Morning Digest: How a 92-year GOP streak might come to an end next month

A top Republican bastion in Ohio is on the verge of collapse

Connie Pillich is campaigning for be the Cincinnati area’s first Democratic prosecutor in almost a century (Credit: Connie Pillich for Hamilton County Prosecutor)

Leading Off

Hamilton County, OH Prosecutor

It's been almost a century since Ohio Democrats last won the prosecutor's office in populous Hamilton County, which is home to Cincinnati and many of its suburbs, but 2024 could be the year that this long losing streak finally comes to an end. 

Appointed incumbent Melissa Powers faces former state Rep. Connie Pillich in a longtime Republican stronghold that has swung hard to the left in the 21st century. Either candidate, as the Cincinnati Enquirer highlights, would be the first woman to win an election for prosecutor in the third-largest county in the Buckeye State.

Hamilton County Democrats, the Enquirer's Scott Wartman wrote in 2022, last won this office in 1930, when Robert Gorman, who was part of an alliance called the "Citizens' Ticket," secured a two-year term. (Terms are now four years.)

While Gorman didn't officially identify as a Democrat at the time, the party opted to endorse the Citizens Ticket rather than run its own slate. Gorman, though, left office just two years later—he would later serve as a Democrat on the state Supreme Court—and Republicans have held his old job ever since. 

The most recent Republican to win this post at the ballot box was Joe Deters, who stepped up in 2004 after incumbent Michael Allen, who was unopposed for reelection, dropped out less than two months before Election Day following a sexual harassment scandal. The news attracted attention far outside southwestern Ohio because Allen was the regional head of George W. Bush's reelection effort, and his fall threatened to weaken the entire ticket at the worst time possible. 

Deters, who was state treasurer at the time, told the New York Times that he felt compelled to run as a write-in candidate, both to help his Republicans hold the office and to aid Bush.

"The scandal was beginning to show signs of driving a strong turnout for Democrats," said Deters.

But 2004 nonetheless turned out to be another successful year for local Republicans: Deters beat Fanon Rucker, a Democrat who was also waging a write-in effort, 57-43 as Bush was carrying Hamilton County 53-47 against John Kerry, whom he defeated 51-49 statewide.

That performance, which helped Bush secure a second term, also extended a nearly unbroken line of Republican victories at the top of the ticket in Hamilton County going back to 1940. The lone exception during these 17 presidential elections came in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won Hamilton County during his landslide national win over Barry Goldwater.

But that long stretch of GOP domination finally came crashing to an end in 2008, when Barack Obama carried Hamilton County 53-46 against John McCain, en route to a 51-47 win in Ohio.

That marked the beginning of a new era that over time saw the county transform into a blue bastion even as Ohio has moved hard to the right. Joe Biden prevailed in Hamilton 57-41 in 2020 even as Donald Trump was winning 53-45 statewide, a result that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier.

The once-dominant GOP, however, has continued to hold the prosecutor's office even as it's lost influence countywide, with Deters once again beating Rucker four years ago, albeit by a slimmer 52-48 margin.

Deters, however, resigned early last year after Republican Gov. Mike DeWine appointed him to an open seat on the state's highest court, prompting local GOP leaders to pick Powers, a former judge, to serve out the remainder of his term. Powers will now face Pillich to keep her new job.

Pillich is a one-time Democratic rising star who is trying to bounce back after a decade out of office. In 2008, she flipped a competitive state House seat in 2008, and she won a final term in 2012 even as Mitt Romney was carrying her district. 

Two years later, she challenged state Treasurer Josh Mandel, who had just failed to unseat Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. However, while Pillich ran ahead of the rest of the statewide ticket, that year's red wave still powered Mandel to a 57-43 victory. Pillich went on to run for governor in 2018 only to drop out before the primary. A 2020 bid for a spot on the Board of County Commissioners ended with her losing a close primary to state Rep. Alicia Reece.

While Hamilton County's political transformation gives Pillich a good chance to become the first Democrat to hold this post in almost anyone's living memory, Powers has other ideas. Pillich, as Bolts notes, has not emphasized criminal justice reform, but Powers has claimed that a Democratic victory would endanger public safety. 

