The Tuesday night special to replace now-resigned Republican Ohio Congressman Bill Johnson has been called by the Associated Press for GOP state Senator Mike Rulli over Dem Mike Kripchak at 98 percent of precincts reporting – 32,563 R votes at 54.6 percent to 27,045 D votes at 45.4 percent.
It got so close that Cook Political Report’s Dave Wasserman wrote “Rulli has to hope for a better Election Day vote surge elsewhere” during his usual play-by-play of returns before he called it for the Republican about 20 minutes later, remarking it was much closer than expected.
This is not a swing district. Johnson won it 67 percent to 32 percent in 2022. True, the absolute turnout was far higher – 189,883 R to 90,500 D – but when you look at it in a larger context of supposed “voter intensity” among the out-party compared to the Trump years you have to wonder why it’s so limp during the Biden years. Like Democrats were fired up and surged to the polls in every race, pulling some serious upsets – especially in off-year and special elections. What the hell do Republicans have to brag about besides flipping the Virginia governorship in 2021? They elected fucking George Santos and now the Dem who he succeeded is now literally back in that same seat.
None of this is to say Biden has it in the bag. It’s just that when voters are angry – especially when they’re as angry as Fox News says they are at Biden – they’re supposed to show up. That didn’t happen in Ohio’s 6th on Tuesday and once again it shows that, pound-for-pound, Trump and Republicans are coasting on polls sampling from far too many voters who simply don’t give a fuck.
What else are we supposed to think after being promised these massive reckonings for the Biden border bloodbath crimeflation crisis only to get frantic, late evening tweets to go vote and emergency NRCC snowplow deployments on election days? Where the hell are these disaffected young Black and Latino men so down with MAGA we keep hearing about when Republicans actually need them? Again, Dems absolutely have a lot of work to do to expand and fortify their base ahead of November. At what point however does it become possible that maybe the GOP has even more?