Democrats did badly in Ohio on Election Day

SANDUSKY — The much ballyhooed "Blue Wave" showed up in many states Tuesday but didn't wash through Ohio, raising the question of if Ohio is becoming a Republican state.Ohio is known nationwide as a "swing state" because it's usually a must-win for anyone seeking to be elected president; as recently as 2008 and 2012, Democrat Barack Obama carried the state.Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown kept his seat Tuesday. But Democrats lost races for governor, secretary of state, auditor and treasurer, didn't flip even one seat in the state's 16-member U.S. House delegation and left Republicans with an overwhelming majority in the Ohio General Assembly. Democrats did win two Supreme Court races.The election returns suggest that Ohio is becoming more of a red state than a swing state, said Thomas Sutton, a political science professor at Baldwin Wallace University.The voting population is becoming older and more white, said Sutton, who directs his university's Community Research Institute, which does election polling and studies state demographics.But Stephanie Walls, associate professor of political science at BGSU Firelands, isn't ready to color Ohio red yet.Republican Mike DeWine received 50.66 of the vote Tuesday in winning his race for governor, compared to 46.44 percent for Democrat Richard Cordray."That's not decisive enough to say that Ohio is decidedly a Republican state," Walls said. "We still look and act like a swing state."As of Friday afternoon, the New York Times calculated that Democrats picked up 30 seats in the U.S. House, with 225 Democrats elected so far and 197 Republicans.But Democrats got no help at all from Ohio, where the U.S. House delegation in 2019 will be 12 Republicans and just four Democrats, just as it was this year.Fifteen U.S. House incumbents from Ohio were on the ballot Tuesday; all won. The one open seat, the District 16 post held by U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci, who left to mount a losing campaign for the Senate, was won by Republican Anthony Gonzalez, who had a comfortable 56 percent of the vote.In the 12th U.S. House district, Republican incumbent Troy Balderson, who barely won an August special election, won 51.5 percent in his rematch with Democrat Danny O'Connor, who won 47 percent.Walls and Sutton both told the Register the U.S. House results reflect skillful gerrymandering by the Republican Party."I think Ohio is a gerrymandered state," Walls said.Brown, a veteran lawmaker, won about 53 percent when turning aside Renacci. But Cordray won 46.44 percent in his bid for governor, and other statewide Democratic candidates had similar percentages: for example, Steve Dettelbach won 47.58 percent in his race for attorney general, while Kathleen Clyde got 46.73 percent in her race for attorney general.The Ohio Supreme Court races were a rare bit of good news for the Democrats, who won two seats."Tonight, Judge Melody Stewart made history as the first-ever African-American woman and first-ever African-American Democrat elected statewide, bringing extraordinary insight and experience to the Ohio Supreme Court," said David Pepper, Ohio Democratic Party chairman, after the results came in."Judge Michael P. Donnelly ran a great campaign focused on the foundational principles of our nation: equal justice and fair treatment for all," Pepper said.Donnell won 61 percent while Stewart got 52 percent.Supreme Court candidates aren't identified on the ballot by party affiliation, said Blaine Kelly, a spokesman for the Ohio Republican Party.Those races "are a little bit different," he said.Democrats picked up five seats in the Ohio House Tuesday, but Republicans picked up one Senate seat, Kelly said, who noted results might change as provisional ballots come in. In 2019, Republicans will continue to enjoy a 62-37 majority in the House (giving them a "super majority" to override vetoes from the governor) and an even more lopsided 25-8 majority in the Ohio Senate, Kelly said.Kelly said he believes the Ohio Republican Party's get out the vote effort paid off Tuesday."Our ground game was unmatched this year," he said.Sutton said that voter turnout was high Tuesday. Democrats showed up, but so did Republicans, he said.Sutton said he agreed with Kelly that Republicans did a good job getting their voters to participate. Democrats were mobilized for change while Republicans had to mobilize to defend the status quo, "which tends to be a tougher job to do," Sutton said.State Rep. Steve Arndt, R-Port Clinton, running for re-election in the 89th Ohio House district that has Erie and Ottawa counties, won re-election by a comfortable margin.Arndt's 65 percent support Tuesday seems particularly impressive given that the district used to be considered Democratic, held in recent years by Democrats such as Chris Redfern, the former party chairman, and Dennis Murray Jr., Sandusky's ex officio mayor.Erie County is one of eight counties that flipped in 2016 from supporting Democrat Obama to supporting Republican Donald Trump, Kelly said."We're seeing these kinds of areas, they know Republican economic policies are working for them," Kelly said.CordrayBGSU political science professor Stephanie Walls, wearing her "I Voted" sticker, speaks during the Register's live election coverage Tuesday. Thomas Sutton