TOLEDO, Ohio — Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur won a 23rd term in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District early Wednesday, Nov. 4, defeating Republican Derek Merrin in a rematch that was not settled until Lucas County’s delayed results finally arrived. The Associated Press called the race for Kaptur at 2:53 a.m., with Kaptur holding 159,306 votes, or 52.7 percent, to Merrin’s 142,830 votes, or 47.3 percent, with an estimated 98 percent of the vote counted, according to the Associated Press election results. Kaptur, a Toledo native, is the longest-serving woman in congressional history.
The margin was far more comfortable than the pair’s first meeting. Kaptur beat Merrin by fewer than 2,400 votes in 2024, according to Ohio Secretary of State results cited by the Akron Beacon Journal. The Washington Examiner reported that the Cook Political Report rated the rematch a toss-up before shifting it to Leans Democrat a week before Election Day, in a district redrawn to give Republicans an even stronger edge.
Northwest Ohio voters waited hours for the outcome because Lucas County, the district’s population center, reported nothing on election night. As of 12:30 a.m., the Secretary of State’s website listed Lucas County as the only one of Ohio’s 88 counties that had not reported any results, the Akron Beacon Journal reported. Election officials told The Blade, in reporting cited by the Beacon Journal, that Ohio’s elimination of a four-day grace period for mail-in ballots, combined with a directive that valid absentee ballots be returned by the end of Election Day, left the board no choice but to count its late-arriving absentee ballots first.
Appearing after midnight at the Lucas County Democratic watch party, Kaptur framed the win as a generational moment. “This election is about the next generation,” Kaptur said, in remarks reported by the Akron Beacon Journal. She told supporters, in the Beacon Journal’s reporting, that Lucas County turnout was the best in 28 years, even as she criticized the reporting delay.
The district stretches well beyond Toledo. According to Secretary of State information cited by the Akron Beacon Journal, it now includes Defiance, Williams, Fulton, Lucas, Ottawa and Erie counties, along with Henry, Paulding and Putnam counties and part of Wood County. The Beacon Journal reported that turnout in the district’s reliably Republican counties ran between about 60 and 65 percent in unofficial 2026 results, down from 72 to 79 percent in 2024, according to the Ohio Secretary of State’s website and area boards of elections.
Merrin, a Monclova Township native and former state representative, made generational change a central argument against the 80-year-old Kaptur, the Washington Examiner reported, while Kaptur’s side criticized the Trump-endorsed Merrin, 40, over national Republican policies, particularly on the economy.
The results remain unofficial until they are certified by Ohio election officials, and final numbers could shift slightly. Kaptur’s 23rd term begins when the new Congress is sworn in in January 2027, extending a tenure that began more than four decades ago into a district drawn to be harder for a Democrat to hold.
Photo: MrJacon000, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons