Most of the teacher-candidates said last year's battle over collective bargaining for public employees spurred them to run. And many of them hoped the energy that surrounded the effort to overturn Senate Bill 5 would propel them to the Statehouse. They had hoped to represent the interests of public schools and prevent any future attempts at Senate Bill 5-type legislation.
But, Stephen Brooks - a political scientist with the Bliss Institute at the University of Akron-says all that probably had little to do with the way the races turned out.
Brooks: They were not in well-designed districts for Democrats to run in so I'm not sure being a schoolteacher or not being a schoolteacher had much to do with that. They were having difficult races because they were running in non-competitive districts if you will.
The only one of the new teacher-candidates to win is John Patterson, who will represent House District 99 in Ashtabula County. Two other former teachers who were incumbents retained their seats in the Ohio House.
