Filing closed Wednesday for Ohio’s March 17 primary. Candidates file with the county that makes up the largest proportion of their district rather than with the state, so a list of contenders can be found on county election sites. Below is a rundown of the House races to watch for in the primary and November general election.
OH-01: GOP Rep. Steve Chabot is arguably the state’s most vulnerable House member a year after he won reelection 51-47 in a suburban Cincinnati seat that backed Donald Trump by a similar 51-45 margin. While there was some speculation that Chabot could retire or face a primary opponent, the congressman is running again without any intra-party opposition.
The two Democrats competing to take on Chabot are former healthcare executive Kate Schroder and former Air Force pilot Nikki Foster, who sought a dark red state House seat last cycle. Schroder has the support of Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley, who is her old boss, while VoteVets is backing Foster. Schroder ended September with a $319,000 to $100,000 cash-on-hand lead over Foster.
Chabot reported having $403,000 to spend, but his campaign finances have been in turmoil since late summer, when the FEC sent a letter asking why the congressman's first-quarter fundraising report was belatedly amended to show $124,000 in receipts that hadn't previously been accounted for. From there, a bizarre series of events unfolded.
First, Chabot's longtime consultant, Jamie Schwartz, shuttered his firm, called the Fountain Square Group, and allegedly disappeared. Then Schwartz's father, Jim Schwartz, told reporters that despite appearing as Chabot's treasurer on his FEC filings for many years, he had in fact never served in that capacity. Chabot's team was certainly bewildered, because it issued a statement saying, "As far as the campaign was aware, James Schwartz, Sr. has been the treasurer since 2011." Evidently there's a whole lot the campaign wasn't aware of.
The elder Schwartz also claimed of his son, "I couldn't tell you where he's at" because "he's doing a lot of running around right now." Well, apparently, he’d run right into the arms of the feds. Earlier this month, local news station Fox19 reported that Jamie Schwartz had turned himself in to the U.S. Attorney's office, which, Fox19 says, has been investigating the matter "for a while."