Brown was first elected to the Senate in 2006, unseating DeWine – small world, Ohio is – then re-elected in 2012 and 2018. He was defeated by Moreno in 2024.
Brown vs. Husted seems to excite Ohio Democratic insiders more than, say, who’ll succeed DeWine as governor.
True, this year’s gubernatorial race between former state Health Director Dr. Amy Acton, a Youngstown native now of Bexley, and Vivek Ramaswamy, a Cincinnati-born high tech zillionaire now of Upper Arlington, offers Democrats a fair prospect of winning the governorship, not least because Ramaswamy obviously sees the governorship as a waypoint enroute to the White House. (Meanwhile, if Mike DeWine has anything bad to say about Acton, no one ever seems to have heard it.)
Competing to become attorney general, succeeding lame-duck Republican AG David Yost, are Republican now-State Auditor Keith Faber, of Celina, an Ohio State law grad, challenged by Upper Arlington Democratic City Council member John Kulewicz, a Yale law grad and a retired partner in the Columbus power law firm Vorys, Sater, Seymour and Pease.
Seeking to succeed Faber as auditor are fellow Republican Frank LaRose of Upper Arlington, now secretary of state, who’s being term-limited out of that office. If there’s a Democrat seeking to become state auditor, she or he hasn’t announced for the job.
Two Democrats want the Democratic nomination for secretary of state, while Findlay Republican Robert Sprague, now state treasurer, is seeking the GOP’s nod.
The Democratic contenders for secretary of state are Brian Hambley, M.D., of Warren County’s Loveland, and state Rep. Allison Russo, of Upper Arlington.
Hambley, a Notre Dame graduate, earned public health and medical degrees at Tulane. He specializes in treating people with blood cancers. Hambley has been energetically campaigning statewide for the secretary of state nomination. He was a volunteer supporting 2024’s statewide Citizens Redistricting Commission ballot initiative, a fair-districts plan defeated in part due to distorted ballot language engineered by LaRose.
Russo spearheaded a bipartisan Ohio House coup that awarded its 2023-24 speakership to moderate GOP Rep. Jason Stephens, of Lawrence County’s Kitts Hill, not doctrinaire Republican state Rep. Derek Merrin, of suburban Toledo, seen earlier as likely winner of the agenda-setting speakership.
Sprague, of Findlay, is being term-limited out of the treasury. He earned a Duke mechanical engineering degree and an MBA at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. So far, three Republicans, but no Democrats, want to succeed Sprague as treasurer: Former General Assembly member Niraj Antani, of suburban Dayton, State Sen. Kristina Roegner, of Hudson, who earned a Tufts mechanical engineering degree and an MBA at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School <OK>; and Lake County Treasurer Michael Zuren, of suburban Painesville.
Do any of those down-ballot statewide executive offices have the prestige of the governorship, or the 24/7 TV exposure of a Senate seat? No.
But the men and women who win down-ballot offices in effect – assuming they deliver responsive services – offer what amount to training schools in practical politics for their employees. Those are greenhouses where candidates sprout. But when was the last time Ohio Democrats landed a down-ballot statewide executive office? A 2008 special election for attorney general, which Democrat Richard Cordray won. That was 18 years ago. And it shows.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com