Republicans in Ohio will determine on Tuesday what the degree of difficulty will be for swing-seat Democrats trying to keep their jobs on Capitol Hill.
A change of Senate control is within the grasp of the GOP and a flip of the narrowly divided House is achievable by Democrats this fall, so the attributes of candidates who make it onto the November ballot is an important barometer of the downballot races ahead in this presidential election year.
In addition to the closely watched battleground races, Tuesday will bring special elections in Ohio and California, plus some primaries that will test the durability of incumbents in Illinois.
Here are the key races to watch.
SENATE
Once tossup-state Ohio has become more GOP-favoring over the years, setting up a challenging re-election landscape for Sen. Sherrod Brown (D).
The first competitive Senate primary of 2024 will test the sway of Donald Trump’s endorsement of Bernie Moreno, a wealthy businessman, in a state that Trump carried by 8 percentage points in 2016 and 2020.
Trump’s Ohio Appeal Tested in Republican Congressional Primaries
The Club for Growth, a limited-government advocacy group that formerly clashed with Trump, joined the ex-president in backing Moreno over state Sen. Matt Dolan and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
LaRose is the only one of the three who’s won a statewide election.
Dolan is a member of the family that owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. His parents funded a super PAC that’s been fueling his candidacy, and he has the backing of Gov. Mike DeWine (R).
Duty and Country, a super PAC aligned with Senate Democrats, showed who it would rather have Brown face in the fall; it spent millions on a TV ad with language calculated to catch the ears of GOP voters, referring to Moreno as a “MAGA Republican” who “would do Donald Trump’s bidding.”
Brown, the Senate Banking Committee chair and an ally of labor unions, is unopposed in the Democratic primary and had $13.5 million in his campaign account Feb. 28. He last was on the ballot in a presidential election year in 2012, when Barack Obama carried Ohio before the state’s GOP-favoring shift.
HOUSE-California
A special primary in California’s 20th District probably will winnow the candidate field rather than elect a successor to ex-Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R), the former speaker. State Rep. Vince Fong (R), a former McCarthy aide endorsed by Trump, may lead the nine-candidate ballot but fall short of the vote majority needed to avert a second-round election May 21.
Fong will be on the Nov. 5 ballot for the full-term election after advancing from the regular “Top 2" primary March 5 along with Tulare County Sheriff Mike Boudreaux (R). Fong (41% of the vote) and Boudreaux (25%) are on the special-election ballot along with teacher Marisa Wood (D), who had 21%.
HOUSE-Illinois
Bost: Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chair Mike Bost (R) is opposed in the 12th District by former state Sen. Darren Bailey.
“Bost is positioning himself as a governing conservative. Bailey is positioning himself as a flame-throwing conservative,” said John Shaw, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
Bailey’s been critical of some Bost votes including one in 2021 for a bill that would provide temporary immigration status for certain agricultural workers to help alleviate labor shortages in the farming sector. Bost supports Trump’s proposal to complete a US-Mexico border wall and backed the House-passed GOP border-security package (H.R. 2) that Democratic senators oppose.
Trump endorsed Bost over Bailey, who became the 2022 Republican nominee for governor with Trump’s endorsement before losing the general election to Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D). Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) endorsed Bailey.
Davis: Rep. Danny K. Davis (D), a House member since 1997 and an elected official in Chicago since the late 1970s, has four opponents including political activist Kina Collins, who held him to a 52%-46% primary win in 2022 and is running for the third time.
Davis’s primary vote share has declined as younger white progressives moved into the West Loop area, shifting the district’s population profile to Black-plurality from Black-majority.
Chicago treasurer Melissa Conyears-Ervin is Davis’s best-funded 7th District opponent and was endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, though Davis stands to benefit from Conyears-Ervin and Collins splitting most of the anti-Davis vote. He may even win with less than a majority of the vote, for a simple plurality secures the nomination and there is no runoff.
