Does Balderson Have to Run Again in November
Troy Balderson, Ohio Republican, Wins Special Election for House Seat
Republicans succeeded in holding on to a traditionally safe congressional district in Ohio on Friday when State Senator Troy Balderson eked out a narrow victory over a Democratic challenger, Danny O'Connor, according to The Associated Press, in a special election whose result was too close to call for nearly three weeks. Mr. Balderson will hold the seat for just over two months before he faces Mr. O'Connor again in the general election in November.
Party leaders celebrated Mr. Balderson's win, but the nail-biting result — and the prospect of repeating the race so soon — amplified Republican anxieties about the midterm elections, when they must contend with demoralized centrist Republicans, popular unease with the Trump administration and energized Democrats eager to retake control of the House.
In a tweet on Friday afternoon, Mr. Balderson thanked his supporters and looked ahead to his rematch with Mr. O'Connor.
In recent years, Republican lawmakers had grown accustomed to winning by large margins Ohio's 12th Congressional District, which covers a sprawl of suburban and rural areas in the north-central part of the state. President Trump won the area by 11 points in 2016.
But this time around, Republicans had to go all-out to keep the district in their column, spending millions on high-octane television ads targeting Mr. O'Connor and convincing two bitter Republican rivals — Gov. John Kasich and Mr. Trump — to each endorse Mr. Balderson.
The morning after the election, Mr. Balderson held a lead of 1,754 votes over Mr. O'Connor, with 3,435 provisional ballots still to be counted. In the intervening weeks, officials finished tallying absentee and provisional votes, and on Friday Mr. Balderson's lead was 1,680 votes, according to The Associated Press — a margin of 0.8 percent, just above the threshold to trigger a recount.
National Republicans declared victory for Mr. Balderson long before the race was officially called, and Mr. Trump took personal credit for his win.
"When I decided to go to Ohio for Troy Balderson, he was down in early voting 64 to 36. That was not good," the president tweeted on Aug. 7, the night of the election. "After my speech on Saturday night, there was a big turn for the better. Now Troy wins a great victory during a very tough time of the year for voting."
Mr. Balderson's victory could be undone in November, when the party will be defending its 23-seat House majority. And in the weeks since the special election, Mr. Trump turned on Mr. Kasich in a tweet, falsely describing Mr. Balderson's razor-thin victory as a "big win" and blaming Mr. Kasich for "tamping down enthusiasm for an otherwise great candidate."
The Republican struggle to hold onto the 12th District highlighted a number of challenges facing the party as it goes into the midterm elections, as well as tactics that may come in handy as it scrambles to defend its congressional majority against what some believe could be a "blue wave" of liberal enthusiasm.
Mr. O'Connor all but erased Hillary Clinton's 2016 deficit in the district thanks to his strong performance in wealthy areas and a stark gap in turnout between rural areas and more populous suburban precincts in Franklin and Delaware Counties, the district's two largest jurisdictions.
But in the end, Mr. Balderson squeaked to victory thanks to a hard-nosed Republican playbook that relied on divisive social issues like immigration and gun rights — especially resonant in rural and exurban areas — to mobilize just enough voters to get their candidate over the finish line.
They also frequently invoked the specter of Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Party leader who could become House majority leader if Republicans lose control of the chamber. At a rally shortly before the election, Mr. Trump cast Mr. O'Connor as a dyed-in-the-wool Pelosi supporter, even though Mr. O'Connor had said he would not vote for her to remain as Democratic leader after the midterms.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/24/us/politics/troy-balderson-ohio.html
0 Response to "Does Balderson Have to Run Again in November"
Post a Comment