Ohio Voters Rejected The Republican Party Yesterday-- And In No Uncertain Terms

Sherrod Brown (r) was the big winner yesterday-- and Frank LaRose (l) went down in flames

In 2020, Trump won 81 of Ohio’s 88 counties and beat Biden 53.3% to 45.2%. The alarm bell for Republicans is not that their anti-Choice ploy lost big in blue counties like Cuyahoga, Franklin, Hamilton and Lucas. They should be freaking out about the 17 counties Trump won— some by landslide levels— that rejected the GOP position on Tuesday— and the overall loss statewide, where the anti-Republican position took 57% of the vote despite a massive campaign headed by Governor Mike DeWine. Senator J.D. Vance, Secretary of State (and Senate candidate) Frank LaRose, Lt. Gov. John Husted, fascist billionaire Richard Uihlein and outside big-names like anti-Choice fanatic Mike Pence and Arizona circus clown Kari Lake.

• Stark- 52% pro-Choice (58.4% Trump)

• Butler- 50/50 tie (61.3% Trump)

• Lorain- 63% pro-Choice (50.4% Trump)

• Delaware- 58% pro-Choice (52.5% Trump)

• Lake- 59% pro-Choice (56.0% Trump)

• Medina- 54% pro-Choice (60.9% Trump)

• Mahoning- 58% pro-Choice (50.3% Trump)

• Greene- 50/50 tie (58.7% Trump)

• Trumbull- 57% pro-Choice (54.6% Trump)

• Portage- 58% pro-Choice (55.4% Trump)

• Fairfield- 50/50 tie (61.0% Trump)

• Wood- 56% pro-Choice (52.9% Trump)

• Geauga- 52% pro-Choice (60.9% Trump)

• Clark- 50/50 tie (60.6% Trump)

• Ashtabula- 52% pro-Choice (60.8% Trump)

• Erie- 57% pro-Choice (54.8% Trump)

• Ottawa- 51% pro-Choice (60.8% Trump)

The right-wing state Senate president Matt Huffman warned that he would “probably” force Ohio voters to spend another $16 million to vote on this again, while blaming the massive loss on “ex-GOP Govs. John Kasich and Bob Taft, along with former Republican Attorney General Betty Montgomery… He said the campaign didn’t have enough time to put together a sufficient case, even though state lawmakers selected the Aug. 8 election date… Ohio Right to Life President Mike Gonidakis, one of the main public faces of the vote-yes campaign, said Ohio will ‘regret’ the vote it took today.” He warned that the left is going to legalize weed and abortion, raise the minimum wage and outlaw partisan gerrymandering (again). Amazing that he's so delusional that he doesn't realize that outside of the Fox bubble, everyone in America-- andapparently Ohio-- wants all of that! Basically, the GOP one-size-fits-all response to any loss at all, even when the voting apparatus is controlled by Republicans:

This morning, Dan Pfeiffer reminded his readers that “The best way to understand the Republican Party’s decision-making is to recognize that the Republicans are a shrinking, mostly White, conservative party in a country defined by a growing, diverse, progressive majority. The GOP and its unpopular agenda cannot survive in a democracy with majoritarian rule. This is why Republicans embrace gerrymandering, voter suppression and authoritarianism. In Ohio, Republicans knew that the majority supported abortion rights, so they attempted to institute minority rule… You can expect to see the blueprint repeated in other places. Already, Republicans in states including Florida, Missouri and North Dakota, recognizing the danger that direct democracy poses to their own abortion bans, are trying to make the ballot initiative process much more onerous.”

Pfeiffer also noted that yesterday as a good sign for Sherrod Brown’s reelection prospects, even if not for Biden. “[I]t is a very positive sign for Senator Sherrod Brown— who is in a very tough reelection race. All of Brown’s potential opponents campaigned for Issue One and hold extreme positions on the issue of abortion. Last night’s results are evidence that a narrow path to reelection exists for Brown in a Red state. Issue One generated an absurdly high turnout for a single-issue election in the summer. The Dobbs decision changed the trajectory of the midterms. The evidence is overwhelming. Abortion is a critical issue for Democratic victories in 2024. Although abortion remains a dominant and galvanizing issue a year after the Dobbs decision, it won’t necessarily be so when people start voting next fall. Ultimately, the salience of the issue is up to Democrats. Like in Ohio, Republicans will do everything possible to distract from their extreme positions on abortion. So, Democrats need to talk about abortion, put it in our ads, run on passing a federal law codifying Roe if we expand our Senate majority, and remind every voter that one of the first acts of a Republican President and Congress will be to pass a nationwide abortion ban.”

