Campaign craziness destined to continue after Nov. 8
If you think Campaign ’22 has stoked worldclass heartburn, keep the Maalox handy: Campaign ’24 will begin Nov. 9, day after this year’s Election Day.
Not only will 2024 be a presidential election year — and if Donald Trump’s breathing, he’s running — but Ohioans will also be treated to another U.S. Senate race and to General Assembly and congressional contests in what will likely (yet again) be redrawn districts.
Also between now and ’24, potential successors to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine will emerge, assuming DeWine, 75, is re-elected this November. If he is, DeWine couldn’t seek re-election in 2026 because of Ohio term limits for statewide executive officers,
DeWine’s heir apparent is Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, a fellow Republican, but Husted has recently shown interest in a private-sector billet. Last spring Husted was elected to the board of directors of Heartland BancCorp, in suburban Columbus, which owns Heartland Bank, a commercial bank that operates in Central Ohio and northern Kentucky.
If Husted doesn’t seek to succeed DeWine, then one of the other statewide Republican elected executive officers — say, Attorney General David Yost, Auditor of State Keith Faber — is a possible gubernatorial candidate. (If they’re re-elected in November, term-limits will keep Faber and Yost from seeking third terms in 2026.)
But in 2024, the bigticket contest, after the presidency, will be for the U.S. Senate seat held by Cleveland Democrat Sherrod Brown, now in his third term.
Republican scuttlebutt is that Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose, of suburban Columbus, is among those gearing up to challenge Brown, who won the Senate seat in the first place by unseating DeWine in 2006.
LaRose was one of the Ohio Republicans who appeared in Youngstown on Sept. 17 at a GOP rally featuring Trump. (So, in a rather nervy move, did this year’s three Republican candidates for the supposedly-above-politics
Ohio Supreme Court, run 4-3 by the GOP.)
Meanwhile, even as Campaign ’24 emerges Nov. 9, so too will politicking get into high gear at the Statehouse — not even counting the GOP fight over the House speakership. Leading candidates: Dayton Rep. Phil Plummer, once Montgomery County’s sheriff, and Rep. Jason Stephens, of Gallia County’s Kitts Hill.
The General Assembly is expected to reconvene after the election to hold one of its always rambunctious “lame duck” sessions. That is, some House and Senate members who likely will never again face voters may act on legislation way too hot to handle before the election.
Traditionally, lameduck sessions, such as 2018’s, are when legislators give themselves pay raises. That’s unlikely during this year’s lameduck session because the 2018 pay-raise bill (passed over Republican thenGov. John Kasich’s veto) annually boosts legislative pay every year through 2028.