One-sided result shouldn’t impact swing-state status

Ohio Republican Party Results in 2014

Source: Ohio Republican Party

On the campaign trail

Our reporters have been working around the clock to bring you the latest and most complete information about the 2014 election and what it means for the future of Ohio.

Lunch for Ohio Democrats holding statewide elected office requires only a table for two: U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and state Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill.

The entire Ohio Senate Democratic caucus — 10 people — could meet in an elevator. And the number of Democrats serving in the Ohio House next year — 34 — will be the smallest since 1967.

Stung by the breadth of losses, Ohio Democratic Party Chairman Chris Redfern announced he is stepping down after eight years as party leader. Redfern even lost his Ohio House seat to a Tea Party challenger two years after posting 61 percent of the vote in that same district.

Ohio Republicans gloated at their victory party, hoisting signs that said “Ted Strickland 2010, Ed FitzGerald 2014, Hillary 2016” with Strickland’s and FitzGerald’s names crossed out. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic favorite candidate for president, is the next target.

But the overwhelming success of the GOP in capturing statewide and legislative offices does not mean Ohio won’t be a presidential swing state in 2016.

Despite the pitiful performance by Ohio Democrats on Tuesday, Ohio voters remain evenly divided between Democrats, Republicans and Independents. It comes down to a function of voter turnout, political scientists say.

“If you look at the Obama strategy and probably the Kerry strategy as well going back to 2004, they get these large population centers (in large cities) to drive up turnout, which helped them in the presidential election. But the same enthusiasm isn’t there for the state elections,” said Dan Birdsong, political scientist at University of Dayton.

Examples of voters sitting out this election are easy to find. Wallace Downey, 81, of Dayton said he implored his 34-year-old daughter to vote last week without success.

“I told her what you vote for now will determine what goes on in the next election,” Downey said. “My grandkids will be affected by what happens in the future.”

Gina Alich, 38, of Dayton, said she wanted to vote but spent a hectic morning taking care of her daughter and then worked a later shift.

“I should have voted early,” she said. “That’s what I normally do, but I didn’t this time.”

Alich said she’ll remember to vote in 2016, a presidential year.

Turnout as a percentage of the voting-age-eligible population in Ohio typically runs 59.8 percent in presidential elections but drops off to 43.6 percent in gubernatorial elections. Voter turnout on Tuesday was particularly low — just 34.7 percent of voting age eligible Ohioans cast ballots for governor, marking the lowest turnout in more than three decades, according to unofficial election results and 2013 census population numbers.

Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, a Democrat, said the energy Ohio has during presidential election years seems to disappear in other years.

“It’s like we have two different states between the presidential and mid-term elections,” she said.

Democrats need to push turnout in the mid-term election cycles and hone their message so that it is more relevant and consistent to voters, Whaley said.

“The message has to resonate. I think that when you spend the presidential cycle talking about affordable health care and talking about access to college and then you spend the next mid-term not talking about any of that — you can’t do that,” Whaley said. “I think that’s a big issue too.”

For their part, Republicans say voters simply rejected the message from Democrats.

“Ohioans are looking for policies that lift up everyone,” said Ohio Republican Party spokesman Chris Schrimpf. “That’s what Republicans have delivered: more money in the pockets of middle class families, better schools and more accountability, better workforce training and more jobs. Democrats offer nothing more than divisive class warfare and a race to the political bottom. Their tactics were soundly defeated.”

No one disputes the defeat; the reasons are in hot dispute. Despite GOP dominance in the state, each election is different. Ohioans rejected Democrats in a big Republican year in 2010, and then helped return Barack Obama to the White House two years later, with turnout being a leading factor.

The fall off in voter turnout for 2014 was nothing short of stunning: 860,000 fewer ballots were cast in the 2014 gubernatorial election than were cast in the 2010 election; 1 million fewer votes in 2014 over the 2006 gubernatorial election; and 2.5 million fewer votes than were cast in the 2012 presidential race.

Ohio was hardly unique, however. In nine so-called swing states, more than 11 million fewer votes were cast in Tuesday’s election than in 2012.

John Nagy, 63, who lives during the week in Vandalia, said lack of competition in the governor’s race dampened enthusiasm.

“The top of the ticket kind of drives the turnout,” said Nagy, who voted absentee. “And with gerrymandering and so forth, most of the congressional races are pretty much in line with what people kind of expect, unfortunately.”

Bob Steinbach, 63, of Beavercreek, also voted but noted that this year’s election “wasn’t particularly exciting.”

“It’s a mistake when people don’t vote,” he said. “They’re giving up their chance to influence the situation especially locally.”

Ohio State University political scientist Paul Beck said Democrats were hurt by having a weak candidate at the top of the ticket — FitzGerald lost in 86 of Ohio’s 88 counties — but had other problems as well in an election that saw Republican victories throughout the country.

In Ohio, Republicans offered up strong incumbents with significant financial advantages. For example, the Republican Governors’ Association alone poured $4 million into Kasich’s re-election bid over the summer, which is more than the $2.98 million raised by the FitzGerald campaign since 2013.

Sen. Brown, who is the de facto head of the Ohio Democratic Party, said, “They had more money. We had a flawed governor candidate. They had friendly media in the state that takes down web site postings because the governor asks them to. I’m not blaming the loss on the media. I’m just saying all those together make it harder.”

Brown was referring to a decision by the (Cleveland) Plain Dealer to remove a video of a bored-looking Kasich at its editorial board meeting.

Brown said he believes 2016 and 2018 will bring better results for Democrats.

“With more people voting and not being able to blame everything and every one of the country’s ills on Barack Obama, I think it’s a different kind of election,” he said. “At the same time, we have to build the party in Ohio from the bottom up and be more inclusive.”

Just who will lead that rebuilding effort is not yet clear. Brown, who is expected to have a major say in picking Redfern’s replacement, said last week he favored long-time ally Dennis Wojtanowski, a former state representative from northeast Ohio, to take over the party’s chairmanship.

But Wojtanowski quickly withdrew his name from consideration. Whoever takes over from Redfern will have to chart a new direction for a party that is reeling from another shellacking in a midterm election.

Brown said he has been talking to people across the state about ways the party can be more inclusive “from the bottom up and start winning elections again.”

The stakes are high for both parties. Not only will all the presidential candidates come to Ohio in 2016 when the state again assumes swing state status, but the 2018 election will determine which party gets to redraw legislative districts after the 2020 U.S. Census.

The party that controls at least two of three offices — governor, auditor and secretary of state — gets to redraw the districts.

Brown said over the next four years, Ohio voters will grow tired of a state government that continues to give tax cuts to the wealthy and deliver funding cuts to local services.

“But we got to do two things,” he said. “We got to have a farm system that offers good candidates and we’ve got to, obviously, show that we have some better plan than they do.”