After a long, acrimonious race for Ohio’s 1st Congressional District that drew national attention, Republican U.S. Rep. Steve Chabot won a decisive victory over his Democratic challenger, Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Aftab Pureval.
Just to the east in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District, Republican U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup also beat his challenger, former Obama administration staffer Jill Schiller.
Despite the losses for the two Cincinnati-area Democrats, their party had a somewhat better night, winning enough races across the country to regain control of the House of Representatives and gain a check on President Donald Trump and the GOP.
Pureval’s race was always going to be an uphill battle against Chabot, a 22-year veteran of Congress who sits in a district gerrymandered in 2012 to include staunchly-conservative Warren County. Chabot ran up the score on Pureval there, and Pureval couldn’t score enough votes in Hamilton County to make up the difference.
Pureval did outpace Chabot in Hamilton County, grabbing 104,000 votes to Chabot’s roughly 87,000. But Chabot doubled up on Pureval in Warren County, getting 64,000 votes there to Pureval’s 31,000. Those numbers came together to give Chabot a five-point margin on Pureval.
Some of that margin of victory may have had to do with voter turnout patterns in Hamilton County. Many conservative-leaning areas on the suburban edges of the county turned out heavily, while the more liberal center had less-consistent voter turnout.
The contest between the 65-year-old incumbent, a 22-year congressional veteran, and the upstart 35-year-old political newcomer has drawn national attention. It’s also unleashed a barrage of acrimony and negative ads.
Pureval has quickly become a rising star in the local Democratic Party after his 2016 win over Republican Tracy Winkler to become Hamilton County Clerk of Courts. He was looking to parlay that momentum into a seat in the U.S. House — a quest for which he received an endorsement from former President Barack Obama, among other noted Democrats.
But conservative groups and Chabot’s campaign didn’t taking the challenge lying down.
The Congressional Leadership Fund, a PAC supported by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, made a $1.2 million ad buy attempting to tie Pureval to a $1.5 billion settlement between the U.S. and the Libyan government for terrorism victims. White & Case, the law firm representing Libya in that settlement, later employed Pureval, then a recent law school graduate. But Pureval had nothing to do with the settlement, which Republican lawmakers in Congress voted for and which Republican President George W. Bush signed.
But Pureval also struggled under somewhat more substantive allegations, including an Ohio Elections Commission inquiry into allegations a campaign volunteer tried to infiltrate Chabot’s campaign. That could be a violation of federal election laws.
Some questions have also followed Chabot’s campaign — mostly related to the roughly $177,000 Chabot’s campaign paid his son-in-law for creating his campaign’s website and other work around the campaign. Hamilton County Democratic Party Co-Chair Connie Pillich filed a federal elections complaint related to that spending in August, saying the price Chabot’s son-in-law was paid for the services he rendered is much too high and amounts to self-dealing by Chabot.
The race has also had some substantive discussion of policy, mostly around health care, where Pureval has accused Chabot of working to take away coverage for pre-existing conditions extended by the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. Chabot has denied this, though he and other Congressional Republicans cast votes to repeal the ACA, including its provisions guaranteeing coverage for those with preexisting conditions.
Less publicized, but similar, was the battle between incumbent Republican Wenstrup, a 60-year-old doctor and Columbia Tusculum resident who has since 2013 held Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District encompassing downtown and areas east into rural, heavily-Republican territory. His challenger, Schiller, was pushing Wenstrup with many of the same strategies as Pureval — calling out his votes to defund the Affordable Care Act, his role in the Republican tax reforms and his alignment with President Donald Trump on many issues.
Schiller is an attorney who formerly worked for the Obama administration in the White House Office of Management and Budget. Like Pureval, she made health care a major issue in the campaign, saying she would act to help make sure government health care options cover those who can’t get private insurance. Schiller’s challenge to Wenstrup wasn’t expected to be as close as Pureval’s bid against Chabot was — in part due to name recognition and in part due to the fact that Wenstrup’s district covers much more rural, conservative ground. But Schiller was hoping that dissatisfaction with Trump and the fact that she’s Wenstrup’s first serious challenger in two election cycles would work in her favor. Wenstrup won decisively, however, grabbing 58 percent of the vote to Schiller’s 41 percent with 91 percent of precincts reporting. .
This article appears in Oct 31 – Nov 7, 2018.