A traditionally Republican district of Ohio that has only elected a Democrat once since the Roosevelt Administration is seen as a tossup in Tuesday’s special election – the latest in a series of once-safe seats the party has been forced to defend ahead of November’s midterms.



The race for Ohio’s Twelfth Congressional District, which is a dead heat in public polling, pits Republican Troy Balderson, a state senator from the rural eastern edge of the district, against Democrat Danny O’Connor, who is an elected official in Franklin County, which is the largest county in the state. The special election was prompted by the resignation of longtime incumbent Republican Pat Tiberi to take a private sector job.

The district centers on the prosperous, traditionally conservative suburbs of Columbus, the home base of Governor John Kasich. It was one of the few parts of Ohio to swing towards Hillary Clinton in 2016 as many well-educated Republican voters looked askance at Trump.

Balderson ended the race in an unusual manner: standing on a flatbed truck and speaking to a crowd in his parochial hometown of Zanesville, he cast aspersions on much of the rest of the district. “My opponent is from Franklin County and Franklin County has been challenging for us,” Balderson told the crowd. “We don’t want somebody from Franklin County representing us.”

Franklin County makes up roughly a third of the district.

In addition, when talking about his primary win, he described it in geographic terms. “We beat Franklin County. We beat Delaware County.”

Delaware County is the second largest county in the district and is considered the swing county in Tuesday.

The event was not advertised to the national media, which was deliberate. Balderson bragged “we were trying to keep the national media out of it because the national media doesn’t always understand what it’s like to be in the 12th congressional district so they come in here for a week or so, kind of see and get a pulse of what the communities are doing and they leave.”

Balderson’s aversion to talking to national outlets has been so pronounced that he only did his first interview with Fox News on Sunday, 48 hours before polls closed with a reporter who happened to be in the state.

In contrast, at an event in a crowded campaign office on Monday afternoon, O’Connor hailed the grassroots volunteers who would be knocking on doors from him.

After an introduction from actress Kathryn Hahn, the Democrat gave a familiar stump speech about being “part of a grassroots movement that is going to change the way politics work” and pledged he would “fight to protect to access to health care and fight against cuts to earned benefits to social security”.

Democratic congressional candidate Danny O’Connor helps two young girls skip rope during a campaign stop on 5 August in Mansfield, Ohio. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

O’Connor, an affable 31-year-old who invariably campaigned in shorts, seemed perpetually open to everyone – media, voters or passersby. The Democrat positioned himself as a moderate who tried to appeal to the voters who long backed Kasich. He insisted that he would not support Nancy Pelosi for speaker and focused his campaign on his support for social security and Medicare.

Despite O’Connor’s insistence that he would not support Pelosi, Republicans have long used the unpopular Democratic leader as an attack line. This was helped when O’Connor, after being repeatedly pressed in television interview, said that he would vote for “whoever the Democratic Party puts forward”.

This served as additional ammunition for the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), the outside superPAC that has carried much of the burden for Balderson, who has been a weak fundraiser and run what Republican observers have considered a lackluster campaign. CLF has spent over $2.7m on television advertising alone in the race and has knocked over 500,000 doors in the district

In a statement, Courtney Alexander, the group’s press secretary, said: “Danny O’Connor has spent the entire campaign lying about his support for Nancy Pelosi and her extreme, liberal agenda. The only thing O’Connor has proven to Ohioans is that he’ll do or say anything to get elected. Ohio families deserve a leader like Troy Balderson who will put Ohio families first, not Nancy Pelosi.”

While Pelosi has proved a flashpoint in the district, so has President Donald Trump.

Balderson initially raised eyebrows when he could not name a single area of disagreement with Trump. The statement caused the traditionally conservative Columbus Dispatch to endorse O’Connor and kept Kasich, the popular never-Trump governor, on the sidelines.

Kasich eventually endorsed Balderson after the Republican came out against Trump’s trade policy and the practice of family separation at the border. However, the relationship became awkward again on Sunday. A day after Trump appeared at a rally in the district for Balderson, Kasich said in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that Trump had not been invited to campaign. The Balderson campaign has yet to address that claim.

However, the Republican enthused about his experience with Trump on Monday. He seemed giddy to recount “on Saturday, I had the opportunity to stand with, not only the President of the United States, but Donald J. Trump.” Balderson added: “I kept pinching myself.”

A win in the district for Democrats would be a major boost in their efforts to take the House in November. Republicans are clinging to a 23-seat majority and the fact that they are on the defense in such a traditionally conservative seat is an bad omen, even if Balderson pulls out a victory. As Kasich said in his interview Sunday, the tight race “really doesn’t bode well for the Republican Party because this should be -- shouldn’t even be contested.”