Three seats of Democrats’ overall four-seat General Assembly gain came in Franklin County, which is becoming Democratic bedrock in Ohio.
Democrats’ fourth General Assembly gain last month, albeit a close tally, was in the Miami Valley – in a district that Senate Republicans deliberately drew to hobble an unpopular GOP peer, lame-duck Sen. Niraj Antani, of suburban Dayton.
Of Democrats’ two state Senate gains, Sen.-elect Beth Liston, of Columbus, drew 60% of the vote in her district, and Sen.-elect Willis E. Blackshear, Jr., winner of the Dayton-area seat, drew 52% of the vote in his. Of two newly won Democratic Ohio House seats, both represent parts of Franklin County.
Welcome though the four-seat General Assembly gain may be to Democrats’ pep squad, it’ll hardly hobble the legislature’s Republican super-majority, certainly not in a House ruled – and that is the appropriate term for it – by its next speaker, Lima Republican Matt Huffman.
As a parliamentary side-note, with Democrats pruning the number of House Republicans to 65, from the current 67, one Democratic claim is that “Republicans can no longer use the emergency clause” – which requires 66 yes votes to OK a bill rather than the usual 50, and bars a referendum on such super-majority measures – “to pass their extreme agenda.”
That may not be open-and-shut, though, because it appears that a bill that includes an appropriation, even if passed by just 50 (of 99) votes, may – may – be shielded from a referendum.
True, Democrats noted, correctly, that all five of Ohio’s U.S. House members survived Donald Trump’s statewide victory: U.S. Reps. Joyce Beatty, of Columbus; Shontel Brown, of Warrensville Heights; Marcy Kaptur, of Toledo; Greg Landsman, of Cincinnati; and Emilia Sykes of Akron. But Kaptur won by only the narrowest of margins.
The overarching party gap is Ohio Democrats’ seeming lack of a farm team for 2026′s election for statewide executive offices; for the state Supreme Court; and to fill out the two years that will then be remaining is Republican Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s U.S. Senate seat.
Because of term-limits, none of the statewide elected executive officers – Gov. Mike DeWine and his running mate, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted; Attorney General David Yost, of Columbus; State Auditor Keith Faber, of Celina; Secretary of State Frank LaRose, of Upper Arlington; and State Treasurer Robert Sprague, of Findlay – is eligible to seek a third consecutive term in 2026.
(And it’s worth mentioning that since Ohioans began to directly elect U.S. senators in 1914, governors have appointed six people to unexpired terms; five later failed to win election, and a sixth, Delaware County Republican Frank B. Willis, had already won a full term and was appointed to serve for several months after then-Sen. Warren Harding resigned in January 1921 to become president.)
True, term-limits have reduced the potential Statehouse experience a possible statewide candidate can gain if thinking about running for, say, secretary of state. But term-limits didn’t keep Faber, Husted, LaRose or Sprague from running, and winning. And it shouldn’t hold back General Assembly Democrats either – if someone in the party would just get the lead out.
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.
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