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Through the "Main Street Initiative," the Ohio Democratic Party is continuing to focus on building a bench of great public servants at the local level -- and that focus paid dividends this week, as Ohio Democrats won races in big cities, growing suburbs and even deep-red counties.
The Main Street program has quadrupled in size from when we launched in 2015. We provided training and support for nearly 500 candidates this year.
Ohio Democrats won in Warren, Norwalk, Reynoldsburg, Coshocton, Hilliard, Ironton and communities across the state!
As we saw in Kentucky, the suburbs are turning purple and, in some cases, outright blue.
"What was telling to me was what happened in the Cincinnati suburbs," Sen. Sherrod Brown told the Toledo Blade. "I think in the suburbs, educated suburban women are increasingly unhappy with the direction of the country."
The 2019 elections were also a victory for diversity -- Reynoldsburg made history on Tuesday, electing three African-American women to city council and the first-ever Nepali-Bhutanese elected official in the entire country.
In suburban Cuyahoga County, Solon will have its first African-American council member.
Successful LGBTQ+ candidates like Sheena Barnes in Toledo and Taylor Sappington of Nelsonville -- a town that went from Obama to Trump -- mark a change in Ohio politics.
The Ohio Young Dems had a great night, with two-thirds of their endorsed candidates winning their elections.
Our brothers and sisters in labor also made an impact, backing more than 50 union members in local races, including Theresa Gadus, a Toledo Public Schools teacher who appears to have defeated her Republican opponent for city council -- by 20 votes. Nearly two-thirds of the Ohio AFL-CIO's candidates won on Election Night.
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