Though voters don’t head to the polls until Tuesday, Republicans already lost the special election in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District. That will remain true even if their candidate actually wins the race and is elected to office.
Why? As in other, high-profile special election battles over the past year or so — think Georgia’s 6th District, or Pennsylvania’s 18th — the GOP has been forced to pour an exorbitant amount of resources into defending a seat that should be safe. “The Republican National Committee has opened two offices in the district, launched a $500,000-plus get-out-the-vote effort, and dispatched one of its top officials, Bob Paduchik, who ran Trump’s 2016 Ohio campaign,” Politico reported on Sunday. “And outside conservative groups, led by a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, have dumped more than $3.5 million onto the TV airwaves, far outpacing Democrats.”
Don’t forget President Trump held a last-minute campaign rally in the district as well.
All this for a seat Republicans have held for 35 years, in a district Trump won with 53 percent of the vote to Hillary Clinton’s 42 percent less than two years ago. Recent polling has the two candidates in a close race.
Republicans should win this election, and given the nature of the district, they should be able to do so without having to rely on outsized resources pouring into the effort. We already know that didn’t happen. Regardless of who wins on Tuesday, and regardless of the explanation, this race is a loss for the GOP.
[Also read: The Trump-era GOP faces a test in Ohio special election]
