans the largely well-to-do suburbs around the state capital and backed President Donald Trump by 11 points in 2016, has been solidly Republican for decades. Voters here sent now-Gov. John Kasich to Congress in 1982 for the first of nine consecutive terms. Kasich was succeeded by Republican Patrick J. Tiberi in 2001, who held the office for 17 years before he resigned in January — leaving the seat wide open for the first time in a generation.
But after a string of Republican special-election losses over the past year in areas that voted for Trump but have grown less supportive of him, the vote here on Tuesday to replace Tiberi has suddenly emerged as the latest big test foreshadowing which party will win control of the House in November. The midterms, after all, will probably be determined by contests in dozens of similarly conservative-leaning suburban communities across the country.
Prominent Republicans have found themselves following a familiar playbook in yet another special election: Send in the cavalry.
Both House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and Vice President Mike Pence have made trips to Ohio in recent days to campaign for the GOP candidate, Troy Balderson, 56, a state senator whose mainstream party bona fides would probably make him a slam dunk for victory in ordinary times.
On Monday, Trump tweeted his “full and total Endorsement!” of Balderson, then declared Saturday he would fly in himself to host a rally in the suburbs of Delaware County, just north of Columbus.
Nevertheless, the 31-yearold Democratic candidate, Danny O’Connor, has kept apace with Balderson, with the latest Monmouth University poll showing the race to be a statistical dead heat.
O’Connor, a lawyer who was elected Franklin County recorder in 2016, has evoked comparisons to another young moderate Democrat, Conor Lamb, whose March special-election victory in a heavily GOP Pennsylvania district Trump had won by 20 points served as an early sign of a potential Democratic wave in the fall.
Adding to the GOP’s anxiety is the sense that Ohio, a perennial battleground that Trump won easily two years ago, is looking more like a Democratic stronghold in 2018, with Sen. Sherrod Brown favored to win reelection and the party looking competitive in the governor’s race.