Though voters don’t head to the polls until Tuesday, Republicans already lost the special election in Ohio’s 12th Congressional District. That will remain true even if their candidate actually wins the race and is elected to office.
Why? As in other, high-profile special election battles over the past year or so — think Georgia’s 6th District, or Pennsylvania’s 18th — the GOP has been forced to pour an exorbitant amount of resources into defending a seat that should be safe. “The Republican National Committee has opened two offices in the district, launched a $500,000-plus get-out-the-vote effort, and dispatched one of its top officials, Bob Paduchik, who ran Trump’s 2016 Ohio campaign,” Politico reported on Sunday. “And outside conservative groups, led by a super PAC aligned with House Speaker Paul Ryan, have dumped more than $3.5 million onto the TV airwaves, far outpacing Democrats.”
