Early voting is underway for Ohio’s May 5th primary. In addition to the senatorial and gubernatorial races, Ohioans have another statewide primary to consider.
Statehouse News Bureau Chief Karen Kasler joined the Ohio Newsroom to discuss the race for Ohio's Supreme Court.
This conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity.
On which seats are up for election in November
"First, we have Republican Justice Dan Hawkins, who's running for a full term. He was elected to fill out Justice Joe Deter's term when Deter decided not to run for the rest of his term after he was appointed to replace Justice Sharon Kennedy in 2023, after she was elected Chief Justice in 2022. That was considered kind of an extraordinary move that Deters did in trying to knock one of the court's three Democrats off the bench at that time, which he was successful in doing. So Hawkins now is running for his first full term in the seat that had been occupied by Deters. All these folks are Republican that we're talking about here.
On the Democratic side, Justice Jennifer Brunner is running for reelection. She's actually the only Democrat elected to statewide office in Ohio. She's the former Secretary of State who was elected in 2006, held that office only for one term and then ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary in 2010 for US Senate. She's been on the court since she was elected as an appeals court judge."
On Brunner’s would-be challengers
"So we have Fifth District Court of Appeals Judge Andrew King, Ninth District Court of Appeals Judge Jill Flagg Lanzinger and Second District Court of Appeals Judge Ronald Lewis. We also have former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge and former immigration judge Colleen O'Donnell. These four are all Republicans. They all talk about being conservatives and originalists and wanting to not legislate from the bench, things that we often hear from Republicans. None of them were endorsed by the Ohio Republican Party, which kind of leaves it open to Republican voters."
On the defining issues of this primary race
"The biggest issue at this point is abortion because we have state laws that are being challenged through the courts following voter approval of the reproductive rights and abortion access amendment in 2023. Those laws were not repealed and they're making their way through the court. They'll end up before the Ohio Supreme Court. For instance, a 24-hour waiting period; the use of telemedicine for abortion-related medications. There's a whole bunch of these laws that are moving forward, and the legislature has been proposing laws that opponents say will conflict with that amendment, so we could see more challenges coming down the road.
Election laws are incredibly important as well. They've been changing even as Gov. Mike DeWine has said, he didn't wanna sign any new laws unless Republican backers convinced him that they were necessary because we've had a lot of changes to election laws in the last 10 or so years, including the elimination of a four-day grace period for ballots to arrive in boards of elections after Election Day and still be counted. Those are among the laws that have changed that could find their way in front of the Ohio Supreme Court."
On Brunner’s chances in the general election
"It's interesting that Brunner did win in 2020 when President Trump won Ohio by eight points and she actually beat incumbent Justice Judith French 55% to 45%. So it was a pretty big margin of victory for Brunner. She lost then two years later in the race for Chief Justice to fellow Justice Sharon Kennedy and that was 56 to 44 so it was even a more lopsided win on the other side. So, it's been an interesting situation to watch Jennifer Brunner in the Supreme Court. She has name recognition and that she was a former [Ohio] Secretary of State and has been on the court already. But this could be a really challenging case for her. I think the fact there are four Republicans, and at one point there were more, who were vying for this chance to run against her shows you how vulnerable they think Jennifer Brunner is as the only elected statewide Democrat in Ohio."
