Can Dems defeat Johnson in ’16?

Belpre Mayor Michael L. Lorentz is facing a significant challenge as the Democratic candidate against three-term incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson in the general election for the 6th Congressional District seat.

If Lorentz somehow wins the race, it won’t be because of him.

His best chance to win is if those casting ballots in the November general election vote a straight Democratic ticket led by Hillary Clinton for president and Ted Strickland for U.S. Senate.

Because of Republican- gerrymandered districts, none of the U.S. House races in 2014 was competitive.

One of the 16 was unopposed. Of the 15 others, the 19.7-percent victory margin by Johnson of Marietta over Democrat Jennifer Garrison, also of Marietta, was the closest race. Garrison won one – Monroe – of the 18 counties in the 6th District.

In 2012, Johnson beat Democrat Charlie Wilson, a former two-term congressman who’s since died, by 6.6 percent.

Wilson, who also served a decade in the state Legislature, had strong name recognition. Garrison, who spent six years in the Ohio House, had decent name recognition. I’m going out on a limb by saying hardly anyone outside of Washington County – where Belpre, a city of less than 6,500 residents, is located – has heard of Lorentz.

But whether he wins or loses has little to do with Lorentz.

Ohio Democratic Party Chairman David Pepper said Lorentz is “a good candidate. He’s an experienced mayor [elected in 2007] and is a former school board member. He has Ted Strickland on the ballot in his former [congressional] district and in southeast Ohio, Lou Gentile,” a state senator from Steubenville who represents half of the 6th District’s counties, is running for re-election.

There’s also the Donald Trump Factor, Pepper said.

If Trump emerges as the Republican presidential nominee – he leads in national polls – Pepper said it will damage the entire GOP ticket.

“Donald Trump is creating chaos on the right as is Ted Cruz,” a conservative U.S. senator from Texas who is rising in the polls, Pepper said.

“If you get a strong enough [anti-Trump] turnout, we can win” in the 6th, Pepper said.

It should be noted that Mick Davenport, a former Meigs County commissioner and Democratic chairman, is also a Democratic candidate for the 6th District. But he was a placeholder for the party in case Lorentz didn’t file, and is expected to withdraw later this month.

Lorentz “has a better chance of winning than Bill Johnson did in 2010,” Pepper said.

During the 2010 election, a strong national Republican movement allowed largely unknown GOP candidates like Johnson, running for elected office for the first time, to win.

Mark Weaver, Johnson’s campaign spokesman, acknowledges that Johnson won in 2010 “more because of the Republican wave than his personal history. A lot of people voted for Bill in 2010 because he was a new face. But in the last five years, people in Southeast Ohio have gotten to know him, and they like him.”

As for Lorentz, Weaver said, “Bill Johnson takes every opponent seriously, and he is prepared to defend his record of speaking up for working families.”

Pepper said recruiting a candidate for the 6th “isn’t easy” because Republicans drew the state’s 16 congressional districts to make 12 of them solidly in favor of that party and 4 of them strongly Democratic.

Pepper points out that Lorentz is “in the heart” of the district – Washington County.

The 6th is a sprawling 18-county district that starts in the southern portion of Mahoning County, follows the Ohio River east to southern Ohio and also takes in counties in the southern central part of the state. Columbiana is the largest county in the district in population and voters.

If you look at the 6th since it was redistricted before the 2012 election, the upper four counties make up a strong percentage of voters. Based on the 2014 general election, Mahoning, Columbiana, Jefferson and Belmont counties made up 44 percent of voters. While voters there backed Johnson in 2014, they have a history of supporting Democratic candidates.

The counties with the most voters in the 2014 general election were Columbiana with 27,200 voters, followed by Belmont with 19,267, Jefferson with 19,151, Washington with 18,588, and Mahoning with 17,549.

As Pepper said, it’s not easy finding Democrats to run in the 6th – and likely even harder in more-Republican districts in Ohio though Democrats were able to find candidates in all 16.

Democrats would be wise to look north to find strong candidates. Gentile, who considered running this year and in 2014, is a solid congressional candidate.

But Gentile chose to run for re-election to the state Senate. If Pepper’s expectation of a strong Democratic turnout in the 6th holds true, Gentile would have had a better chance against Johnson than Lorentz.