Democratic candidates hold leads in both Ohio Supreme Court races

Ohio Democratic incumbent justice Jennifer Brunner and Democratic challenger Marilyn Zayas hold leads over their Republican opponents in unofficial results from the Ohio Secretary of State’s website.

Two slots for the Ohio Supreme Court were open, one currently filled by Republican Justice Dan Hawkins, and the other by the only currently statewide elected Democrat, Justice Jennifer Brunner.

Brunner faced Republican opponent and former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell. O’Donnell spotlighted her time as an immigration judge in Texas as part of her campaign, a time in which she said she never granted asylum for those who were in her courtroom.

With 102,148 provisional ballots outstanding, and 100% of precincts reporting in unofficial results on the Ohio Secretary of State website, Brunner has 2,324,212 votes, or 51.37%, to 2,200,021 votes, or 48.63% for O’Donnell.

Zayays has 2,307,346 votes, or 51.01%, to 2,215,728n votes, or 48.99% for Hawkins.

O’Donnell also aligned with the many Republican judges she defeated in the primary in supporting “originalism” as the method for interpreting the state constitution during supreme court cases.

“I do not take the view that the Constitution, for example, is a living, breathing document, and so I honor both substantive and procedural judicial restraint,” O’Donnell told the Capital Journal in May.

The former common pleas and immigration judge served in the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, clerked for a federal judge and worked in private practice before being appointed to serve as judge in the Franklin County Common Pleas Court. After she left the post in 2023, she served as a federal immigration judge in Laredo, Texas.

She is also the daughter of retired Ohio Supreme Court Justice Terrence O’Donnell.

Brunner has been on the bench since 2021, and has been the sole Democrat on the bench since her colleagues Michael Donnelly and Melody Stewart were defeated in 2024. Since she started on the bench, the court has seen the chief justice change from Maureen O’Connor to Sharon Kennedy, and considered cases on topics ranging from redistricting, data centers, and education, to abortion, victim’s rights, and gender-affirming care.

A state law passed in 2021 required supreme court races to include partisan labels on ballots, something Brunner sued to repeal in 2023. The lawsuit is still ongoing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Ohio, and cites the state’s judicial conduct code in arguing judicial candidates are not allowed to participate in political or campaign activities that go against judicial independence or impartiality.

Brunner told the Capital Journal before the election that she sees it as a First Amendment issue which causes voters to assume she agrees wholesale with the Democratic platform.

“And I’m not in in a position to say, ‘well, it’s more nuanced here,’ or ‘no, it’s not the same here,’ or even ‘yes, it is the same,’ because I’ve got the code of judicial conduct,” Brunner said in August.

First District Court of Appeals Judge Marilyn Zayas is no stranger to campaigning for a seat on the supreme court, but as the campaign moved past the primaries, she said she felt a different energy in the 2026 election.

“I’m seeing how we are losing faith in our court because of politics, and politics has no place in our Ohio Supreme Court,” Zayas said at the Ohio Democratic Party’s primary event in May.

Hawkins was elected in 2024, taking over for fellow Republican Justice Joe Deters, who chose not to run for re-election, but to run for the seat that was held by Justice Melody Stewart. He previously served on the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas. He also spent more than a decade as a trial prosecutor, and a decade as director of Franklin County’s Special Victims Unit.

On social media, he campaigned with the idea that there would be no special treatment or “gray areas” in his method of judging.

“The moment justice becomes selective it stops being justice,” a post on his Facebook page stated. “That is a line this court will never cross while I’m on the bench.”