CLEVELAND, Ohio – One of the most prominent Democratic super PACs in the country does not have Ohio high on its list of targets for the 2020 presidential election, further eroding the state’s status as a presidential battleground.

A report from Priorities USA, the primary super PAC that supported both President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign, significantly downgrades Ohio’s targetability, listing it as a “GOP Watch” state along with Texas and Iowa. That’s below other more traditional swing states like Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, but also historically red states like Arizona and Georgia.

The Buckeye State is also notably absent from the super PAC’s $100 million early engagement program planned for Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida. A second phase without a dollar amount attached will include Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and New Hampshire.

“It’s not in our initial spending plans,” said Josh Schwerin, spokesman for Priorities USA. “It is in the states to watch and see if an investment is worth making.”

In plainer terms, Ohio is a luxury, not a necessity.

“That doesn’t mean we don’t think Ohio is winnable for a Democrat,” Schwerin said. “What we think that means is if Ohio is in play, we’ll have already won the easier states and have 270 electoral votes. Our investment strategy is how to get to 270 electoral votes.”

Ohio Democrats, including Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper, have scoffed at the idea of Ohio no longer being a prominent swing state – even as Republicans have dominated them in the past decade.

“Any look at the actual hard-nose data of 2018 belies what they’re saying,” Pepper said. “We were closer being blue in 2018 than we were in 2010, and two years after 2010 we were blue.”

Since 2010, Democrats have only won statewide election three times in Ohio. One was Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, when he won by 3-percentage points. The other two were U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown during his 2012 and 2018 re-election campaigns. (Democrats have won Ohio Supreme Court seats in that time, but those races are nonpartisan.)

Republican President Donald Trump won the state by a comfortable 8-percentage point margin in 2016.

Democrats got trounced in 2018. Republican Gov. Mike DeWine beat Democrat Richard Cordray by 3.7-percentage points despite massive spending on both sides. Republicans took the rest of the statewide executive ticket with the closest margin at 3.4-percentage points in the auditor race.

Democrats also failed to flip a single congressional seat despite strong showings – and lots of outside money – in several districts.

Brown was the lone exception last year. He’s pointed to his 2018 victory as a reason he’s considering running for president.

Pepper pointed to several figures in a Democratic Party 2018 election post-mortem memo as proof Ohio is still firmly in swing territory.

The memo notes that Democratic turnout was the second-highest in history and several of the races were more competitive in 2018 than in 2010. It also states Democrats gained support in counties representing the largest share of voters in the state, including the highest-growth counties and former Republican strongholds.

“There are two views about the best path forward,” Pepper said. “One is go all Midwest and the other is sort of Sun Belt. I think the best campaign tries to do both. We’re being approached by people who think if you’re going to go (to Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania), you go into Ohio too.”

2018 Election PostMortem by srichardson on Scribd

Still, it’s stunning that arguably the most prominent Democratic super PAC in the country views Ohio as an afterthought, given the state’s significance in the past. The group was active in Ohio during the midterm elections, but came away with little to show for it.

Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said Priorities USA’s reasoning makes sense. Ohio is drifting away from Democrats while other states are moving in their favor, he said.

“There are individual county-level trends that are positive for Democrats. There are just more for Republicans,” Kondik said. “Also, doesn’t it seem within the realm of possibility with as bad as it was for Democrats in 2016 in the eastern part of the state, surely it can get worse. Would Trump maybe carry Mahoning in 2020? I don’t think it’s out of the question.”

Democrats outright ignoring Ohio is unlikely in 2020. At the very least, they will want to make Trump spend money to defend the state since it is critical to his re-election chances.

But its status as a must-win battleground in the 2020 election seems unlikely, Kondik said.

“I think if Democrats win Ohio, that probably means they’re winning back much of the rest of the Heartland states,” Kondik said. “You wouldn’t expect Ohio to be sort of the decisive state like it was in 2004.”