"It is simply too important to let it fall into the hands of soft-on-crime criminal advocates," the Republican says on her website. In an April interview with WCPO's Paula Christian, she further warned that her defeat could see Cincinnati turn into "a Baltimore, a Saint Louis."

"That's veiled, stereotypical race baiting and fear mongering," Rucker, who is Black, told Bolts' Daniel Nichanian. (Both Powers and Pillich are white.)

Powers, the Enquirer notes, also began the general election with a huge financial advantage, though the candidates' most recent disclosures run only through mid-April. Updated numbers aren't due until Oct. 31, just a few days before the election.

But even with her fundraising edge, Powers will need significant crossover support in a county that Kamala Harris is likely to decisively win.

"Prosecutor Powers is trying to buy her way out of a rising tide against her," political science professor David Niven told the paper this month. "She is trying to stop the passage of time, but that is a tough thing to buy."

Senate

Governors

IN-Gov

The Democratic Governors Association has contributed another $450,000 to Jennifer McCormick's bid for governor in Indiana, Politico's Adam Wren reports, which brings its total investment to $1.1 million. The Republican Governors Association has donated a comparable amount to Republican Mike Braun over the last several weeks.

Ballot Measures

FL Ballot

A federal judge has ordered Florida's surgeon general to stop threatening TV stations with criminal prosecution for airing an ad in support of an abortion rights amendment, telling the state in no uncertain terms, "[I]t's the First Amendment, stupid."

Earlier this month, Florida's Department of Health began sending letters to broadcasters warning that they could face criminal sanction if they ran an ad from Floridians Protecting Freedom, the main organization promoting Amendment 4, which would restore abortion rights in the state.

That prompted the group to file a lawsuit on Wednesday, saying its free speech rights were being trampled on and asking a court to intervene. According to plaintiffs, at least one station, WINK-TV in Fort Myers, stopped running the ad after receiving the Health Department's letter.

Judge Mark Walker agreed, concluding in a 17-page opinion issued Thursday—just one day after the case was filed—that Floridians Protecting Freedom "had shown a substantial likelihood of proving an ongoing violation of its First Amendment rights through the threatened direct penalization of its political speech."

Walker was dismissive of the state's arguments, at one point calling them "[n]onsense." And in a sign that he did not consider the case a close call, he summed up the matter by saying, "To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it's the First Amendment, stupid."

Walker's ruling marks the first time that a court has intervened to halt the state's multi-prong assault on Amendment 4, which needs to win 60% of the vote to pass. As the Miami Herald's Ana Ceballos noted the day before Walker's decision was handed down, state courts, including the Supreme Court, have repeatedly declined to step in, even as Gov. Ron DeSantis' administration continues to use official resources and spend taxpayer dollars in an effort to defeat the amendment.

Anti-abortion advocates are also hoping that the state court system will prove friendly to them. A group of Amendment 4 opponents filed a lawsuit on Wednesday asking a judge to remove the measure from the ballot, claiming that Floridians Protecting Freedom had failed to submit enough valid signatures.

That argument is based on a report recently issued by the DeSantis administration claiming that organizers had engaged in fraud during the signature collection process, even though state officials certified the amendment in January. The Tampa Bay Times called the report "unprecedented" and noted that it made "sweeping generalizations about the petition drive without providing data to back them up."

MT Ballot, MT-01

In an unusual move, a new ad from Republican Rep. Ryan Zinke spends considerably more time attacking CI-126, one of the two state constitutional amendments that supporters of the top-two primary are promoting, than Democratic opponent Monica Tranel. 

Zinke's narrator warns that "out-of-state billionaires are pushing a radical scheme to try and change how we run our elections." These outsides are pushing CI-126, the voiceover claims, so that they can "rig the system for radical candidates like Kamala Harris and Monica Tranel and force Montana to run our elections like they do in San Francisco." The commercial urges voters in Montana's 1st District to vote against all three.

CI-126 (also known as Ballot Issue 12), would replace Montana's partisan primaries. All candidates would instead run on a single primary ballot; the four contenders with the most votes, regardless of party, would move forward to the general election. However, the initiative doesn't include any rules for how voting in the second round would work, likely to avoid running afoul of the state's "single-subject" rule for ballot measures.

