“We’ve got a really good caliber of people all over Ohio,” Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said. “I think we’ll see a really good crop of people who are going to run statewide.”
That includes running for governor, and though no one has officially declared on the Democratic Party side, names including Congressman Tim Ryan, former Congresswoman Betty Sutton, and former state lawmakers Connie Pillich and Nina Turner have been pitched by some.
The Butler County Democratic Party's Vision 2020 plan is to be competitive in local races, and the party saw where they stand if a candidate, outside of attending a few forums, did nothing to help their cause. The answer was to win only 29 out of more than 280 precincts in Butler County, which is what congressional Democratic Party candidate Corey Foister, formerly of Fairfield, did when he ran against Warren Davidson in the special general election this past June, according to the county Democrats. Davidson cruised to election in June.
The party isn’t commenting yet on its plans to bolster its ranks in the upcoming local election year, nor on plans for the 2018 county commissioner and county auditor race.
Pepper said if the voting public will be voting for change as they did this year, then the push back from Tuesday’s election is likely the ballot box in 2018.
“The message voters just sent was pretty darn clear,” he said.
That likely means, Pepper said, Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine, the only person to announce his or her candidacy for governor in 2018, may not be the voters’ choice. DeWine has held a political office for 31 out of the past 35 years. But in 18 of the past 25 years, Ohio’s been operated by a Republican government, meaning the governor has been a Republican and the state Senate and House had GOP majorities. And since 2011, all of the statewide officeholders have been Republicans.
But the Democratic Party’s woes were exemplified on Tuesday.
The party’s presidential candidate, Hillary Clinton, lost the state to Donald Trump and the election in what national pundits and politicos have called a “change election.”
But in Ohio the status quo remained. U.S. Sen. Rob Portman easily won re-election to his Senate seat and zero headway was made in flipping any Republican-held congressional seats.
“Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but there was a wave that made Trump president and that cost us a lot in Ohio,” Pepper said.
This is the second straight federal election where the Democrats had a poor showing in Ohio, but Pepper says that was for very different reasons.
“One was a real failure of Ohio, of a candidate who had real problems in 2014,” said Pepper of the candidacy of the party’s nominee Ed FitzGerald. “This week’s election had similar results but a very different cause.”
That cause was a national narrative of change, and Trump “epitomized change,” he said.
Traditional blue states, like Michigan and Pennsylvania turned red, and Ohio and Florida both turned red. All four supported Obama four years ago, which probably supports why Clinton, on hindsight, was considered a weak candidate.
Xavier University political science professor Mack Mariani said Tuesday was probably “the biggest upset in American history,” and it shows on hindsight “how terrible” a candidate Clinton actually was because after all in 2008 a “back-bench Senator” from Illinois beat her for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political science professor, said the Democratic Party are “licking their wounds” after the election, and their hope is that Trump’s popularity is significantly down by the 2018 midterm election, which is when Ohio elects a new governor.
“The Democratic Party is in danger of being reduced to a handful of remote outposts with a swath of Republicans in between,” he said. “We’ve come to see a lot of first presidents become unpopular by the first midterm … it’s time to start recruiting some serious candidates.”
It will be next-to-impossible to flip any congressional seat as the districts are gerrymandered to favor one party over another. No congressional seat this year was competitive as all incumbents enjoyed at least a 30-point margin of victory or better.
“If they don’t have quality candidates they won’t be in position to take advantage of an unpopular Trump, should there be one,” Niven said.
Democrats will have to harness the anger those on the far left are experiencing into 2018 and 2020, said Mariani. And Pepper said the party has received quite a number of calls from people wanting to be involved.
If Clinton would have won, there would not have been this riotous attitude by many across the country because Mariani said Republicans had come to terms with a possible Clinton administration.
“But Democrats did not come to terms with Donald Trump,” he said. “Some calmer heads have to prevail in the Democratic Party because that sort of message is not going to win back your base.”
And if Democrats are going to hope for success in 2018 or 2020, Mariani said the party needs to win white working class voters back and improve the women’s vote as those two sectors are being attributed to Trump’s presidential victory. He also said the Democrats need to shore up the black vote, which was not as strong for Clinton this year as it was for President Obama in 2008 and 2012.
“If I’m the Democratic Party, I’m trying to hold on to black voters,” Mariani said. “If you would lose that, the Trump coalition would be a very difficult one to beat.”
But what it all comes down to is if Trump keeps or breaks campaign promises, Pepper said. History has shown, he said, Trump has broken plenty of promises.
"If Donald Trump and the Republicans keep their promises to do a lot of these things, I think they'll have a really bad 2018," Pepper said. "But if he breaks his promises, the country will be better off but his supporters will be in very much of a pickle."
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