Democrat Richard Cordray won the Democratic nomination for governor of Ohio Tuesday night, setting up a November race against Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine.
Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, bested former Rep. Dennis Kucinich and several other contenders in the Democratic primary. Cordray had 64 percent of the vote to Kucinich’s 23 percent when the Associated Press called the race early, with just over 2 percent of precincts reporting.
Cordray had been the Democratic frontrunner since leaving the CFPB to run for office again in Ohio, where he had previously served as attorney general, treasurer and a state legislator. But Kucinich, who also entered the race late, proved to be a tenacious challenger, hitting Cordray from the left for his past position on guns and highlighting his own longtime support for single-payer health care. People and entities aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders in 2016 — Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, the nonprofit group Our Revolution, actor Danny Glover — supported Kucinich’s bid.
The Republican Governors Association released a new video in the Ohio governor’s race today, highlighting Richard Cordray’s record as a power-hungry, self-serving Washington D.C. bureaucrat.
Watch the video:
The Hill: Blue Wave? Not so fast after GOP-friendly primary results.
Over the past several months, political pundits and media elites alike have decided we are headed toward a “blue wave” in this year’s midterm elections. This narrative is spoken as if it is an absolute certainty, reminiscent of the “Hillary Clinton is unbeatable” conventional wisdom in 2016 — and we all know how that turned out.
The reality on the ground is that the fundamentals are not nearly as good for the Democrats as many in the media would have you believe. President Trump’s favorability numbers are higher than they were at any point during the 2016 campaign, and generic ballot numbers are up for Republicans across the board. Trump’s objective successes — a growing economy, newly passed tax cuts that put money in the pockets of millions of American families, and diplomatic success with North Korea — have clearly helped the GOP’s image with voters.