CINCINNATI — Democratic U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman won a third term in Congress on Tuesday, defeating Republican challenger Eric Conroy in Ohio’s 1st Congressional District despite a newly drawn map that had made the Cincinnati-based seat more Republican.
The Associated Press called the race for Landsman with nearly 93 percent of precincts reporting. In the AP’s unofficial tabulation, Landsman had 175,919 votes to 139,168 for Conroy. The Columbus Dispatch, citing unofficial results with more than 90 percent of votes counted, reported Landsman at 54.5 percent to Conroy’s 42.8 percent; NBC also projected Landsman the winner, and Decision Desk HQ called the race earlier in the evening.
Landsman, a former Cincinnati City Council member, first won the seat in 2022 by defeating 13-term Republican incumbent Steve Chabot, and he was re-elected in 2024. Tuesday’s win makes him only the third Democrat to represent a significant portion of Cincinnati for more than one term since the Civil War, according to his congressional biography as compiled by Wikipedia.
The 2026 race was run on new lines. The Ohio Redistricting Commission approved a map that made the 1st District more Republican-leaning, and Conroy, a fourth-generation Cincinnatian endorsed by President Donald Trump, was expected to give Landsman his toughest test yet. Instead, Landsman improved on his early-evening margins as Hamilton County’s count came in and never trailed in the reported vote.
Landsman’s re-election came on a strong night for House Democrats nationally: CNN and Decision Desk HQ both projected that Democrats would take control of the U.S. House of Representatives, which would return Landsman to the majority side of the chamber for the first time in his congressional career.
Elsewhere in Greater Cincinnati, Republican Rep. David Taylor was also declared the winner in Ohio’s 2nd District with about 61 percent of the vote, according to The Cincinnati Enquirer.
All of Tuesday’s results are unofficial until the Hamilton and Warren county boards of elections certify them, which must occur within 21 days of the election. Landsman’s third term begins when the new Congress convenes in January.
Photo: Warren LeMay, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons