Former county judge Fanon Rucker got the nod from Hamilton County Democratic Party voters to take on Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters this November, according to unofficial vote tallies released by the county board of elections this morning.
The prosecutor’s office is one of the last Republican strongholds in a county that used to be mostly red, and Democrats have salivated over the prospect of knocking Deters from that perch. But that won’t be easy — Deters has strong support and a big campaign fund on his side.
The Hamilton County Democratic Party endorsed Rucker in the race. But to get the chance to take on Deters, Rucker had to take on fellow Democrat and former federal prosecutor Gabe Davis, who announced his campaign back in July.
Davis, who graduated from Harvard Law School, served as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan and in the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights division under President Barack Obama. Currently, he is an attorney with Frost Brown Todd downtown.
Rucker received 46,733 votes to Davis’ 21,406.
Rucker was appointed to the county’s municipal court in 2007 by then-Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. He announced he was stepping down from that role in August last year. Before his time as a municipal judge, he was a private attorney focused on civil rights and labor law and an assistant prosecutor for the City of Cincinnati.
“On day one, we will enact policies that will focus on aggressive prosecution of violent crimes, provide continued support of victims after the court process, staff an office with those focused on the foundational principles of justice and reduce overcrowding in our jails and prisons,” Rucker said in a statement about his candidacy, pledging to “bring a renewed sense of fairness to the prosecutor’s office.”
This won’t be Rucker’s first race against Deters: The two battled it out for the prosecutor’s office in 2004.
Rucker will face a formidable, but perhaps vulnerable, foe. Deters began his career as an assistant Hamilton County prosecutor in 1982. In 1988 he was elected Hamilton County Clerk of Courts and in 1992 he was appointed to his first stint as Hamilton County prosecutor, a position to which he was reelected in 1996. After serving five years as the Ohio State Treasurer beginning in 1999, Deters was once again elected county prosecutor in 2004. He has won three reelection bids since.
Deters officially launched his reelection campaign May 30 last year with a fundraiser that drew big-name local Republicans and raised roughly $500,000.
Despite his popularity, Deters has at times drawn ire from Democrats in a county that is growing more and more blue.
Some Democrats, including Cincinnati City Council member P.G. Sittenfeld, have called for an end to cash bail at the county level for those suspected of most nonviolent crimes. Deters, however, says that’s unnecessary.
Ohio’s primary election was originally supposed to wrap up with in-person voting March 17, but a last-minute order by Gov. Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Health closing polls amid concerns about the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an extension of absentee voting until April 28.
This article appears in Apr 15 – May 5, 2020.