Benjy Sarlin made an even stronger point about Choice. “The next Democratic trifecta in Washington seems more likely than not to reinstate Roe v. Wade via legislation, whether it’s two years or twenty years from now. And once that happens, there may not be a Republican majority with enough political will to ever fully reverse it— at least not if elections keep looking like they did in Ohio on Tuesday night. Those are the stakes, and as one social conservative put it as the votes came in, it’s “a five-alarm fire for the pro-life movement.” Last night was “the latest in an ongoing streak of failed post-Dobbs ballot initiatives backed by anti-abortion activists, joining others in Kansas, Montana, and Kentucky.”

Republicans hoped the timing of the vote in August would give them an advantage in a lower turnout election, but the move appeared to have backfired. Democrats have done unusually well in special elections this year, buoyed by a base of college-educated voters who are turning out for everything. That’s especially true when abortion is on the ballot — and the savvy “no” campaign did their best to ensure voters saw it that way.

You saw this play out in Athens County, home to Ohio University, and one of the first places to fully report its votes. Republican Sen. J.D. Vance lost it by 20 points last year; Issue 1 lost there by 42 points. And you saw it in Delaware County, north of Columbus, which has trended left since 2016. President Joe Biden lost it by single digits; Issue 1 failed there by 16 points.

But Issue 1 was also a bust in some of the iconic working-class areas that have flipped from Democrat to Republican in recent years, like Mahoning County, where the “no” votes outperformed Vance by a wide margin.

Lisa Lerer was on the same page this morning: “Nearly twice as many people voted on the Ohio measure than cast ballots in primaries for governor, Senate, House and other marquee statewide races last year. The power of abortion to mobilize a majority coalition has armed Democrats with a potent new political tool, particularly in crucial battlegrounds like Michigan, Ohio and Arizona where Republican legislatures moved quickly to restrict abortion rights. Already, Democrats are looking ahead to 2024, with activists in around 10 states considering efforts to put abortion protections in state constitutions… After spending nearly a half century pushing against Roe, Republicans have struggled to adapt, trapped between a party base that still largely opposes abortion rights and a country that broadly supports them.”

The other big message of last night was what a good sign this was for Sherrod Brown and how badly it messed up the GOP primary. Matt Holt and Dan Merica put it like this: “The biggest loser in the fight over this issue is Secretary of State Frank LaRose. LaRose, a Republican, made himself the face of the ‘yes’ campaign, crisscrossing the state to urge voters to back the issue and centering is newly launched Senate campaign on the issue. ‘This is 100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution. The left wants to jam it in there this coming November,’ LaRose said in June. That comment from LaRose proved to be a rallying cry for Democrats and those who were opposed to Issue 1. Last week, LaRose issued an ultimatum to his GOP primary opponents to spend $1 million in support of the effort, which was quickly criticized by Bernie Moreno, a former car dealership owner who dropped out of the 2022 Senate primary and is endorsed by Vance.”

“The implosion of Issue 1 could be extremely detrimental to LaRose’s fundraising,” said a Republican strategist working in Senate races. “He made himself the face of this issue and then it went down in brutal fashion.”

LaRose is the only statewide elected official in the GOP Senate primary, but his opponents are both wealthy and can self-fund their campaigns. While Dolan has a base in the Cleveland suburbs, Moreno is positioning himself as the “MAGA” candidate. When he launched his campaign, Trump praised him in a TruthSocial post, saying he will “not be easy to beat.”

“The only thing I would knock Frank on is that he said it’s ‘100% about abortion’ which has screwed up the messaging,” Moreno said in an interview on Common Sense Ohio. “It’s 100% about protecting the constitution.”

As Democrats grew more confident that Issue 1 would fail, they delighted in the way LaRose had tied himself to the campaign. And the Ohio Democratic Party’s statement on Tuesday night was explicit: “Frank LaRose… made himself the face of this effort and is now officially Ohio’s biggest loser,” said Walters.

LaRose conceded defeat, releasing a statement late Tuesday night.

"Unfortunately, we were dramatically outspent by dark money billionaires from California to New York, and the giant 'for sale' sign still hangs on Ohio's constitution," he said in a statement. "Ohioans will see the devastating impact of this vote soon enough."