This was a quiet year for elections in Ohio. That’s about to change.
2026 rings in a midterm election, with races for governor, U.S. Senate, the Ohio Supreme Court and other statewide offices.
Voters will pick a replacement for term-limited Gov. Mike DeWine and decide whether Sen. Jon Husted should remain on the job.
Ohioans also will pick a new slate of statewide executive office holders, get a chance to tweak the partisan balance of the state legislature and decide whether to retain the lone remaining statewide elected Democrat, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Brunner.
With all that in mind, here are some semi-provocative questions likely to be answered in the coming year.
How will Vivek Ramaswamy’s predictions age?
Vivek Ramaswamy has a background in business, but he apparently doesn’t subscribe to the “underpromise and overdeliver” school of thought.
Over the summer, Ramaswamy made a regular point of saying that he not only wants to be elected as Ohio’s 71st governor in November 2026 — he wants to win the race in a landslide.
“We’re running this campaign not just to win, but to win by a seismic margin,” he said during a public appearance in Columbus in July that I attended.
Ramaswamy’s comments struck me at the time as perhaps ill-advised, and if nothing else a sign of his immense self-confidence. But they’ve been on my mind lately as political polls show an increasingly tight race between him and his likely Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton.
RaceTotheWH, an elections data website, currently projects Ramaswamy will win by 2.4% — a Republican-leaning tossup. We’re going to find out this year if we’re seeing another case of Ohio Republicans being underestimated by these kinds of tools.
We’ll also find out whether this campaign strengthens Ramaswamy’s political trajectory — perhaps setting him up for another run for president at his next available chance — or exposes its limits.
Will this be the year Ohio Democrats become relevant?
This remains the biggest fundamental questionfacing Democrats, who haven’t won a statewide executive office since the 2000s. The state has only trended more Republican since then.
2026 presents Democrats with the best chance they’re likely to have any time soon. They should be running under ideal national electoral conditions — an open governor’s seat and a second-term Republican president with iffy approval ratings.
Ohio clearly isn’t the swing state it once was. But I’ve been saying for years that Democrats have shown they can win in red states including Kansas and Kentucky. So there’s no reason it can’t happen here too. Democrats I talk to have grown more confident in Acton as a candidate for governor – although their failure to assemble a full statewide slate shows their actions haven’t yet met their words.
A more modest goal for Democrats would be breaking the Republican supermajority in the Ohio House. While the Senate is out of reach, they could do so in the House by flipping six GOP-held seats, ending Republicans’ ability to overturn a governor’s veto.
Republicans currently hold five House seats in districts that Trump won last year by fewer than 5 percentage points, and they hold a sixth, held by Rep. Andrea White, that Trump lost. All of these seats should be winnable, plus maybe one or two more, if the environment is less pro-Republican than it was last year.
But if Democrats can’t make progress under these conditions, it’s fair to ask when they ever will.
Did Sherrod Brown make the right call?
Sherrod Brown passed on what currently looks like a more winnable race for governor to instead challenge Husted for the senate seat. The move was a big recruiting victory for national Democrats, who will have a tough time retaking control of the U.S. Senate without wins in at least a couple of red states like Ohio. But it also was a loss of sorts for state Democrats, since winning the governor’s office would single-handedly revive the state party.
So Brown could face some big time second-guessing if he ends up losing to Husted, especially if the governor’s race turns out to be as close as it currently looks. Even if he wins, he could face similar questions if Acton doesn’t.
Will ballot measures make a comeback in 2026?
Ohio seemed as though it could be in store for plenty more left-leaning ballot measures after 2023, when voters here approved a constitutional amendment protecting abortion access and an initiated statute legalizing recreational marijuana.
But then a redistricting reform amendment with deep financial backing went down in flames in 2024. And 2025 passed without any statewide issue campaigns at all.
So will any ballot measures emerge next year?
The one that’s gotten the most coverage is a grassroots campaign to abolish property taxes, although it’s still an open question if it will get enough funding or organization to qualify for the ballot. As a reminder, amendment campaigns must collect 413,487 voter signatures, including a minimum number in 44 of Ohio’s 88 counties.
