New Maps Challenge the Longest Serving Woman in Congress

On November 3, Kaptur faces what may be her toughest electoral challenge yet—running for reelection to a new seat that picks up several barn-red, predominantly rural counties in Northwest Ohio. The race is a bellwether for how Democrats might fare in rural America in the next presidential election. In 2024, Trump carried the 9th Congressional District by 7 points, while Kaptur eked out a win by less than one point—just 2,382 votes. The redrawn district would have expanded Trump’s 2024 margin to nearly 11 points.

Kaptur faces a rematch against Republican Derek Merrin, 40, a former Ohio House member running on an “America First” platform of lower taxes and “taking on the political class.” He and the GOP have attacked the congresswoman, 80, as an out-of-touch career politician. “I’m running against someone who’s been in Washington longer than I’ve been alive,” Merrin said at a campaign stop in September.

The math is daunting for Northwest Ohio Democrats, even though signs point to a blue wave in November. Kaptur’s race is one of 21 for the House considered a tossup by Cook Political Report, as of mid-October; of those seats, only six are Democrat-held, making Kaptur one of the most vulnerable House Democrats running this cycle.

Kaptur’s name carries weight in Toledo and across the region. Covering Kaptur’s reelection for HuffPost in 2022, I wrote that she was “basically royalty” at Toledo’s Labor Day Parade, where Kaptur rode along the route in a vintage, cherry-red Chevy Impala. As a staunch supporter of organized labor, Kaptur is known for rejecting the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, which she predicted would offshore jobs and decimate domestic manufacturing. Two years later, after burnishing a national reputation as a free-trade skeptic, she declined an offer to join Ross Perot’s presidential ticket. “Some people have watched her on the news their entire lives,” Chris Liebold, a Democratic official in Sandusky County, southeast of Toledo, told me.

In 2022, Kaptur defeated J.R. Majewski, an ultra-MAGA Republican, for a 21st term in the House, after redistricting expanded the 9th District to redder parts of Northwest Ohio. The district’s 2022 boundaries contain over 1.1 million farmland acres and more than 4,700 farms, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA). Now it has three of the state’s reddest counties—Henry, Paulding, and Putnam—plus all of blue Lucas County, home to Toledo.

During an interview this month, Kaptur touted her support of biofuels and renewable energy, which, she argues, have provided economic stability for the region’s corn and soybean growers despite environmental concerns. In 2002, Kaptur co-authored the first renewable energy title in that year’s farm bill, and has worked on multiple subsequent energy bills. She’s also the ranking member of the House Appropriations panel’s energy and water development subcommittee, and a member of the agriculture and rural development subcommittee.

In April, Kaptur showed her willingness to vote across party lines as one of the 14 House Democrats who joined Republicans in passing the 2026 farm bill (the “Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2026”). The legislation, now with the Senate, included several Republican priorities, such as maintaining $187 billion in cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” It also upholds $66 billion in additional spending on commodity crop subsidies and insurance—spending that primarily benefits only the largest commodity operations and has helped accelerate the loss of family-scale farms across the country—while also cutting about $1 billion in conservation funding through the Environmental Quality Incentive Program (EQIP).

“I recognize the bill is imperfect,” Kaptur said in a statement, “and I filed multiple amendments to strengthen it and will continue fighting to secure year-round E15 sales by any means necessary, restore SNAP cuts, expand crop insurance assistance, bring more local food into schools, and strengthen USDA programs before final passage. But I will not let my pursuit of perfection stand in the way of a meaningful step forward.”

Kaptur also wants to see the United States boost its diesel reserves to help manage expenses for farmers, instead of banning diesel exports, which some congressional Republicans have called for. “We can fuel ourselves if we have the will,” Kaptur said. “I’m hell-bent on doing that.”

‘Rural votes are in play’

To keep her seat, Kaptur will have to bridge an urban-rural divide that’s widened dramatically throughout her career. During the last decade, that divide has turned Ohio—a bellwether for presidential elections from 1964 to 2016—more or less reliably red. In 2024, Ohio lost its Democratic U.S. Senator, Sherrod Brown, after his defeat by Republican businessman Bernie Moreno. But the GOP’s grip on the state’s electorate might be softening as Trump and Republicans face low approval heading into the midterms. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, Ohio’s Covid-era health director, and Brown, hoping to return to the Senate, are tied in polls with their Republican opponents, Vivek Ramaswamy and U.S. Senator Jon Husted (who was appointed to fulfill the remainder of Vice President J.D. Vance’s vacated term).