United Democracy Project, a super-PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, spent more than $480,000 opposing Collins, who’s been critical of the Israeli government and called for a full ceasefire in Gaza. UDP didn’t respond to a request about its intervention in the primary.
Davis, 82, is the seventh-oldest House member seeking re-election in 2024. He’s defended his seniority and service on the Ways and Means Committee, where he’s the top Democrat on the Work and Welfare Subcommittee and in line to chair a subcommittee if he’s re-elected and Democrats win control of the House.
Sorensen’s Seat: Republican leaders back Joe McGraw, a former judge, to oppose one-term Rep. Eric Sorensen (D) in the mildly Democratic-leaning 17th District that meanders from Rockford to Bloomington. Under a Democratic gerrymander drawn before the 2022 election, it’s the most competitive of Illinois’s 17 districts — and might be the only one in the state that will have a close general-election contest.
HOUSE-Ohio
Johnson’s Seat: The same three Republicans running in the regularly scheduled primary also are competing in a special 6th District primary that will select a shoo-in to complete ex-Rep. Bill Johnson’s unexpired term. Johnson (R) resigned Jan. 21 to become president of Youngstown State University.
State Sen. Michael Rulli’s backers include Rep. Dave Joyce (R-Ohio), the center-right Defending Main Street super-PAC, and the American Bankers Association PAC. State Rep. Reggie Stoltzfus ran to Rulli’s right on cultural politics with ads that referred to him as a “woke liberal.” The third candidate, Rick Tsai, is a chiropractor from East Palestine, site of a train derailment in February 2023 that attracted national attention and spurred bipartisan Senate legislation (S. 576).
Kaptur’s Seat: After a disastrous 2022 election for House Republicans in the Toledo-area district, party leaders backed state Rep. Derek Merrin as their preferred nominee against Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D), one of just five Democrats from districts Trump won in 2020.
JR Majewski, the 2022 Republican nominee Kaptur trounced, is still on the ballot in the 9th District even though he announced that he’s no longer a candidate. House Republican leaders had initially backed former state Rep. Craig Riedel as their stop-Majewski candidate, then recruited Merrin into the race at the eleventh hour after leaked audio captured Riedel making comments critical of Trump.
Kaptur, first elected in 1982, has served in Congress longer than any woman in history. She’s the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Energy and Water Subcommittee.
Sykes’s Seat: Three Republicans are seeking to unseat one-term Rep. Emilia Sykes (D) in a swing district in and around Akron and Canton. The top two 13th District contenders are former state Sen. Kevin Coughlin and Hudson city councilor Chris Banweg. Coughlin has the backing of county party organizations and Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan, a Freedom Caucus co-founder who represents Ohio’s 4th District. Banweg’s backers include Sen. JD Vance (R).
Wenstrup’s Seat: The winner of an 11-candidate Republican primary will have a clear path to succeeding retiring Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R) in a southern Ohio district that was the most pro-Trump (72%) in the state in the 2020 election.
Tim O’Hara, a restaurant owner who largely self-financed his campaign, accentuated his past service as a Marine drill instructor. Dave Taylor, a businessman from the district’s most populous county (Clermont), loaned his bid $1.7 million, more than any other candidate.
Larry Kidd, another wealthy businessman seeking the nomination, noted his pro-Trump stance extended to filing an amicus brief urging the US Supreme Court to overturn a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that would have barred Trump from the state’s 2024 presidential election ballot. The field also includes state Sen. Shane Wilkin, who benefited from a super-PAC funded by his state campaign account, and state Sen. Niraj Antani, the first Hindu-American to serve in that chamber.
Phil Heimlich, a former Cincinnati councilor and county commissioner, is an anti-Trump Republican whose backers include ex-Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). He has famous relatives including father Henry Heimlich, a surgeon who invented the eponymous anti-choking maneuver, and maternal grandfather Arthur Murray, the ballroom-dancing entrepreneur.
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