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Republicans gain edge in Ohio Supreme Court races

Before the 2022 election, Ohio Supreme Court justice candidates ran in partisan primaries and then had their party affiliation removed for the general election.

Of course, the parties backed their candidates, spending money building them up and sometimes attacking their opponents.

But without affiliation on the general election ballot, numerous people weren’t aware of who was a Republican and who was a Democrat.

We can talk about judicial philosophy, but voters largely decide who to support in these races based on party affiliation and name recognition.

Republicans, who control state government, saw this law as a problem, particularly after Democrats won two Ohio Supreme Court seats in 2018 and picked up another one in 2020.

So Republicans in the state Legislature changed the rules starting with the 2022 election to require political party affiliation for Ohio Supreme Court candidates as well as those running for court of appeals.

The change was instantaneous. After all, Republicans have won every partisan executive branch statewide election since 2012.

We saw it in the Mahoning Valley as longtime incumbent Democratic appeals court judges lost to Republican challengers — one in the Warren-based 11th District Court of Appeals and one in the Youngstown-based 7th District Court of Appeals.

The districts also include smaller but heavily Republican counties.

This year, only the second election since the party identification law took effect, saw no Democrats file for the three seats on the 11th District bench and one on the 7th District court.

As for the Ohio Supreme Court, there were two Republican incumbents — Pat Fischer and Pat DeWine — on the 2022 ballot as well as a race for the open chief justice seat between two sitting justices, Republican Sharon Kennedy and Democrat Jennifer Brunner.

Republicans won all three races and maintained their 4-3 advantage on the court. While Maureen O’Connor, who couldn’t seek reelection as chief justice in 2022, is a Republican, she sided with the three Democrats on seven redistricting cases and her party was happy to see her forced retirement.

With Kennedy as chief justice, Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, appointed Joe Deters, a longtime Hamilton County prosecutor and former state treasurer, to her open seat. That solidified the 4-3 Republican majority.

There are three Supreme Court judicial seats on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Republicans, who have had a majority on the Supreme Court for nearly 40 years, can grow that advantage with this election. Republicans are working toward a 6-1 majority.

Democrats, who failed to win any of the three seats on the 2022 ballot, get another shot this year. If they sweep the three races, Democrats will control the court 4-3.

But unlike 2022, Democrats have to play defense. Two Democratic incumbents — Michael P. Donnelly and Melody Stewart — are up for reelection. Deters’ seat also is open.

Instead of seeking to fill the two years remaining on his term, Deters challenged Stewart for her seat, with a full six-year term.

Donnelly faces the challenge of Republican Megan Shanahan, a Hamilton County Common Pleas Court judge. Republican Daniel Hawkins, a Franklin County Common Pleas Court judge, is running against Democrat Lisa Forbes, a judge on the Cleveland-based 8th District Court of Appeals for the open seat.

Stewart isn’t pleased with Deters’ decision.

Stewart said she’s been a judge for 18 years and was elected while Deters “never served as a judge or even a magistrate on any court before being appointed.”

Stewart said Deters “has been an active partisan politician for many years. He has run for, and been elected to, other public offices over the decades. But he has never run for a judicial office. I think this clearly demonstrates his lack of interest in the job and that his appointment to the court was based solely on personal and / or political reasons, not ones having anything to do with public service, good government or competency.”

Deters said he’s running against Stewart “to ensure we have an originalist philosophy on the court. More and more courtrooms across the state and country are falling into judicial activism where the judge takes it into their own hands to legislate from the bench and influence the law however they feel.”

Deters added: “The greatest obstacle to justice is the failure to apply equal protections under the law. I would hope that more judges maintained an originalist philosophy rather than legislating from the bench and ruling in a way that appeases current and fleeting fads.”

David Skolnick is a political writer for the Youngstown Vindicator and Warren Tribune-Chronicle, sister Ogden newspapers with the Columbiana Country newspapers. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dskolnick.Contact David Skolnick by email at dskolnick@vindy.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dskolnick.

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