COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — In Ohio’s partially open primary, Democrats will be able to select a Republican ballot when voting, but can they impact the race?
In one month on March 19, the Republican primary for U.S. Senate will decide who will face the incumbent Democrat, Sherrod Brown, in November, with the leading candidates state Sen. Matt Dolan, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and businessman Bernie Moreno.
Given the certainty of Brown advancing and how Ohio could decide whether Republicans or Democrats control the Senate starting in 2025, some Democrats may choose to cross over and vote for their favorite, or least-unfavorite, Republican candidate.
But two Republican strategists said this is not as common as some might think.
“It’s certainly something that campaigns have to consider, as part of the strategic overlook of the campaign,” Licking County Republican Party chair Matt Dole said. “The likelihood for people to cross over is lower the more local you get.”
One example of a concerted effort to cross over voters and impact a primary was “Operation Chaos” in 2008. Conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh encouraged listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton over Barack Obama in the presidential primary in an attempt to “bloody up Obama politically.” Those efforts are believed to have helped Clinton win the Indiana primary by 14,000 votes.
Dole pointed to former Ohio governor John Kasich winning his home state in 2016 over Donald Trump as another example of Democrats perhaps influencing Republican races. But he doubted it would happen this year. One reason is that when a person in Ohio votes in a party’s primary, they become registered to that party.
“The only way you become a member of a party in the state of Ohio is to vote in a partisan primary,” Dole said.
Being registered with the opposite party for two years may not sound bad, but Dole said it can lead to targeted advertising: mail, digital ads and more. He said this can even inconvenience the party bringing in crossover voters, as their target list for future elections becomes muddled.
Independents may be deterred from voting in either party’s primary for similar reasons.
Dole said another factor is the practicality of targeting voters outside of the party. Campaigns only have so much in terms of resources and trying to draw voters from the opposite side can be a waste.
“A campaign has limited resources available to it: time, people and money,” Dole said. “Those are the only three resources a campaign has. And the question that a campaign always has to ask is, how do we deploy those resources?”
Republican political strategist Bob Clegg pointed to a recent example.
“In certain congressional districts back in 2022, the Democrats actively campaigned on behalf of certain Republicans that were in primaries because they viewed them as weaker general election opponents, and they were successful in a number of those primaries,” Clegg said.
But Clegg said that with the Senate race, there is no clear Republican candidate that Democrats would prefer to face Brown. He said a scenario where crossover voting is more likely is when a clearly vulnerable candidate is running in a primary. A recent poll did not give Dolan, LaRose or Moreno a clear edge over Brown.
“[In Montana], you’ve got a very similar situation where you have Jon Tester, who’s the Democrat incumbent running in a Trump state, much like Sherrod has to do here in Ohio,” Clegg said. “And they actually have a primary where one candidate is viewed as being more able to be tested than the other one. I just don’t think we have a comparable situation here in Ohio.”