Republican Holds Tight Lead in Ohio Special Election for House Seat
John Begley, 43, an insurance executive who voted for Mr. Balderson, said he did so to send a message of support for Mr. Trump.
“It’s important that we stand behind what we voted for in the general election,” said Mr. Begley. Asked what he was happy with about the president’s record, Mr. Begley answered: “My investment accounts.”
For some voters, economic prosperity was not enough to allay a deeper sense of unease. Pam Moore, 57, said that even though “my stocks are doing well,” she voted for Mr. O’Connor. She said Mr. Trump scares her.
“I’m afraid he’s going to make some crazy decision that could turn us around in the wrong direction,” said Ms. Moore, who works in the loan department of a bank.
Josh Wickham, 38, a community college administrator, voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but for Mr. O’Connor on Tuesday. He said he wanted a Democratic-majority House to be a check on the president, especially over some conservative social positions the White House has promoted. A sister of Mr. Wickham’s is married to another woman and is “terrified,” he said, of a conservative Supreme Court reversing same-sex marriage.
The special election was set in motion earlier this year by the resignation of Pat Tiberi, a nine-term incumbent who quit midway through his term to take over a business association back in the state capital. Republicans initially believed they could hold the district with relative ease, so long as they nominated a mainstream candidate. And so the party worked aggressively to steer Mr. Balderson, 56, through a contested primary that he barely won.
But Mr. O’Connor, the 31-year-old county recorder in Franklin County, which includes Columbus and is the most Democratic-leaning part of the district, proved unexpectedly formidable as a challenger, collecting more money for his campaign than Mr. Balderson and assailing the Republican as a threat to popular health care and retirement-security programs. And Mr. O’Connor aligned himself in his rhetoric with Gov. John R. Kasich, Ohio’s Republican chief executive who is an outspoken critic of Mr. Trump, and who withheld his endorsement from Mr. Balderson until the last week of the race.