DEFIANCE, Ohio — With just 10 days to go before the 2024 election, Marcy Kaptur wanted help.
She wasn’t looking for donations or requesting canvassing support in the election’s waning days. Instead, at a Saturday event in her district’s westernmost reaches, Kaptur tasked the roughly 25 attendees with a project: to come up with routes for potential rail improvement projects.
“When they keep switching the district around, I can’t become expert enough in an area to make a difference,” Kaptur said to the crowd at the Defiance County Democratic headquarters as she called on the audience to share their ideas. “So I need you.”
Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history, often touts her record of service and the infrastructure work she’s done in her northern Ohio district on the campaign trail. But her ire about redistricting comes in the face of perhaps her most formidable campaign cycle in more than a decade.
Although Kaptur, 78, has served part of northwest Ohio since 1983, interviews with more than a dozen voters, volunteers and operatives in this Ohio district paint a picture of a veteran lawmaker now in a fight for her political life and legacy.
Kaptur’s district was redrawn after the 2020 census, shifting from a seat President Joe Biden would have won by 19 points to one former President Donald Trump would have captured by 3 points. As a result, Kaptur has spent the past few years being forced to introduce herself to new voters — and potentially persuading Trump supporters to split their tickets and back her.
This year, she faces state Rep. Derek Merrin, whose legislative district overlaps with part of her congressional district. Merrin has sought to portray the longtime lawmaker as ineffective and out of touch. The seat is rated Tilt Democratic by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales, but Republicans view the district as one of their strongest opportunities to flip a House seat.
Kaptur’s campaign has received nearly $4.5 million in contributions throughout the cycle and ended the latest campaign finance disclosure period in mid-October with more than $900,000 on hand, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Merrin, meanwhile, has raised almost $1.5 million and had more than $540,000 on hand as of Oct. 16.
And external spending has flooded the district: Outside parties have spent more than $16 million in hopes of influencing the race, according to OpenSecrets.
“The last tough race she had was after the 2010 redistricting, when she was thrown into the same district with [former Rep.] Dennis Kucinich and she had to run in a primary against another incumbent, but for the most part, [the district] has been a pretty safe Democratic district,” said Sam Nelson, an associate professor in the University of Toledo’s Department of Political Science and Public Administration.
“It’s probably the first real direct challenge where you look at it and say, ‘Well, yeah, she could lose this race,’” Nelson added.
‘The decency to step down’
Kaptur’s tenure in the House is historic. But it’s also one of the most prominent pieces of ammunition her Republican opponent has wielded against her.
Merrin, a term-limited state lawmaker, has repeatedly targeted Kaptur’s legislative record, pointing to the fact that the longtime congresswoman has been the primary sponsor of just five bills that have been signed into law. However, Kaptur has also been a co-sponsor on 660 pieces of legislation that have been signed into law — a much more common occurrence for lawmakers.
Still, Merrin sees these numbers as evidence that Kaptur needs to wrap up her time in Congress. And in an election cycle where politicians’ age and mental acuity have been so front and center that the issue resulted in the end of Biden’s campaign, that approach could resonate with voters more than ever.
“Joe Biden had the decency to step down,” Merrin said at a Saturday morning event. “Marcy Kaptur doesn’t have the decency to step down and let northwest Ohio have a representative that’s excited about going to work and can walk up the steps of the Capitol and deliver.”
Bill passage isn’t the only way to measure a lawmaker’s effectiveness. Projects and money brought to the district can be just as compelling in arguments to voters, if not more motivating, according to Nelson.
But Merrin’s line of messaging has resonated with some constituents, including Lucas County voter Connie Boraby. After casting her vote early, Boraby said she voted for Merrin, citing the economy, border security and her opposition to transgender athletes in women’s sports as her top issues this election cycle.
Boraby said she grew up within a few miles of where Kaptur lived, and she even recalls often checking out the representative and her mother while working at a neighborhood grocery store. But she’s skeptical about Kaptur’s ability to deliver for her district.
“I think she’s tried, at times, her best, but she’s been in Washington a very long time and I haven’t seen, in the last 10 years, her do anything for our area,” Boraby said. “It really seems like she used to kind of stand up to them, and now she just follows the party line, which has not helped Lucas County.”
Kaptur contends that her decades of experience in the House have set her up to deliver for her district. She’s the ranking member on the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development — a panel she describes as “so precious” to voters in the Great Lakes region. And she touts her seniority as one of her most effective attributes as a lawmaker.
“I would put my record up against any person in the current Congress and even some who have preceded me,” Kaptur said in an interview. “And I defy my opponents to even show anything they’ve done that comes close to what we have been able to accomplish because of that seniority.”
Voters like Marvin McClellan and Tracey DeBoe agree. In a joint interview after the pair voted early, McClellan cited Kaptur’s work with the 180th Fighter Wing, a Toledo-based unit of the Ohio Air National Guard, as one of the reasons he backed the lawmaker. And both McClellan and DeBoe also praised Kaptur’s constituent response services in her district.
GOP hopes for a pickup
Republicans are pushing hard for Merrin while telegraphing confidence about their chances with the seat. On the same Saturday morning that Kaptur held her event, the Young Republican National Federation concluded a series of national deployments to seven key districts with a kickoff event in Lucas County and a day of canvassing.
Later that evening, after about 70 volunteers knocked on hundreds of doors, Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., spoke about the state of the race in front of about 120 people at the Lucas County GOP headquarters.
“This is seen by everybody around the country as what may be the best pickup opportunity we have to flip a blue seat to red,” Johnson told attendees.
Victory in this redrawn district isn’t impossible for Kaptur. In 2022, she won with the same map, defeating challenger J.R. Majewski by a 13-point margin. But Majewski was a political newcomer, whereas Merrin in 2023 came within striking distance of becoming speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives.
The 2022 cycle wasn’t a presidential election year, which means down-ballot Republicans didn’t benefit from Trump’s ability to turn out low-propensity voters. And Majewski, who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy theory, was also plagued by reports that he misrepresented his military service.
For Kaptur, hope in this newly Republican-leaning district remains in the form of voters such as 48-year-old Shane McGowan, who on Saturday voted for Trump, citing the former president’s business background and his concerns about the economy. On the same ballot, he also cast a vote for Kaptur.
“She’s done good for the city, good for the state,” McGowan said after casting his vote. “So why not push her forward to the next level?”
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