Bernie Moreno ousted Ohio’s one consistent Democratic winner, Sherrod Brown, from his Senate seat.
Republicans won all three state Supreme Court races, and they weren’t terribly close.
The Issue 1 gerrymandering amendment that most Republicans opposed was rejected.
As fully expected, Republicans retained super-majorities in the state house and senate.
In Montgomery County, some races are close, but if current results hold, Republicans will have ousted one veteran Democratic county commissioner and the county recorder, while retaining their existing posts. And that includes Republican clerk of court Mike Foley winning by a solid 5 percentage points despite being under criminal indictment.
• ELECTION RESULTS: Click here for all results from Tuesday
The president
Some doubted whether Trump could win coming off felony convictions and a civil finding for sexual abuse, but he will return to the White House.
What the results show us is that the general American public, knowing Trump pretty well, gave him a clear victory over Kamala Harris. Not the “he didn’t win the popular vote” of 2016 vs. Hillary Clinton. Not the defeat of 2020 vs. Joe Biden that Trump falsely claimed was rigged.
He is likely to win the electoral vote comfortably and the popular vote by millions.
Moving on, the process begins to see what executive orders Trump has planned, who he has in mind if Supreme Court justices consider retiring in the coming years, and who he will put in charge of cabinet departments, especially Defense and State, given international conflicts in the Middle East and with Russia-Ukraine.
U.S. Senate and House
Whether Trump is able to rapidly advance his agenda will depend on whether Republicans retain control of the U.S. House of Representatives — an issue that may not be decided for sure for days to come.
For the past two years, Democrats have held the presidency and the U.S. Senate, while Republicans had a majority in the House.
If you don’t think that’s important, here are the bills Democrats passed in 2021-22, when they controlled all three — American Rescue Plan Act, the CHIPS Act, the infrastructure bill, a mild piece of gun control legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, and certain Ukraine funding, among many others.
With Trump winning the presidency, and Republicans clearly grabbing control of the Senate, control of the U.S. House becomes extremely important for the course of the next two years.
Issue 1 on gerrymandering
This was an interesting result. Ohioans rejected the anti-gerrymandering amendment Tuesday by a fairly solid 53.8 to 46.2 ratio, another victory for the Republicans who have supermajorities in state government.
Six years earlier, Ohioans had overwhelmingly (75%) approved a ballot issue that aimed to make the map-drawing system less politically partisan.
But the process that came out of that 2018 vote did not achieve that goal, as the Republican majority on the redistricting commission in 2022 kept approving maps that the state Supreme Court, led by a Republican, said were unconstitutional.
All of that led to Tuesday’s vote, on a proposal that would have more forcefully taken the process out of politicians hands. Given Ohioans’ 2018 vote, and the 2022 redistricting mess, a lot of people expected Issue 1 to pass.
Not really even close.
Hard to say whether Ohioans simply didn’t like the proposal, or were influenced by the egregious ballot wording Republicans approved, or whether it was just another piece of a basic red wave, as Ohioans were on board with Republican ideas as a whole in this election.
But it means that Republicans retain more control of the map drawing process.
The state of Ohio is bright red
Ohio’s top five elected administrative offices, led by Gov. Mike DeWine, have been held by Republicans for years.
Trump carried Ohio on Tuesday night by over 11 percentage points (55.2 to 43.9), a bigger margin than 2016 or 2020.
Ohio’s U.S. Senate seats have been one R and one D, but that will end in January, as Bernie Moreno beat longtime Democratic stalwart Sherrod Brown on Tuesday.
Ohio’s U.S. Congressional delegation is 10-5 Republican, and depending on final counting of close races, will stay the same or add one Republican seat.
Ohio’s state-level House and Senate have had Republican super-majorities and will continue to have those after Tuesday’s election results.
Ohio’s state Supreme Court, which has been 4-3 Republican, will be 6-1 Republican in January based on Tuesday’s results.
Republicans make Montgomery County inroads
At the end of Tuesday’s counting, incumbent Democrat Judy Dodge and Republican challenger Mary McDonald (a former Democrat) were in position to win the two Montgomery County Commission seats up for grabs — a gain of one seat for Republicans.
But there’s a big caveat, as both races are close. McDonald was ahead 50.5% to 49.5% over Democratic incumbent Debbie Lieberman, while Dodge was holding off Republican challenger Kate Baker, 50.3% to 49.7%.
Just two years ago, in another county commission race, Carolyn Rice trailed Jordan Wortham by over 1,000 votes on election night, but when all of the provisional ballots and late-arriving absentee ballots had been counted, the result flipped and Rice won.
Stay tuned for updates on the McDonald-Lieberman and Dodge-Baker races in the coming days. The Montgomery County Board of Elections says its final certification of election results will be on Nov. 26.
Some other races weren’t as close. Clerk of Court Mike Foley — a Republican who pleaded not guilty in August to felony charges related to improper political activities — won re-election over Democrat Lynn Cooper, 52.5 to 47.5.
Elsewhere, Republican Lori Kennedy appears to have beaten incumbent Democratic county recorder Stacey Benson-Taylor 51% to 49%. And incumbent Republican John McManus (another former Democrat) defeated his former Dayton school board colleague Mohamed Al-Hamdani in the race for county treasurer by a 57-43 ratio.
Big tax levies — several yes, 1 big no
Montgomery County voters decided they were OK with a tax increase to pay for additional day-to-day funding for the Dayton Metro Library (yes by a 53-47 ratio). They were MORE than OK ponying up extra money for Five Rivers MetroParks (yes by a 62-38 ratio). Both levies will cost a homeowner an extra $35 annually per $100,000 of home value.
On the school levy front, voters said yes in Centerville, yes to the Springfield-Clark CTC, and no to the Beavercreek district.
Beavercreek schools and the Springfield CTC both wanted new tax money to pay for school construction. Based on Tuesday’s results, Springfield will become the latest in the region to build new career tech space, following on the heels of Greene and Montgomery counties.
Beavercreek school officials, trying to manage rising enrollment, only said Tuesday night that they “will consider what next steps are necessary,” after voters rejected their plan for a new high school.
Centerville schools finally got approval for new local tax funding for day-to-day operations, on its third request to voters.
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