Schmidt Hangs On in Ohio 2, Leaving Three Races Undecided

[Ron Burgundy]

CQPolitics.com - Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt was declared by The Associated Press as the winner of the very close Nov. 7 House contest in southern Ohio’s 2nd District, as the nearly completed canvass by election officials continues to show her holding a narrow lead over Democratic challenger Victoria Wulsin.

Republican Rep. Jean Schmidt was declared by The Associated Press as the winner of the very close Nov. 7 House contest in southern Ohio’s 2nd District, as the nearly completed canvass by election officials continues to show her holding a narrow lead over Democratic challenger Victoria Wulsin.

Wulsin, a epidemiologist who staged a serious upset bid in the strongly Republican-leaning district, has declined to concede, hoping that the count of “provisional” ballots — those for which the voters’ eligibility could not be confirmed Nov. 7 — would sharply narrow her 2,900-vote deficit to Schmidt in the initial and unofficial tally. Instead, a partial count of those provisional ballots boosted Schmidt to a 3,100-vote advantage, according to the AP.

The ultimate outcome could be closer. Provisional ballots remain to be counted in two counties, including Hamilton, which includes Cincinnati and is the most populous jurisdiction in the 2nd. Wulsin leads Schmidt by 53 percent to 47 percent in the Hamilton County tally so far.

But barring the discovery of serious vote-counting errors, it now appears Wulsin almost certainly will not be able to totally erase Schmidt’s lead. The challenger would even need to win an overwhelming share of the outstanding ballots just to narrow Schmidt’s margin to one-half of 1 percentage point, the threshold that would trigger an automatic recount.

Schmidt’s campaign has called on Wulsin to concede. Wulsin has demurred on the grounds that all votes should be counted.

While the Ohio 2 contest will go down as a Republican “hold,” Schmidt just narrowly averted a stunning defeat in one of the most rock-ribbed Republican districts east of the Mississippi River.

In the 2004 election, President Bush took 64 percent of the vote in the 2nd; Republican Rob Portman, easily re-elected that year, had dominated during a 12-year tenure that ended with his April 2005 resignation to become U.S. Trade Representative (he subsequently shifted over to direct the Bush administration’s Office of Management and Budget).

But Schmidt has struggled to establish herself as a welcome candidate: Her strongly conservative views, especially on social and national security issues, drew her an image as something of a hardliner even in this Republican stronghold district, and her personal approach is viewed as confrontational by most Democrats and even a sizable number of her fellow Republicans.

Though Schmidt prevailed in the contest to fill the seat Portman vacated, she was just a plurality winner in the crowded June 2005 GOP primary, then struggled to a narrow (52 percent to 48 percent) victory over Democratic lawyer Paul Hackett, an Iraq war veteran turned critic, in the August special election.

In the regularly scheduled May 2 primary for this year’s general election, Schmidt only narrowly defeated former Rep. Bob McEwen, who finished second in the June 2005 GOP balloting.

Schmidt’s apparent victory in Ohio 2 leaves three Nov. 7 House general elections that CQPolitics.com considers as still uncalled:

Florida’s 13th District: Republican businessman Vern Buchanan holds a narrow lead after a machine recount of vote. But Democratic nominee Christine Jennings has sued charging widespread voting irregularities, and state officials plan to audit electronic touch-screen voting machines of the type used in the election to determine whether alleged malfunctions could have affected the outcome. The winner will succeed two-term Republican Rep. Katherine Harris (news, bio, voting record), who left the seat open for a Senate bid that failed.

Ohio’s 15th District: A count of provisional ballots in the 15th, located in and around Columbus, probably will confirm Republican Rep. Deborah Pryce (news, bio, voting record) as the winner over Democrat Mary Jo Kilroy, a Franklin County commissioner. Should Pryce’s lead in the close race be upheld, she will earn an eighth term. But she has already surrendered her position in the House GOP leadership, as Republican Conference chairwoman, which formerly was a political blessing but turned into a burden this year as the national political tide turned against her party.

North Carolina’s 8th District: Four-term Republican Rep. Robin Hayes (news, bio, voting record) leads Democratic nominee Larry Kissell, but by such a narrow margin that the votes will be subject to a partial recount by hand. Kissell, a teacher little known to voters when the campaign began, staged one of the most serious House upset bids in the nation.

There also are two other House contests in which the outcomes still are pending because December runoff elections are required. One of these will be held Dec. 9 in Louisiana’s New Orleans-area 2nd District, where Democrats already are assured of maintaining their hold on the seat: Democratic Rep. William J. Jefferson (news, bio, voting record) and Democratic state Rep. Karen Carter are the contestants. The other, on Dec. 12, is in Texas’ southwestern 23rd District, where Republican Rep. Henry Bonilla (news, bio, voting record) is up against Democratic former Rep. Ciro D. Rodriguez (news, bio, voting record).

Should Buchanan, Pryce and Hayes maintain their leads, and if Bonilla prevails next month in Texas, the 110th Congress will have 232 Democrats and 203 Republicans — a precise partisan mirror image of the House that convened two years ago. The Democrats’ net gain, at this point, is holding at 29 seats, 14 more than they needed to claim a bare one-seat majority and more than enough to end 12 years of Republican dominance in the House.