Dems Sweep Columbus City Offices; Turnout Light in N. Ohio; SW Ohio Slow In Counting Ballots

In Ohio's capital city, the democrats swept the mayor's race and all city council races. Anti-gun Mayor Michael Coleman handily defeated challenger Bill Todd by 40 percentage points. And all five incumbant democrats on council won their races.

One judicial race to watch, where an anti-gun former member of Columbus City Council is waging a fierce struggle to hold the judgeship she was appointed to in April, will probably go late before a winner is announced. Franklin County Municipal Judge Patsy Thomas is losing to attorney David Tyack. In the campaign, Thomas touted her "get tough" programs while on Council, which included "tearing down crack houses." But in Council hearings on the city's ill-advised ban on so-called "assault weapons" a few years ago, Thomas appeared to coddle drug dealers, stating that the courts were sentencing too many people on drug charges to jail.

Across much of far northern Ohio, gale-force winds and cold unrelenting drizzle kept many people away from the polls today in one of the lowest turnouts known. I talked to some friends who split their time between Columbus and Middle Bass Island on Lake Erie. They said they were glad they voted at the Franklin County Board of Elections last week because wind and deteriorating lake conditions had forced ferry operators to shut down service between the mainland and islands today. "We couldn't get off the island today if we wanted to," they said.

A slowdown in the Cincinnati area have some people concerned tonight. While most Southwest Ohio counties had nearly all their votes counted by 10 pm, Hamilton County still had only absentee ballots -- and just 38 precincts counted.