Parties in Ohio take lessons from 2023 abortion, marijuana votes

By Julie Carr Smyth and Samantha Hendrickson | Associated Press/Report for America

COLUMBUS, Ohio  — For more than half a century, Ohio was one of the most important states to watch during presidential election years, a place where both parties competed vigorously for support from voters who were often genuinely undecided.

Then came Donald Trump.

Beginning in 2016, Ohio became reliably Republican as more and more voters embraced the New York businessman’s brash brand of politics. When Trump won the state in 2020 without clinching the White House, he became the first losing presidential candidate Ohio had supported since it sided with Richard Nixon over John F. Kennedy in 1960. With that, the Buckeye State’s bellwether status was officially unrung.

Now there are hints that the dynamic may be shifting again after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal constitutional protections for abortion. Ohio voters responded last year to the 2022 ruling by overwhelmingly approving an amendment enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution. They did so after swarming polls to defeat a Republican effort that would have made doing so more difficult. The state also legalized recreational marijuana.

There’s a risk of overinterpreting the results from 2023, but the victories have encouraged Democrats defending a pivotal U.S. Senate seat this year.

Last August’s GOP-backed effort to make amending Ohio’s constitution harder showed Ohioans that “Republican politicians were not on their side,” said Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters.

“The Democratic Party isn’t getting ahead of themselves after just one election, but it does provide some hope that steadily, and with a lot of work, Ohioans could drift more to the left than to the right in upcoming elections,” she said.

Democrats’ most immediate concern is re-electing three-term U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown. He’s unopposed in the March 19 primary as Republicans hash out who will run against him, but Brown is viewed as among the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats in November’s general election, when voters also will cast ballots for president and Congress.

Delaware County voter Janelle Tucker, 53, said as she perused the floral section of a Kroger recently that she can’t predict how Ohio will vote this fall. She’s a Democrat and a “big fan” of Brown but said she just doesn’t know what will happen.

“Ohio used to be sort of the pulse of the voter, and it’s not anymore,” she said. “It’s fascinating because it seems like the voter strongly approved women’s rights, but the representatives don’t support the voters.”

Since Trump, Tucker said, “I feel like I don’t know my community anymore.”

Brown stands as a rare Democrat to be elected statewide in Ohio. Republicans control every statewide non-judicial office, both chambers of the state Legislature with supermajorities and the Ohio Supreme Court — and they have for years.

Mark Weaver, a long-time Ohio-based Republican consultant, said, “Anyone who suggests that Ohio has become purple again is going to have to offer up evidence other than 2023.”

He chalked up the resounding success of November’s Issue 1, which guaranteed an individual’s right “to make and carry out one’s own reproductive decisions,” to abortion rights groups outraising and outspending their anti-abortion opponents, therefore driving more left-leaning voters to the polls.

Unless those same groups put similar millions into Brown’s race, Ohio will “return to its reliable red state results,” Weaver said.

That’s what happened in 2022, when then-Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan ran what was widely considered a textbook campaign for the Senate seat vacated by Republican Rob Portman, only to lose by more than 6 points to Republican venture capitalist and “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance. Vance had been backed by Trump.

But Ryan failed to garner the financial support from national Democrats that Brown is receiving. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has committed at least $10 million to re-elect him and Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

David Niven, an associate professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, said Brown has a shot at keeping his seat if he focuses on abortion in a way that connects with voters.

Brown, acutely aware of the issue’s potential to help him, has wasted no time contrasting his stance on abortion with those of his Republican opponents: Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan.

“I have always been clear about where I stand: I support abortion access for all women,” he wrote in a text to voters the week after the November referendum. “I know where my opponents stand, too: All three would overturn the will of Ohioans by voting for a national abortion ban.”