Trump, GOP make last-ditch push to avoid another costly special-election defeat
By Amy B Wang
August 4 at 10:14 PM
COLUMBUS, Ohio — It was a muggy Thursday morning when Drew Niccum, a rising sophomore at Ohio State University, drove 40 miles from campus to his hometown of Newark to conduct a rather unusual summer activity for central Ohio: cast a ballot for a Democratic congressional candidate — who just might win.
“It’s been a pretty safe Republican district for a pretty long time,” Niccum said. “I’m just excited that my district is actually competitive this year.”
Ohio’s 12th Congressional District, which spans the largely well-to-do suburbs around the state capital and backed President Trump by 11 points in 2016, has been solidly Republican for decades. Voters here sent now-Gov. John Kasich to Congress in 1982 for the first of nine consecutive terms. Kasich was succeeded by Republican Patrick J. Tiberi in 2001, who held the office for 17 years before he resigned in January — leaving the seat wide open for the first time in a generation.
But after a string of Republican special-election losses over the past year in areas that voted for Trump but have grown less supportive of him, the vote here on Tuesday to replace Tiberi has suddenly emerged as the latest big test foreshadowing which party will win control of the House in November. The midterms, after all, will probably be determined by contests in dozens of similarly conservative-leaning suburban communities across the country.
Prominent Republicans have found themselves following a familiar playbook in yet another special election: Send in the cavalry.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-gop-make-last-ditch-push-to-avoid-another-costly-special-election-defeat/2018/08/04/78e6253a-97c4-11e8-810c-5fa705927d54_story.html
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