Merrin, Kaptur’s opponent, began his political career in Waterville, Ohio, winning a spot on the city council at 19 and becoming mayor at 21. He served four terms in the Ohio House, where he led efforts to reduce Ohio’s income tax and expand private-school vouchers while heading the GOP caucus. His campaign did not respond to an interview request. Tom Waniewski, the communications chair of the Lucas County Republican Party, said Merrin would bring new leadership and fresh ideas to a region that’s struggled against deindustrialization. “Lucas County and our district has suffered a lot, and that suffering has gone on under the last 43 years with Congresswoman Kaptur,” he told me.

So far, Kaptur has out-raised Merrin 4 to 1. Kaptur has raised nearly $4.3 million this cycle, compared to Merrin’s $1.2 million. Kaptur’s largest organization-affiliated donations come from the liberal, pro-Israel J Street; Merrin’s largest organizational funder is the American Revival PAC, associated with GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.-04), according to Open Secrets. National groups like the Democrat-aligned House Majority PAC and GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund are also flooding the 9th District with millions of dollars worth of attack ads.

The Ohio Democratic Party, which continues to cede ground to the GOP in rural areas, has invested in making inroads with the kind of voters that Kaptur could use in her column. Last year, it tapped Chris Gibbs, a former Republican, as its rural outreach chair. Gibbs farms 560 acres of alfalfa hay, soybeans and beef cattle in Shelby County, south of Kaptur’s new district.

“Expenses are just absolutely exploding,” Gibbs said, “much of it from tariffs” and high diesel costs. Gibbs acknowledges the tough race for Kaptur, but noted that her endorsements from groups like the local chapters of the right-leaning Farm Bureau signal she can win support from conservatives in farm country. Kaptur is also endorsed by the more progressive National Farmers Union. “She has credibility in the farm sector,” Gibbs argued.

Graham Oberly, an Ohio Farmers Union member who owns a produce operation in Champaign County, said Kaptur has been responsive to the concerns of smaller-scale farmers. The Farmers Union tries to meet with all members of Ohio’s congressional delegation, he said, “but we often just get listened to, and she’s one of the champions of trying to take it beyond that.”

Still, the race’s outcome may hinge on the national mood more than the individual strengths of either candidate. Democrats, “in a way that would seem truly unbelievable even 12 months ago,” appear viable in traditionally red states, said Toledo Mayor Wade Kapszukiewicz, a Democrat. “No one can win states like Kansas and Iowa and Ohio without rural voters who work in agriculture and who traditionally vote Republican, but who are looking at what tariffs and the cost of diesel have done to their bottom line.”

Across much of the country, he said, “rural votes are in play.”

Bucking the Democratic brand

Last year, Ohio’s Redistricting Commission redrew the state’s congressional boundaries after the 2022 map failed to meet voter-approved guidelines for bipartisanship that would have allowed it to stand for the entire decade. The new map increases the GOP’s statewide advantage from earlier gerrymanders. The 2012-2022 version of the 9th District—nicknamed “the snake on the lake”—carved an awkward blue seat for Kaptur that extended 100 miles from Toledo to Cleveland along Lake Erie. The two ends of the district were so disparate that Kaptur used to produce two versions of her district newsletter.

Kaptur argued the latest map is “meant to confuse the public and make campaigning more difficult, rather than addressing the serious questions that attend to this region and the country.” Three weeks from the election, Kaptur is crisscrossing a district that now spans 11 of Ohio’s 88 counties. (A hit-and-run accident in early August forced Kaptur to spend most of that month in a rehab facility.)

In her TV ads and on the campaign trail, Kaptur continues to lean on her history of bucking her party. In September, she released a direct-to-camera TV ad highlighting that she “voted with Republicans to keep transgender ideology out of our schools.” (In May, Kaptur broke ranks with Democrats to support GOP legislation requiring schools to notify parents of changes to a child’s pronouns or gender identity.) The Lucas County Democratic Party called on Kaptur to remove the ad, while the conservative editorial board of the Toledo Blade newspaper praised her “independence and courage.”

Kaptur defended the ad to me: “I was straightforward in what I said, but I don’t want to change the nature of this election from the serious economic and security issues that are facing the country.”

In 2020, Kaptur evolved her stance on abortion rights, well behind the rest of the party, as she pursued a House leadership role. (Kaptur ultimately dropped her bid to chair the House Appropriations Committee, which she was poised to lose, despite her seniority.) In 2023, she nearly crossed party lines to support Republican Kevin McCarthy for GOP Speaker. After 43 years in Congress, Kaptur’s best known legislation is the overwhelmingly bipartisan 1993 law creating the National World War II Memorial on the National Mall in Washington.

“Marcy harkens back to a time when the Democratic Party’s roots were in rural America,” Kapszukiewicz, Toledo’s mayor, said. “There might not be many people like Marcy Kaptur left in the Democratic Party.”

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Liz Skalka is a freelance journalist based in Maryland. She’s written for HuffPost, Politico Magazine, NOTUS, the Toledo Blade, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the New York Post, and the Stamford Advocate.