A county that Ohio Republicans counted on for generations voted blue on November 3. Delaware County, long a mainstay for the GOP, carried both of Ohio’s top Democratic candidates and elected what its Democratic chair says is the first Democrat to countywide office in more than 50 years, the Columbus Dispatch reported.
Governor-elect Amy Acton is only the second statewide Democratic candidate in more than 100 years to win Delaware County, following Ted Strickland in 2006, and she beat Republican Vivek Ramaswamy there by nearly 10,000 votes, the Dispatch reported. Sherrod Brown also carried the county in his winning U.S. Senate race, drawing about 5,000 more votes than incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted, according to the Dispatch’s review of unofficial results.
Further down the ballot, Emma Mirles-Jones, running in a nonpartisan race for Common Pleas Court judge, is leading with a 2.3-point margin — the result Delaware County Democratic Party chair Peg Watkins cited in calling her the first Democrat elected countywide in more than 50 years, the Dispatch reported. Democrat Shelby Kimball also unseated Republican incumbent Brian Lorenz in Ohio’s 60th House District, which covers much of southern Delaware County.
The shift was not uniform. Acton swept the core of the city of Delaware and the Columbus neighborhoods that cross into the county, and won majorities in the suburban townships of Liberty, Orange, Genoa and Berlin, the Dispatch reported. She struggled in Sunbury, Galena and the county’s rural townships, taking just 29 percent in far-northern Marlboro Township. Republicans also held the county’s 61st House District, where Shawn Stevens won, and Genoa Township Trustee Renee Vaughan leads the county commissioner race by 514 votes — 0.46 points, inside Ohio’s 0.5 percent automatic-recount threshold for county races, the Dispatch reported.
National analysts had flagged the county before a single vote was counted. Ohio native Kyle Kondik of Sabato’s Crystal Ball told the Dispatch in October that Democrats have been faring better in wealthier, more-educated suburbs, including fast-growing southern Delaware County, and Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson wrote in The New York Times, in an essay quoted by the Dispatch, that Delaware County was one of five places in the country that could be key to a Democratic victory.
Watkins told the Dispatch that President Donald Trump’s unpopularity likely boosted local Democrats, but she argued the county has been trending toward Democratic values and will keep trending that way. The Dispatch reported it has also reached out to the Delaware County GOP for comment. What happens next: the close commissioner race heads toward certification — and a possible automatic recount — while Watkins told the Dispatch she is already organizing for the township races ahead.
Photo: Christopher L. Riley, CC BY-SA