Two Northeast Ohio incumbent Republican state representatives lost their primaries Tuesday. One expert believes their defeats weren’t just about the infighting over the Statehouse speaker.
Two term Rep. Gail Pavliga of Portage County and three term Rep. Brett Hillyer of Tuscarawas County both lost their primaries. They’re part of a group of nearly two dozen Republican incumbents that were censured and not endorsed by the Ohio GOP after backing Rep. Jason Stephens for House Speaker. Stephens beat fellow Republican Rep. Derek Merrin, who was selected after an informal caucus vote.
Heidi Workman beat Pavliga. Her campaign focused on what she said was Pavliga’s betrayal of the Republican party.
“It was always about empowering the people and making sure they knew what was at stake here," she said.
Stephen Brooks with the Ray C. Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron doesn’t think it was just the Speaker battle that led to these incumbents’ defeats.
“The nature of the people who were voting in this election were those of the Trump faction of the party," he said.
Brooks thinks the voices of more conservative Republicans dominated election results, with Bernie Moreno, endorsed by former President Donald Trump, winning the Senate primary. Low voter turnout could also have worked against the incumbents, he said.
Even then, the awareness the GOP infighting brought to these primaries likely did have an impact, Brooks said.
"It had an unusual level of campaigning in those areas, and that then woke up people who were just normally voting for the person that's been there and all of that," he said.
This made voters become more educated on contested primaries, Workman said.
"They're forced to go deeper into the issues," she said.
Republican Reps. Jon Cross of Findlay and Sara Carruthers of Hamilton also lost their primaries.
Rep. Sharon Ray of Medina County, who did not vote for Stephens but was not endorsed by the state Republican party due to accepting the role of Assistant Majority Whip, won her reelection against Gary Fox. Rep. Scott Oelslager of Canton was also not endorsed by the state GOP for voting for Stephens but ran unopposed in his primary.
