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There were a lot of reasons why Democrats did so well during the midterm elections, but none greater than having Republican Donald Trump as president.
Trump holds a special spell over many Republicans. It's the rest of the country that has issues with him and there are far more voters who are unaffiliated than loyal members of the Democratic and Republican parties combined.
Trump's decision to wage war with Iran caused the prices of gas to skyrocket and, with it, the cost of everyday products. Even with the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature eliminating the state's gas tax for 90 days in an effort to ease that burden and prop up the failing gubernatorial campaign of Vivek Ramaswamy, the cost for gas in the state was about the same on Election Day as it was when the tax holiday took effect.
Affordability isn't just a buzzword. People struggle with it every day, even before the war in Iran. After the war, it only got worse. It was particularly bad because when Trump launched the war in February, the president promised it would quickly come to an end.
It cost Republicans elections in states they hadn't lost in decades: Texas, Kansas, South Carolina and Iowa.
Come the beginning of the year, Republican control of the U.S. House and Senate - along with numerous state legislative bodies and statewide offices - is over.
Trump said many times during this campaign to make believe he was on the ballot. People did and it didn't help matters. Voters knew candidates the president backed and took out their anger on them as well as others with an R after their name.
This brings us to Ohio.
The last time Ohio saw a swing in favor of Democrats similar to Tuesday's election was in 2006.
At the time, Ohio had an unpopular governor, Bob Taft, who had been convicted a year earlier of four misdemeanor counts of breaking state ethics laws by not reporting golf outings and other gifts.
Republican George W. Bush, an unpopular president, was serving at the time, and in an unpopular war in Iraq.
Democrats capitalized and won all over the country, including in Ohio.
Ohio Republicans pretty much won everything back in 2010 with Democrat Barack Obama's approval rating underwater and voters not happy with the economy.
Sound familiar?
Tuesday's election in Ohio was nowhere near the landslide victories Democrats experienced 20 years earlier.
But it was still an impressive showing in a state that has long been considered Republican.
Ohio Republicans were quick to anoint Ramaswamy as the party's gubernatorial candidate - akin to what Democrats did in 2014 with Ed FitzGerald with disastrous results.
FitzGerald lost by more than 30% to then-incumbent Gov. John Kasich, a Republican.
Ramaswamy lost by about 8% to Democrat Amy Acton.
Republicans coalesced behind a flawed candidate for governor.
Ramaswamy is a successful billionaire biotech entrepreneur who flew around the state in a jet. There's no doubt he is engaging and smart, but a lot of people couldn't identify with him.
Democrats pointed out that voters should be questioning why a person of such great wealth was running for governor.
You could point out that Trump is a billionaire who says outrageous things, insults people and was convicted of 34 felonies when he was on the campaign trail in 2024 yet was still elected. Despite Trump's declining popularity now, he is likely the only person in the country who can do the things he does and still have a solid, albeit lessening, group of supporters.
While Ohio Democrats were competitive in statewide elections in 2010 and 2018, none of their statewide candidates won except Sherrod Brown in 2018 for his third term in the Senate.
But back to Ramaswamy. He and outside entities spent significantly more money than Acton. Despite all that spending, Ramaswamy was not only unable to move the needle in his direction, but it just got worse and worse for him as the campaign got closer to Tuesday.
That's why he ran that outrageous, tasteless commercial with Acton's estranged mother calling the Democrat a liar and why he constantly complained about his opponent's refusal to debate him.
Ramaswamy was going to lose so his campaign stopped at nothing to garner attention. It succeeded, but it was universally negative.
Meanwhile, Acton's campaign was ready if the issues of her childhood and her stepfather accused of sexually abusing her were brought up by Ramaswamy.
Acton's campaign ran a campaign ad back in August called "Tent," about the issues she experienced as a child.
Acton's campaign was very quick to react to Ramaswamy's ad and his Hail Mary smear was the final nail in his political coffin.
Acton isn't particularly adept at politics and from the time she announced her candidacy for governor in January 2025 until now, she has insisted she is not a politician.
But people like that about her and Acton's story resonated with Ohio voters. Attempts to attack her for being responsible for the restrictions in Ohio during the COVID-19 pandemic failed miserably so Ramaswamy and his allies called her a drunk who popped pills and was mentally unstable.
That too failed.
In the end, Ramaswamy suffered the biggest defeat of any of the statewide Republican candidates.
Between him and Trump, the rest of the GOP ticket got dragged down, except Frank LaRose, who was elected auditor.
It isn't a stretch to say Acton had coattails throughout the state.
Seth Walsh, the Democratic candidate for state treasurer, may have stepped foot inside the Mahoning Valley a couple of times - though none of his appearances were announced and I never saw him - won the state by 1.1%.
He won Mahoning County by 4.22% and Trumbull by 0.1%.
Even with gerrymandering, Democrats broke the GOP supermajority in the Ohio House and will have more members of the U.S. House from the state than Republicans.
As for Mahoning and Trumbull, both were longtime reliable Democratic counties for decades until Trump came along in 2016.
It changed so much in Trumbull that not a single Democrat in a contested race on the 2022 or the 2024 ballots won in the county.
It was a very different story Tuesday.
With Acton winning the county by 7.05% and Brown beating U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, a Republican, by 2.61%, several races were extremely close with Democrats winning most of them, including for county commissioner and county auditor.
In 2024, Republicans picked up historical victories in Mahoning County.
In Tuesday's election, Acton beat Ramaswamy by 11.73%. It was nowhere close to the blowout wins by Democrats in 2006 or 2018, but it was a remarkable result when you consider Trump beat Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election in Mahoning by 9.37%, and in 2022, Republican Mike DeWine beat Democrat Nan Whaley in the governor's race by 30.72%.
Also, Brown won Mahoning by 7.17%, only two years after he lost it by 0.2%.
Mahoning and Trumbull are far from returning to the days of Democrats winning with 60% or more of the vote.
But the counties largely delivered Tuesday for Democrats.
David Skolnick covers politics for the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator.