Ohio Shows Different Paths for Democrats & Republicans

State Sen. Nina Turner (D-OH)

This past week, the Democrats had what might have been the most consequential primary of the 2021 election season.  In Ohio's 11th district, in the fight to replace now-HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge, it felt like to many that the 2016 primary was being rehashed.  Initially, Democrats appeared likely to pick former State Senator Nina Turner, a strong supporter of Bernie Sanders who was an ardent critic on both the Clinton & Biden presidential campaigns.  Turner had the most name recognition, she was running in a deep blue district where winning the primary is tantamount to winning the general, and she was polling the best.  But this past Tuesday, Turner lost the primary to County Councilwoman Shontel Brown, losing by more than 5-points in what is a strong indication of the direction of the Democratic Party, and yet another indication that Joe Biden might be more of the future of the party than most initially thought.

First, let's take a step back and look at Turner's race specifically, as all elections can be part of a pattern, but we shouldn't look at one election and say it is a pattern.  Turner's campaign was unique in a few ways. Like many conversations these days in politics, the positions between Turner & Brown were not that different-both are progressive Democrats, and while they have some differences in policy (specifically foreign policy), it's not that pronounced.  The biggest difference between the two ultimately boiled down to their views on the party of which they were running for.  Turner supported Bernie Sanders in 2016, but unlike Sanders, she did not support the Clinton campaign, and became one of the most notable Democrats in the country to refuse to endorse Clinton that year (it's worth remembering that had all of Jill Stein's supporters instead supported Clinton, Donald Trump would've spent the last five years with the best time slot on Fox News rather than as POTUS).  Turner did the same thing in 2020, endorsing Sanders and then refusing to endorse Biden in the general election, despite (again) Sanders getting behind the Democratic ticket himself.

Conversely, Brown is a pretty loyal Democrat.  She endorsed both Clinton & Biden in their respective general election runs, and had strong establishment support from the Democratic Party.  Hillary Clinton, Jim Clyburn, & Joyce Beatty all got behind her candidacy, which helped bolster it amongst a multi-candidate race, and hurt Turner's campaign strategy.  Turner's initial campaign strategy seemed to be to win in a plurality against a field of unknowns (this was a smart strategy-it would've worked had the establishment not decided to pick a candidate to get behind).  Against Brown, though, she needed to run an actual race, which went negative quickly.  Brown focused less on issues, and more about supporting a president that the vast majority of the voters (for Brown or Turner) supported a few months ago & beat Donald Trump.  She won the race as a "Biden Democrat" and will become a member of Congress on that logic later this year.

Brown isn't doing this in a vacuum.  While none of the candidates have polarized candidates to the same degree as Turner (whose views on Clinton & Biden are minority views considering the vast majority of Democrats ended up supporting their general election campaigns), Democratic primaries for major offices in Louisiana, New Mexico, Virginia, & New York have all sung the same song-moderate Democrats (I use this term loosely-none of the victors are Joe Manchin's) with a more pragmatic approach (similar to Biden) have beaten high-profile liberal candidates.

Councilwoman Shontel Brown (D-OH)

This runs counter to what we've seen in Republican primaries.  While a House race in Texas seemed to indicate that Donald Trump's endorsements aren't important, Mike Carey's victory in the other House special election this past week shows the former president still has tremendous sway in Republican primaries.  It's also become less about issues, and more about who can appear most loyal to the former president.  While the Turner/Brown race ended up seeming like a referendum on Turner's attitude toward President Biden, that wasn't really the substance of the campaign, where both women talked repeatedly about income inequality & healthcare in their public speeches.  Carey's race, though, like many other Republican primaries, seemed to hinge exclusively on loyalty to Donald Trump.  We saw this play out in 2020 when the Republicans decided against a party platform while the Democrats wrote a robust one-the Republican Party in 2021 is more about identity, while the Democrats are still a party that is debating its own direction.

Lost in that latter point, though, and where I will leave you, is that the identity conversation is not going the way pundits & the media have assumed it would for the Democrats.  In 2016, the surprising strength of Bernie Sanders against Hillary Clinton (initially it seemed that Clinton would easily discard the Vermont senator, who definitely won states that Clinton would've thought she would have won) seemed to indicate a similar energy to the Republicans-a more polarized, left-leaning future for the party.  That hasn't been the case.  While there are exceptions (Cori Bush, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib), by-and-large the "far left" wing of the party has been more a force to bring positions of elected officials to the left, but ultimately not win elections.  The Democrats have stayed largely away from nominating figures like Nina Turner, instead favoring increasingly left-leaning candidates who still come with an establishment sheen that is anathema to Republican voters.  In an era where the media struggles with "Both Sides" arguments, this is something that they haven't grasped, but Clinton, Biden, Brown...they're definitely a pattern at this point that indicates that the Democratic Party may be going left, but it still has respect for a more traditional power structure to their primaries.