Another possibility emerged just this week. A committee of intoxicating hemp businesses turned in initial paperwork to try to repeal Senate Bill 56, which bans these companies’ products from being sold anywhere other than a state-licensed dispensary. If they can clear some state regulatory hurdles, they then would have until March to collect the 248,092 signatures – a lower number than what’s required for constitutional amendments – required to get a repeal vote on the ballot.
Managing to do so would put the law on hold until a statewide vote can be held in November. This sort of delay would be a win for the industry, regardless of what voters do, since it would buy them time to lobby the state and federal government to let them stay in business.
Dennis Willard, a spokesperson for the repeal effort, which is called Ohioans for Cannabis Choice, didn’t have much to share about the burgeoning campaign in an interview on Tuesday. He said he’s confident the group will have the resources it needs to qualify for the ballot – and suggested some of that money may come from the industry.
“There’s a natural constituency of people who have a financial stake in this,” Willard said. But, he added, the group also expects to have support from everyday Ohioans.
A few other amendment campaigns have gotten approval from state officials to collect voter signatures. They are:
- One that would expand voting access laws and overturn the state’s photo ID requirement for voters
- Another that would codify broad anti-discrimination protections, including on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity
- A third that would make it easier to sue police officers and other government officials for misconduct by abolishing what’s called qualified immunity
All the ballot measures mentioned so far would be citizen-proposed. But the state legislature also can propose constitutional amendments, although they still need voter approval.
There’s one possible legislative amendment brewing: a “right to hunt and fish” amendment I wrote about earlier this month.
That’s what’s on my mind heading into 2026. Now here are a few thoughts from the rest of our team.
Jake is thinking about FirstEnergy, data centers’ future in Ohio and a few good court cases
In July 2020, Akron’s FirstEnergy Corp. was accused – implicitly, at first – of running a political bribery scheme out of the Statehouse spanning three years. It rocked Ohio’s political order, sent a House speaker to prison for 20 years, preceded the deaths by suicide of two alleged conspirators with storied legal and political careers, and cast a shadow of impropriety over the Statehouse.
In January 2026, the two former company executives accused of masterminding the operation can finally make the case of their innocence and leave it to a jury to sort out. As for me, perhaps more than anything else, I want to hear what Gov. Mike DeWine’s former chief of staff – who prosecutors say knew about a $4.3 million payment to a public official and, according to DeWine, failed to tell the governor – has to say.
Plus, will Jon Husted, a sitting U.S. senator, really schlep to a county courthouse in Akron to testify for the defense, as an early witness list has indicated?
The other storyline to watch: our political leadership is at a fork in the road on data centers. The legislature tried to erase a major tax break they receive. DeWine vetoed it. Lawmakers talked about overriding the veto, but at that point it’s just that – talk.
Local governments are facing pressure to prohibit data centers. An anti-AI fervor feels like it’s in the air. So what will the state do? Stick it to big tech? Align with the Googles and Amazons of the world and pass a “preemption” law to undermine the cities’ efforts?
Also, the Ohio Supreme Court owes a major ruling on the future of solar in Ohio, as well as on hundreds of millions of dollars in unemployment money the governor spurned, a ruling on gun prohibitions in bars, and more.
Amy’s watching the ongoing rollout of SB 1 and next steps for lawmakers
2026 marks the first post-Senate Bill 1 year (though, as I reported back in September, the full rollout of the law that overhauls how public higher education works in Ohio has a long tail). I’m now wondering about state leaders’ potential next steps for colleges and universities – and whether they may be looking towards their peers in other GOP-led states for inspiration.
That includes places such as Texas, where one of the state’s largest public university systems recently installed a policy restricting how educators can talk about race and gender in the classroom. And in Indiana, public college leaders will have to prove any new proposed degrees show “commitment to the core values of American society” in order to earn approval from the state’s higher ed commission. Will Ohio follow suit in any of these, or other, areas?
In the news
THC bill repeal effort: A group of intoxicating hemp businesses have filed initial paperwork seeking to repeal much of Senate Bill 56, the law Gov. Mike DeWine signed earlier this month that overhauls Ohio’s marijuana laws. Read more from Andrew Tobias.
Major changes: Senate Bill 1, the higher-education law, requires colleges and universities to cut programs that enroll few students. This new requirement has led schools to cut majors including Spanish and medieval and Renaissance studies, although some have managed to put off the new rules by seeking waiver requests. Read more from Amy Morona here.