Ohio Democrats Swept the State. The Black Woman on the Ticket Lost by 72,150 Votes.

Politics / Commentary — REAL POWER.TV

Every Democrat on Ohio’s statewide ticket won Tuesday except the only Black candidate on it. Kenn Dowell went county by county to find where Annette Blackwell’s votes went, and what the party owes her next time.

Tuesday night was the best night Ohio Democrats have had in twenty years. Even the Republicans said so.

“It’s certainly a victory that’s bittersweet,” Frank LaRose said Wednesday morning. “I know we’re disappointed about the outcome of so many other races. We, as Republicans, have a lot of work to do.”

LaRose was the only Republican in Ohio to win statewide. Amy Acton took governor. Sherrod Brown took the Senate seat. John Kulewicz, Allison Russo and Seth Walsh took attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer. Marilyn Zayas and Jennifer Brunner won on the Supreme Court.

Which means one Democrat lost.

Her name is Annette Blackwell. Mayor of Maple Heights. The only Black candidate on the statewide ticket. She lost the auditor’s race 50.79% to 49.21% in the unofficial count, by 72,150 votes. There were 102,148 provisional ballots still out, but she would have needed about 85% of them. She conceded Wednesday.

Everybody won but her. I want to know why. And I want the party to tell us.

Red Dirt

Annette Blackwell is the granddaughter of Alabama sharecroppers. “We didn’t go to camp, we went back to the farm,” she told the Ohio Capital Journal this summer.

When her grandmother’s arthritis got bad, young Annette set the table for her. “If they had seen her not being able to set the table, it would have cost her her housing,” she said.

That girl grew up to work in finance, became the first African American and the first woman to lead Maple Heights, and walked that city out of fiscal emergency. The same auditor’s office she ran for has since handed Maple Heights awards for clean audits.

“My resumé never said I could do the job,” she said. “I’ve been given opportunity after opportunity.”

That’s who lost by 72,150 votes. So where did they go?

The Easy Answer Is Wrong

The first thing folks said to me Wednesday morning was, “Cuyahoga didn’t come through for her.”

So I pulled the numbers. Blackwell got 69.85% in Cuyahoga County. Acton got 72.23%. That’s a real gap. But to win this race on Cuyahoga alone, she would have needed 77.55%. Nobody in a contested race got that this year. The best number in the county was Judge Anita Laster Mays, at 72.54%.

Cuyahoga didn’t sink her by itself. Something bigger did. And it has happened before.

Same Seat, Twenty Years Apart

In 2006, Ted Strickland led a Democratic sweep across Ohio. The ticket took the top offices. All but one. The auditor’s race. The Democrat was Barbara Sykes, president of the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus. She lost by 48,791 votes, after her opponent’s campaign polled voters on whether her leadership of the Black Caucus would affect their vote.

Two Democratic sweeps. Two Black women. The same office. The same result.

Once is an accident. Twice is a pattern somebody should have planned for.

Where the Votes Went

I went county by county through the Secretary of State’s results. If Blackwell had simply run even with the rest of the Democratic ticket, she wins by about 39,000 votes.

She didn’t run even. She ran 1 to 2.4 points behind her own ticket in every major county in this state. Mahoning, Summit, Trumbull, Lucas, Cuyahoga, Lorain, Stark, Franklin, Hamilton, Montgomery. Out in the red counties, she ran close to the ticket. The bleeding happened at home, in the Democratic base.

Meanwhile LaRose, a name voters have seen on their ballot for years, pulled about 65,000 more votes than the other Republicans. That’s name recognition. And name recognition is money.

Follow the Money

By early summer, LaRose had about $844,000 in the bank. Blackwell had about $106,000.

The party will point out that $50,000 of what she raised that spring came from the Ohio Democratic Party. Fair. One check, against an $844,000 head start. That’s not a plan to win. That’s a plan to say you tried.

So what was in the budget after that check cleared? Who campaigned with her in the last two weeks? Was her name on the door hangers and slate cards in Black neighborhoods, or did the top of the ticket get the ink and the bottom get a prayer?

The Number for Next Time

Here’s what it would have taken. If Blackwell had run about 3.7 points stronger in just two counties, Cuyahoga and Franklin, she wins. That’s about 73.6% here and 72% in Columbus. A point and a half past the top of the ticket.

Or count it in people. Shayla Davis’s Ohio Legislative Black Caucus Foundation counted 603,000 missing Black voters in this state. Registered. Voted before. Sat out the last midterm. Bring 13 to 15 percent of them home, and the auditor’s office has a Black woman in it.

That’s not a miracle. That’s a field plan with a budget.

What We Ask For Next Time

When the Ohio Democratic Party builds its 2028 ticket, it should tell us, before we knock a single door, how it plans to carry every candidate on it. A turnout target for every county that covers every name. Name-recognition money for the newcomer. Surrogates for the bottom of the ticket, not just the top.

And Black voters should ask for it in writing. You cannot run the top of the ballot on our turnout and leave our candidate to swim alone.

Annette Blackwell set her grandmother’s table so the family could keep a roof over its head. She deserved a party that set the table for her.

Next time, we’ll be watching to see if she gets one.