COLUMBUS, Ohio—In the most unlikely victory of Ohio’s 2018 campaign, Democrat Tina Maharath was certified Tuesday as the winner of a Republican-held state Senate seat in Franklin County, overcoming a troubled past, an avalanche of attack ads, and abandonment by her own party.

Maharath, a 27-year-old financial analyst from Canal Winchester, won Senate District 3 over veteran Republican lawmaker Anne Gonzales by 705 votes, according to final results from Franklin County elections officials. That’s a margin of 0.53 percent, just barely above the threshold of one-half of one percent of the total vote to trigger an automatic recount.

It was an outcome that many didn’t expect – or, frankly, want – to happen. Even Maharath, in an interview late Tuesday afternoon, said she was “absolutely surprised” and thought there was no way she would win "unless hell froze over.”

But on a snowy day in Central Ohio, Maharath triumphed through a combination of luck, opponents’ mistakes, perseverance, and (perhaps most importantly) running in an increasingly blue-leaning district in a year favorable to Democrats.

“These are typically low-visibility races, and I doubt that many people knew a lot about her, despite all the Republican spending to try to point out what her record was like,“ said Paul Beck, a political scientist at Ohio State University.

With Republican Sen. Kevin Bacon term-limited, Democrats considered Senate District 3 to be their best chance at flipping a GOP-held Senate seat for the first time in 12 years. But when Maharath filed to run in February, party officials were skeptical at best about her chances to win.

Not only did she have no prior campaign experience, but a Google search of her name revealed a past that included being arrested for selling alcohol to minors, a bankruptcy stemming from a divorce and an incident where she hit a dead man with her car (she was absolved of blame in the latter case).

But the man Franklin County Democrats backed for the seat, Gahanna attorney Nathan Dowds, didn’t submit the 50 valid petition signatures he needed to run. The county party then endorsed their former executive director, Katherine Chipps, as a last-minute write-in candidate, but Maharath won the May primary easily as the only Democrat on the ballot.

Even as the Democratic nominee, the Ohio Democratic Party and Franklin County Democrats refused to endorse Maharath and didn’t give her campaign any money – an unusual move, especially for a candidate in a competitive race.

But as Election Day neared, Republican polling showed that Gonzales was in trouble. The Ohio Senate Republicans’ campaign arm spent nearly $750,000 on TV ads highlighting Maharath’s past, according to political ad tracker Medium Buying.

As of late September, Maharath’s campaign only raised $5,264, less than 1/40th of the $212,606 raised by Gonzales. Instead of ads, she said, she focused on door-to-door campaigning around the district.

Maharath also said the Republicans' attack ads backfired, as they motivated her shocked family and friends to start a word-of-mouth voter turnout campaign for her.

“It was as if the smear ads were actually positive ads for me,” she said.

Unofficial vote totals showed Gonzales with a 329-vote lead on Election Night. But when the provisional and outstanding absentee ballots were counted, Maharath pulled ahead for good.

Maharath said that, as a senator, she plans to push for expanding Ohio’s anti-discrimination laws to include lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning or queer people.

The daughter of refugees from the southeast Asian nation of Laos, Maharath also intends to seek the creation of a state commission for Asian-Americans, similar to ones already set up for Latino and black Ohioans. Such a commission, she said, would help to educate Asian-Americans in Ohio about issues like health care.

Although the Ohio Senate Democrats' campaign caucus didn’t support her campaign, Maharath said she plans to caucus with the Senate Democrats.

Even with Maharath’s victory, Republicans will continue to hold a 24-9 supermajority in the Ohio Senate, as the GOP won a Democratic-held Senate seat in the Youngstown area.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story inaccurately stated that Ohio Senate Republicans spent $1.5 million on TV ads against Maharath. The correct total is $748,794.