The state’s most prominent Democrat, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, is not attending the DNC as part of his re-election campaign
Ohio Democrats are on their way to Chicago to support Vice President Kamala Harris, but they will have to do without their most prominent politician.
Senator Sherrod Brown is skipping the Democratic convention because he is in a re-election battle against Republican Bernie Moreno. The political calculation for Ohio’s top Democrat appears to be that attending Harris’ convention will not help him win the Buckeye State, which twice supported former President Donald Trump.
According to a recent AARP poll, Brown is ahead of Moreno in Ohio, while Harris is trailing former President Donald Trump.
But Ohio’s remaining 143 delegates will celebrate the selection of the first Asian American and Black woman as presidential candidate. (Harris was officially nominated through a virtual vote earlier this month.)
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How were Ohio’s Democratic delegates selected?
The Democratic selection process in Ohio is more complicated than that of the Republicans, who sent 79 delegates and 68 alternates to their convention in Milwaukee last month.
District-level elections elected 83 delegates. In January, Democrats held elections in each of Ohio’s 15 congressional districts, allowing candidates to give speeches about why they should represent their district in Chicago.
The Ohio Democratic Party State Executive Committee then selected an additional 44 delegates to serve as Party Leadership and Elected Officials (PLEO) delegates. Together, these 127 individuals are Ohio’s pledged delegates.
The party also has 17 automatic delegates, often called superdelegates, which include Brown, Ohio’s five Democratic congresswomen – Reps. Joyce Beatty (Democrat of Columbus), Shontel Brown (Democrat of Cleveland), Marcy Kaptur (Democrat of Toledo), Greg Landsman (Democrat of Cincinnati) and Emilia Sykes (Democrat of Akron) – as well as union leaders such as Tim Burga of the Ohio AFL-CIO, Joe Rugola of the Ohio Association of Public School Employees and Melissa Cropper of the Ohio Federation of Teachers.
Who are Ohio’s delegates to the DNC?
About two-thirds of Ohio’s Democratic delegates are at their first convention. The youngest delegate is 18-year-old Christian Pearson of Marion, and the oldest is 83-year-old former Ohio Governor Ted Strickland.
Rugola and Ron Malone, a longtime Democratic consultant and union leader, have attended the most conventions, ten each.
Other delegates are:
- City leaders include Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb, Columbus Mayor Andy Ginther, Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval, Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz and former Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley, the Democratic candidate for governor in 2022.
- Several current and former state lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Nickie Antonio of Lakewood, House Minority Leader Allison Russo of Upper Arlington, and former House Speaker Armond Budish of Beachwood.
The full list of delegates can be found below:
Jessie Balmert is a reporter for the USA TODAY Network Ohio Bureau, which covers the Columbus Dispatch, the Cincinnati Enquirer, the Akron Beacon Journal and 18 other affiliated news organizations across Ohio..
