Birds fly past the U.S. Capitol at sunset earlier this month.

In a blow to the Democratic Party’s chances of competing for the new 6th Congressional District seat, Mahoning County Commissioner Anthony Traficanti said he will not seek the position.

Traficanti of Poland, first elected commissioner in 2004, was seen as the party’s most formidable candidate to challenge U.S. Rep. Bill Johnson, R-Marietta, in the newly-drawn district that favors Republicans based on voting trends.

“After careful consideration and talking to my family and close friends, I decided not to run because I can’t put 100 percent into it now,” Traficanti said. “It’s not the time for me to run. The process to create the new district was rushed. It wouldn’t have given me enough time to campaign and to raise the money needed. I wouldn’t have the time to mount a substantial campaign.”

The new 6th District is considered a safe Republican seat based on voting trends: 55.81 percent Republican to 41.83 Democrat with the rest going to other political parties. The district includes all of Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana, Carroll, Jefferson, Harrison, Belmont, Noble and Monroe counties and all of Washington County except for four townships. Mahoning and Trumbull are, by far, the two most-populous counties in the new district.

The Republican-drawn congressional districts are being challenged in the Ohio Supreme Court in two separate lawsuits by organizations that contend the lines are gerrymandered to heavily favor the GOP. The court is to hear oral arguments on the legality of the map today.

“With being commissioner, it would not allow me to give 100 percent to running for Congress,” Traficanti said. “It’s a large district and it would have taken a lot of my time to campaign. It is a hard district for Democrats to win, but my political ideology is I’m a moderate and I follow a lot of conservative values.”

Traficanti added: “I would have been the only Democrat in the area to have a chance to win. I had people from Trumbull to Jefferson (counties) urging me to run. You need a person with a name and a pocketbook. Bill Johnson has a lot of money and is the incumbent so he has the advantage. I can’t think of any Democrat who can challenge him.”

CHALLENGES

Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairwoman Joyce Kale-Pesta said of the congressional race: “I haven’t even thought about it. (Traficanti) was our go-to candidate. I’m sure someone from Mahoning and Trumbull counties will run. There’s a lot of lawsuits out there so the district may change. Give me till after the first of the year.”

May 3 is the primary date for next year’s congressional election. Because the Republican-controlled state Legislature waited so long to approve the congressional maps, the filing deadline for those seats is March 5. The deadline for other races on the May 3 ballot is Feb. 2.

The new map is essentially a 12-3 Republican map though one Democratic district (Akron and its surrounding areas) and one Republican district (Cincinnati and surrounding areas) have a difference of about 1 percent between the political parties based on voting trends in partisan statewide elections during the past decade.

The existing congressional makeup in Ohio is 12-4 in favor of Republicans, but a state constitutional amendment changed the process for drawing lines that was supposed to make it more fair.

Ohio is losing a congressional district next year because the state’s population didn’t grow as fast as the rest of the country’s.

The new congressional map will be good for only four years because it failed to get the required support from Democratic legislators. It needed at least one-third of the Democratic vote. It received none.

Johnson lives in Marietta, the southern-most county in the district though he’s represented small sections of Mahoning County since he first started serving in Congress in January 2011.

Johnson’s congressional campaign had $1,131,401 in its account as of Sept. 30, the latest filing date.

Several other prominent Democrats have said they won’t run next year including: former Ohio Senate Minority Leader Capri Cafaro of Liberty; Lou Gentile of Steubenville, a former state legislator; John Boccieri of Poland, a former congressman and state legislator; and Sean O’Brien of Brookfield, a former state legislator who is running next year for Trumbull County Common Pleas Court judge.

dskolnick@vindy.com

dskolnick@tribtoday.com