(NewsNation) — Voters in Cincinnati, Ohio, cast their ballots Tuesday to decide who their next mayor will be, a local race that has national implications.
Incumbent Democrat Aftab Pureval ran for his second term as mayor and is projected to win against Republican challenger Cory Bowman, who is the half-brother of Vice President JD Vance.
It’s the first time in 16 years the city has had a Republican on the ballot for the nonpartisan mayor’s race. In the May primary, Pureval took roughly 83% of the votes with Bowman securing about 13%, which qualified him for the ballot.
Republicans are facing an uphill battle in the heavily blue city where a Republican mayor has not been elected in more than 50 years.
Bowman’s connection to Vance could hurt his chances after voters in Hamilton County, where Cincinnati is located, favored Democrat Kamala Harris by 57% during the 2024 presidential election.
During the campaign, Bowman downplayed his connection to Vance, choosing to focus instead on crime as his major issue along with infrastructure and city management. The city was in the spotlight earlier in the year when videos of a violent beating downtown went viral, raising questions about how the city was dealing with public safety.
The focus on crime echoes sentiments from the Trump administration about the level of crime in Democratic cities. The president has taken the unprecedented move of deploying National Guard troops in U.S. cities to fight crime against the wishes of state and local officials, though some of those deployments have been blocked by the courts.
Pureval, for his part, has said public safety would be his priority if he were to be reelected, while also pointing to his record of increased economic investment.
Polls close at 7:30 p.m. ET. Follow along with election results as they come in using the tracker below: