The Ohio Democratic Party will be looking for a new leader heading into next year’s election.
Liz Walters is resigning as the chair of the Ohio Democratic Party after four years leading the party, she said this week in an exclusive interview with Signal. She is leaving to take a job as CEO of TargetSmart, a prominent Democratic political data firm in Washington, D.C.
Walters said party leaders are looking to hold a meeting on June 10 to pick her replacement. She said she will remain in her job until then. She also will remain in her position on Summit County Council and on the Ohio Democratic Party’s executive committee. Her new job is all-virtual and won’t require her to move.
Walters said she wasn’t necessarily looking for another job, but she feels good about leaving the party in its current financial and structural state.
“For a whole host of reasons, both professional and personal, this is the right move for me,” Walters said, emphasizing she is not being forced out of her job.
Walters said she expects candidates will emerge quickly to replace her. She said ODP likely will hold two forums for voting committee members. She said she expects activist groups, such as the Indivisible and Ohio Young Democrats to push for candidate forums.
The change will come as state Democrats try to gear up for the 2026 elections. Nationally, Democrats are hoping to capitalize on the traditional backlash to the ruling party and retake control of the U.S. House and reach for a much harder path to regain control of the U.S. Senate.
In Ohio, voters will choose a successor to Gov. Mike DeWine, who can’t seek re-election because of term-limits. Voters will also have to decide whether to let Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted finish the final two years of Vice President JD Vance’s term. Jennifer Brunner, the lone remaining Democrat to hold a statewide office, will also be on the ballot next year.
What does the chair of the Ohio Democratic Party do?
The Ohio Democratic Party is the umbrella organization for all the Democratic Party organizations in Ohio. The party chair’s biggest role is fundraising, since the party exists to support candidates and party-supported issues during elections. ODP’s biggest expenses include political mailers that are sent to voters using a special bulk mailing rate under. Under the chair’s direction, state party staff work on candidate recruitment, volunteer organizing and advertising. The position’s stature has diminished in recent years as state Democrats have become less politically competitive, reducing the state’s prominence in national political campaigns.
Walters has run the party since January 2021, when she got the job with the support of Sherrod Brown, the longtime former U.S. Senator who lost his election in November. Party leaders often, but not always, are closely affiliated with a state party’s most prominent politician. Walters was the first woman to hold the position.
Brown issued a statement for this story praising Walters for her tenure as party chair.
“I’m grateful to Chairwoman Walters for her service to Ohio Democrats over the past four and a half years,” Brown said. “Whether it was beating back attempts to take power away from Ohio voters and hand it to politicians, enshrining abortion rights in our state constitution or standing alongside our labor leaders as we fought for the Dignity of Work, Chair Walters has been a strong and effective advocate for working Ohioans. I’m grateful for her work throughout two very challenging election cycles and while I’ll miss her leadership at the state party, I’m looking forward to seeing how she continues to serve our state.”
What happened during Walters’ tenure?
When she became state party chair, Walters was seen as a rising star in Democratic circles, having been elected to Summit County Council in 2016 and working in top positions in the state party before that. She took over for David Pepper, who resigned following the November 2020 election.
The assignment was a difficult one. Ohio for decades was the country’s quintessential swing state. But it’s been trending toward Republicans over the last decade or more, particularly since Donald Trump’s first election as president in 2016.
Walters launched a long-term turnaround plan, telling reporters the party needed to rebuild some of its county parties and do a better job attacking Republicans while differentiating itself from the national party. She also sold the party’s longtime headquarters in downtown Columbus in 2021, moving last year to a new leased location on the city’s near east side. But these tweaks have done little to fix the big-picture political trends that pose the biggest problems for Ohio Democrats: the erosion of support among of union voters in traditional manufacturing communities and the party’s complete collapse in rural areas.
The two major statewide election cycles under Walters’ leadership have been failures for state Democrats. The party was swept in the 2022 election, including a crushing 25 percentage-point loss in the governor’s race. In 2024, Trump won Ohio by 11 points, while Brown and two Democratic Ohio Supreme Court justices, Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart, lost their positions. The lone remaining statewide elected Democratic is Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Brunner, whose term expires next year. A silver lining to both elections was that Democrats won all three of the state’s competitive congressional districts in the 2022 election and held the seats in 2024.
Democrats have seen a clear source of success though: ballot issues.
In 2023, a campaign coalesced that sought to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution in response to the backlash of the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade the previous year.
Voters approved the measure in November, and also defeated a related measure Republicans put up for a vote in August that was meant to block the abortion-rights amendment. In the same November election, voters also approved a ballot measure that made recreational marijuana use legal.
Walters and other party leaders hoped to build off of 2023’s success for the 2024 election. But Democrats lost all their statewide races, and voters also defeated an amendment that would have reduced Republicans’ power to draw the state’s state legislative and congressional maps.
What’s next for Ohio Democrats?
The party will have to get its 2026 ticket in order.
The Republican field is rapidly coming into focus. Vivek Ramaswamy in strong position to win the GOP nomination for governor, and Husted facing no opponent. But the Democratic candidate slate remains unsettled. The lone Democrat running for governor is Dr. Amy Acton, DeWine’s former state health department director. Many potential Democratic candidates are waiting to see whether a more proven candidate will emerge to lead the Democratic ticket, with Brown’s name at the list.
Walters, who’s trying to sell national Democratic donors on investing in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, said her party will have plenty to work with.
“The last time Donald Trump was in the White House, we won a competitive Senate election,” Walters said. “We got within [three points] in the governor’s race against a politician who had more name recognition than Joe Biden. And this time around, Gov. DeWine won’t be at the top of the ticket, Republicans will be inseparable from an unpopular administration, and there’s what looks to be like a $600 million giveaway to a football team owner.”
So, she added, “I think we’ll have a lot to work with next year.”
Jockeying begins for party leadership
Being the leader of a state political party is a thankless job. But that’s not stopping people from immediately lobbying for Walters’ position.
State Sen. Bill Demora, a Columbus Democrat and longtime party operative, said he’s running for the job. In an interview, he said he heard Walters was stepping down on Tuesday and immediately started making calls and putting together meetings. One person he said he has not spoken with is Brown, whom has had a large influence over the process in previous years.
Demora said he believes Democratic voters want their leaders to fight. He said some of the party’s challenges have been due to weak candidates.
Demora has run for the ODP chair multiple times in the past, and each time has been asked to drop out and support someone else, including Walters in 2021.
“If they need someone who can do it better, than I will consider that,” Demora said. “But I think I’m the person for the job. I think the job needs a pit bull right now, and that’s who I am.”
This story has been updated to include comments from Bill Demora
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