To fill this gap, supporters are also promoting a second amendment, CI-127, that would require affected elections to be decided "by majority vote" rather than "by a plurality." Both amendments would apply to the same set of races: those for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, statewide posts, and the legislature, as well as "other offices as provided by law."

But CI-127, while goes unmentioned in Zinke's ad, does not specifically require the use of ranked-choice voting. Montana's Republican-run legislature banned that method of voting last year, so it's not clear how the state would ensure winners secure a majority of the vote if voters were to approve the amendment.

Despite what Zinke's ad insinuates, though, neither plan would force Montana to adopt the kind of nonpartisan, ranked-choice election system that San Francisco uses for its local elections, including its race for mayor this year.

Mayors & County Leaders

Portland, OR Mayor

A startling new poll shows businessman Keith Wilson winning the ranked-choice race for mayor of Portland, a contest where he's long looked like a longshot.

In a survey for the Oregonian, DHM Research finds 23% of respondents listing City Commissioner Rene Gonzalez as their first choice in the 19-way nonpartisan race to succeed retiring Mayor Ted Wheeler in this dark blue city while Wilson is in second with 18%.

Two of Gonzalez's colleagues on the city council, Carmen Rubio and Mingus Mapps, respectively take 11% and 10%, with another 4% going to Liv Osthus, whom The Oregonian's Shane Dixon Kavanaugh characterizes as "an artist and iconic Portland stripper."

Despite trailing in the first round of voting, though, Wilson ultimately defeats Gonzalez 53-47 after DHM simulates the instant runoff process—but there's a big caveat. A 32% plurality of respondents say they don't know who they'd even rank as their first choice, so this remains a volatile and unpredictable contest.

Gonzalez and Rubio had for some time appeared to be the top candidates to replace Wheeler as leader of Oregon's largest city. Gonzalez, who has described himself as a "centrist" and a "Biden Democrat," has focused on crime.

Gonzalez has also come into conflict with more liberal elements in the city. He told Oregon Public Broadcasting in March that, while he's a progressive on major issues like combatting climate change and abortion rights, his more conservative views on criminal justice have left him "politically homeless" in this dark blue city.

Rubio, by contrast, is touting herself as a more dependable Democrat with "progressive values" and sports endorsements from Gov. Tina Kotek and several labor groups.

Rubio, though, has attracted unwanted headlines in recent weeks over her driving record. The candidate received 150 tickets over the last two decades and has had her license suspended six times. She earned more attention last month when she was filmed scraping a parked car with her own vehicle and then walking out of the parking lot. (Rubio said she didn't notice she'd damaged the other vehicle.)

Gonzalez's past traffic infractions have also generated notice, including his two license suspensions. But Rubio's record on the road has prompted some backers to consider alternatives. SEIU Local 49 recently announced that, while it still wants voters to rank Rubio as their first choice, it would ask voters to also support Mapps and Wilson. (Portlanders can rank up to six contenders.)

A prominent progressive group called Portland For All is also calling for voters to rank Wilson in addition to just Rubio, though it named Osthus as another choice while excluding Mapps. What both organizations and others agree on, though, is that they need to stop Gonzalez.

Mapps, for his part, has had difficulty raising money and collecting endorsements—and even just making his presence in the race known. Politico's Natalie Fertig recently wrote that "there seems to be confusion among many Portlanders over whether Mapps is still running (he is)." 

Wilson, who runs an all-electric trucking company, may be best positioned to consolidate anti-Gonzalez voters. The candidate has focused on ending homelessness and has emphasized that, unlike his many rivals, he's not an elected official.

"Electing one of our failed city leaders into the Mayor's office will double down on the dysfunction of the status quo," he wrote last month in response to a questionnaire from OPB.

Wilson has tapped into broader discontent with the state of affairs in Portland, a sentiment shared by one of the city's most prominent politicians. Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenauer, who has not taken sides in the mayor's race, lamented to Fertig that some parts of downtown Portland resemble "Dresden in World War II."

"I've spent 54 years trying to make Portland the most livable city in the country or in the world," said Blumenauer, who is retiring after a long career in local and national politics. "No one's going to describe it like that now."

Obituaries

Rick Nolan

Former Rep. Rick Nolan, a Minnesota Democrat who served two nonconsecutive stints in Congress from 1975 to 1981 and 2013 to 2019—the second longest gap in the history of the House—has died at the age of 80.

