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Party Leaders Debate Ohio’s Future Political Landscape
By: Jo Ingles | Statehouse News Bureau
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The leaders of Ohio’s two major parties see different signs in the outcome of the 2018 election. At a forum sponsored by the Ohio Associated Press, both said they have good reason to hope their parties will be in control in coming years.
Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken says the 2018 election proved one thing.
“I think Ohio is a center right state and we see that over and over again where Republicans have been successfully elected statewide,” Timken says.
But Ohio Democratic Party Chair David Pepper sees something else when he looks at key Ohio House races his party won in 2018.
“When you look at where those seats were won, areas that four and six years ago, people would have assumed there’s no way a Democrat could compete there,” Pepper says.
Republicans have controlled state government for more than two decades now with the exception of 2006 when Democrats took most statewide offices. Pepper says his party needs to reach out more to small towns to explain to them how GOP policies have hurt them but Timken says those small towns are voting for Republicans because they like the GOP policies.