Ohio's five-member Democratic Congressional Delegation is now majority Black after the midterm elections and consists of U.S. Reps Sykes, Brown, Beatty and Kaptur, and U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Cleveland.....And all three of the Blacks are women....By Clevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com, Ohio's Black digital news leader
Ohio's five-member Democratic Congressional Delegation is majority Black as of the Nov 8 midterm elections and includes U.S. Rep-Elect Emilia Sykes of Akron (top left), U. S. Reps Shontel Brown of Warrensville Hts. (top right), Joyce Beatty of Columbus (bottom left), and Marcy Kaptur of Toledo (bottom right), and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown of Cleveland
By Kathy Wray Coleman, associate publisher, editor-in-chief
ClevelandClevelandurbannews.com and Kathywraycolemanonlinenewsblog.com
CLEVELAND, Ohio-Ohio's five member majority female Democratic Congressional Delegation is now largely Black following the Nov. 8 midterm elections that added newly elected U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes alongside Reps Marcy Kaptur of Toledo, Joyce Beatty of Columbus, who is Black like Sykes, and Shontel Brown, also Black and of Warrensville Hts, the fifth member of whom is U.S Sen Sherrod Brown of Cleveland, Ohio's most prominent elected Democrat and a senior member of Congress. And the three Blacks are women, two of them from Northeast Ohio, which includes the cities of Cleveland and Akron, the hometown of NBA megastar LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers. With Sen Sherrod Brown included, three of five Democratic delegation members will be from Northeast Ohio beginning in January when a new Congress begins.
Beatty also leads the Congressional Black Caucus, an activist group of some 58 Democratic members of Congress.
Missing from the delegation beginning next year is outgoing congressman Tim Ryan, a Youngstown area Democrat and a 20-year congressman who did not seek election to the House of Representatives and instead ran a hard fought yet unsuccessful campaign against Republican J.D. Vance in a high-priced election to replace retiring U.S. Sen Rob Portman, also a Republican. In fact, Republicans won all of the statewide offices in Ohio in last month's election, including the reelection of Gov Mike Dewine, Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state attorney general Dave Yost, and three seats up for grabs on the seven-member on the largely Republican and majority female Ohio Supreme Court This includes the Ohio Supreme Court seat open due to the impending retirement of age-limited Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor, her open seat won by sitting Justice Sharon Kennedy, also a Republican, and a former cop.
In helping to turn Ohio's five-member Democratic Congressional delegation majority Black, which is historical in Ohio, and in keeping it largely female Sykes, a state representative and former minority leader out of Akron, and the daughter of state Sen Dr. Vernon Sykes and his wife Barbara Sykes, a former state representative, defeated Republican Madison Gesiotto Gilbert in Ohio U.S. House District 13, a newly created district formed via Ohio's new congressional map, a controversial redistricting map that was gerrymandered but still remains intact in conjunction with an Ohio Supreme Court ruling issued earlier this year.
"It was my name on the ballot, but we are all going to Congress," said Sykes during an election night victory party speech that drew a round of applause from supporters in attendance.
Shontel Brown's 11th congressional district included Akron and Cleveland before redistricting but the new map moves Akron into the new 13th congressional district that Sykes won. The Republican-drawn map is in place for the next four years instead of 10 because it passed without Democratic support.
Ohio lost one of its 16 House seats relative to the redistricting process that occurs every 10 years in cooperation with the U.S. census and population dynamics and the new boundaries eliminate its only Black-majority seat, the 11th congressional district, which includes Cleveland and has been led by Rep Brown since 2021, Brown a former congresswoman Marcia L. Fudge's successor, Fudge now secretary of Housing and Urban Development with the Biden administration.
Ohio went from 12-4 Republican-to-Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives to 10-5 Republican-to-Democrat via the Nov 8 midterm elections. Hence, Republicans technically lost two seats from Ohio and Democrats maintained the four seats they had in the U.S. House prior to redistricting.
In other closely watch races in Ohio for the U.S. House of Representatives, Toledo Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, the longest serving woman in the U.S. House and whose ninth congressional district stretched to Cleveland and Lorain county before redistricting won election on Nov 8 over Republican J.R. Majewski after Kaptur's district was redrawn to include more moderate voters or constituents, and Republican Max Miller,a former Trump aid, won over Democrat Matthew Diemer for the seat in Ohio's seventh congressional district.
Rep Brown, also a former chair of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party and former county councilwoman, will now represent the parts of Cleveland, including west side areas that Kaptur represented. More specifically, Brown's 11th congressional district now includes all of Cleveland and several of the eastern suburbs of Cuyahoga County that she already represented.
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