Jerry Burnes of the Iron Range Today has an obituary of Nolan's long career, which began in 1968 when he was elected to the state House as Richard Nixon was winning the presidency. 

Nolan's final campaign took place in 2018 when the congressman, who had already announced his retirement from the House, unexpectedly agreed to serve as Attorney General Lori Swanson's running mate when she launched a last-second bid for governor. The Swanson-Nolan ticket, though, ended up taking third place in the primary behind the team of Rep. Tim Walz and state Rep. Peggy Flanagan.

While Walz went on to win the general election in that year's blue wave, Nolan's departure hurt Democrats in the House district he represented in the northeastern corner of the state. Republican Pete Stauber scored a rare pickup for his party that cycle by flipping Nolan's seat in the Iron Range, an ancestrally Democratic area that swung hard to Donald Trump, and Stauber has remained secure there ever since.

Poll Pile

• FL-Sen: RMG Research for the Napolitan Institute: Rick Scott (R-inc): 52, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell (D): 44 (52-47 Trump) (late Sept.: 50-44 Scott)

• MI-Sen: The Bullfinch Group (R): Elissa Slotkin (D): 51, Mike Rogers (R): 42 (51-43 Harris) (Aug.: 48-38 Slotkin)

• PA-Sen: Bullfinch (R): Bob Casey (D-inc): 50, Dave McCormick (R): 43 (49-48 Harris) (Late Sept.: 52-42 Casey)

• TX-Sen: YouGov for the University of Texas: Ted Cruz (R-inc): 51, Colin Allred (D): 44 (51-46 Trump) (Aug.: 44-36 Cruz)

• WI-Sen: Bullfinch (R): Tammy Baldwin (D-inc): 49, Eric Hovde (R): 45 (48-46 Harris) (Aug.: 50-41 Baldwin)

• WA-Gov: Public Policy Polling (D) for the Northwest Progressive Institute: Bob Ferguson (D): 48, Dave Reichert (R): 41 (55-40 Harris) (July: 49-43 Ferguson)

• MI-08: NMB Research (R) for the NRCC: Paul Junge (R): 41, Kristen McDonald Rivet (D): 40 (47-46 Trump)

• MT-01: Guidant Polling and Strategy (R) for the Congressional Leadership Fund: Ryan Zinke (R-inc): 52, Monica Tranel (D): 44 (51-44 Trump) 

• NM-02: Research & Polling for the Albuquerque Journal: Gabe Vasquez (D-inc): 49, Yvette Herrell (R): 45

Bullfinch’s previous Michigan and Wisconsin polls were conducted for The Independent Center, while its prior Pennsylvania survey was done for the Commonwealth Foundation.

Ad Roundup

• NE-Sen-A: Dan Osborn (I) - anti-Deb Fischer (R-inc)

• PA-Sen: Bob Casey (D-inc)

• VA-Sen: Tim Kaine (D-inc) - anti-Hung Cao (R)

• WI-Sen: Eric Hovde (R) - anti-Tammy Baldwin (D-inc)

• WA-Gov: Washington 24 - pro-Dave Reichert (R)

• AZ-06: Kirsten Engel (D) - anti-Juan Ciscomani (R-inc); CLF - anti-Engel

• CA-45: DCCC - anti-Michelle Steel (R-inc)

• CO-03: Adam Frisch (D) - anti-Jeff Hurd (R)

• CO-08: CLF - anti-Yadira Caraveo (D-inc)

• IA-01: Christina Bohannan (D) - anti-Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-inc)

• IA-03: Lanon Baccam (D); CLF - anti-Baccam

• ME-02: Jared Golden (D-inc)

• NE-02: Don Bacon (R-inc)

• NJ-07: Tom Kean (R-inc) - anti-Sue Altman (D)

• NM-02: CLF - anti-Gabe Vasquez (D-inc)

• NY-19: Josh Riley (D) - anti-Marc Molinaro (R-inc)

• NY-22: CLF - anti-John Mannion (D)

• WI-03: CLF - anti-Rebecca Cooke (D)

• FL Ballot: Yes on 4 Florida - pro-abortion amendment; Vote No on Amendment 4 - anti-abortion amendment

• SD Ballot: Life Defense Fund - anti-abortion amendment