EXCLUSIVE — House Democratic nominees in competitive races in Ohio are contending with whether to campaign on impeaching President Donald Trump — again.
The issue has created fissures among Democrats across the country as they try to motivate their base with arguments regarding allegations of Trump administration corruption.
At the same time, they are hoping to appeal to independent voters by speaking, undistracted, to their economic and cost-of-living concerns.
Democratic nominee in Ohio’s 15th Congressional District Don Leonard, however, knows where he stands. Leonard is adamant that his party needs to “hold elected officials accountable for the oaths to the Constitution that they have taken.”
“Whenever someone, usually a Democrat, tries to tell me that we shouldn’t talk about investigations, subpoenas, hearings, and potentially impeachment if the evidence is there,” Leonard told the Washington Examiner. “Whenever I hear a Democrat telling me, ‘Oh, the people don’t want that, they just want you to focus on governing,’ [well] part of governing is enforcing our Constitution.”
Speaking at the Circleville Pumpkin Show in southwest Ohio, Leonard added what Democrats “need to do is show the American people that we can walk and chew bubblegum at the same time.”
“We can form a commission, we can get the evidence collected, and then we can evaluate that evidence to decide whether impeachment’s warranted while tackling the affordability crisis,” said Leonard, an Ohio State University urban planning professor who is running against Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH).
Meanwhile, in northern Ohio’s 7th Congressional District, Brian Poindexter is adopting a different approach in his quest to oust scandal-plagued Rep. Max Miller (R-OH).
“I’m not in this to carry a flag for a party,” Poindexter told the Washington Examiner after an agriculture and rural issues town hall in Ashland. “I’m in it to fight for workers.”
For Poindexter, a union ironworker and former Brook Park city councilman, Democrats have “been there, done that” with impeachment. During Trump’s first term, Democrats impeached him for allegedly pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate former President Joe Biden in 2019 and, secondly, over whether he incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021. Both attempts failed in the Senate.
“I’m not running to settle any scores or get any vengeance,” Poindexter said. “Like a bad relationship, when it’s over, just move forward, you know. And that’s what I’m looking to do here for the residents of this district. We’re going to move forward from Max Miller, and they’re going to have real representation for the first time in a long time.”
The divergent positions by Leonard and Poindexter come after Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown said earlier this month that he “would not support an impeachment of Trump.”
“There’s simply no reason for that, no matter what happens in the midterms,” Brown, a former senator who previously voted twice to impeach Trump, told the Columbus Dispatch.
But Leonard and Poindexter’s responses underscore the crossroads at which Democrats find themselves a week before the Nov. 3 midterm elections. Numerous election prognosticators and political strategists predict Democrats will retake control of at least the House and maybe even the Senate.
The issue is further complicated by the rise of the far-left, socialist faction of the Democratic Party. Several Democratic Socialists of America candidates won their respective primaries earlier this cycle and are campaigning on, among other issues, Trump’s impeachment.
The budding power of the socialist bloc could increase next Tuesday if Democrats win the House by a small margin. In that scenario the socialist members could have outsize sway in setting the direction of the Democratic Party in exchange for supporting the election of Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) as speaker.
Jeffries, who could be the first black House speaker, has remained mum regarding another Trump impeachment but has indicated impeaching War Secretary Pete Hegseth is more likely.
The socialists’ potential leverage is underscored by candidates like Poindexter, who refused to tell the Washington Examiner if he would support Jeffries. Instead, Poindexter said he did not “want to put the cart before the horse” and had to win his race first.
“I haven’t really given much thought to that,” he said. “But my support for the speaker is going to go behind somebody who I feel is going to be a good strong voice for working families.”
Leonard, however, argued that voters have “sent a signal to the Democrats that they want transformation.”
“If Hakeem Jeffries is not willing to embrace a platform of true transformation and meaningful change, he will not have my support,” he said.
The different approaches could be because of the races Poindexter and Leonard find themselves in ahead of Election Day.
The contest between Poindexter and Miller has been upended by allegations of emotional and physical abuse by the incumbent Republican’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno. Miller has denied the claims, including that he threatened his ex-wife with a gun and burned her with hot water. Emily Moreno is the daughter of Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH).
Prior to the allegations reaching a fever pitch in August, the Poindexter-Miller race was considered to be an uncompetitive, safe Republican seat.
To punctuate the point, Miller, a former Trump campaign and administration aide, won a second term in 2024 by almost 15 percentage points. Two years later, the Cook Political Report now considers the Poindexter-Miller race to be a toss-up contest.
By comparison, Leonard’s race against Carey, who is looking to secure a fourth term in Congress after winning a special election in 2021, appears to be more at the mercy of national trends, moving from likely Republican to lean Republican in August.
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Leonard described the district as “a slice of America,” from farms, to industry, the inner city on the west side of Columbus, and “the suburbs in between.”
“So it’s a real opportunity, I think, to show not just the Ohio Democratic Party, but national Democrats, that a Democrat can run and win in a seat like this without compromising on core Democratic values,” he said.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
