Republicans Are Throwing Everything They Can at This Ohio Special Election--and It's Still Close
Panicked by recent polling and fearing another loss on the national stage, Republicans are scrambling to hold on to a district Donald Trump won comfortably two years ago. Sound familiar? It should by now. After a high-profile loss in Alabama last December and another in Pennsylvania in March—as well as a too-close-for-comfort victory in Arizona in April—the GOP is desperate to win next week’s congressional special election in Ohio.
Trump plans to touch down in the district this weekend to rally support for Republican Troy Balderson, who is running for the seat former Rep. Pat Tiberi vacated at the end of January. House Republicans are also lending their support in the form of millions of dollars via their official campaign arm and a Paul Ryan-aligned super PAC. House Democrats haven’t gotten involved to the same degree, though their campaign arm did make a late splash in the form of a mid-six-figure TV ad buy backing their nominee, Danny O’Connor.
You don’t need to squint to see a contest that looks a lot like the special election Democrat Conor Lamb won this spring. That district included parts of suburban Pittsburgh as well as more rural areas of Pennsylvania; this one includes suburban Columbus as well as more rural parts of Ohio. Trump won both districts comfortably, and O’Connor has largely been working from the same moderate playbook Lamb used to win his race. O’Connor, for instance, doesn’t support single-payer health care, abolishing the U.S. Immigration and Custom Enforcement agency, or electing Nancy Pelosi as House speaker. (Though he did create a headache for himself recently when he accidentally stated the obvious: He’d vote for Pelosi over a Republican.)
Just as Lamb did, O’Connor has closed the gap considerably coming down the home stretch, adding to the suspense and boosting national interest. A Monmouth University poll released Wednesday showed a statistical dead heat—Balderson 44 percent, O’Connor 43 percent among potential voters—a 10-point swing in the Democrat’s favor since the same pollsters asked the question in June. Non-partisan handicappers, likewise, see the race as toss-up.
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/ohio-special-election-danny-oconnor-troy-balderson-in-a-dead-heat.html
= new reply since forum marked as read
but the Republicans have ZERO room for error. They're throwing everything they have, and it's still a dead heat?
I LOVE IT.
