Ohio special election results: Republican Michael Rulli wins to claim US House seat
Ohio voters elected Republican State Sen. Michael Rulli to be the next congressman for the 6th Congressional District.
Rulli won nearly 55% of the votes in the district, according to the Ohio Secretary of State unofficial results. He ran against Democrat Michael L. Kripchak in a special election to replace former Congressman Bill Johnson, who resigned in January to be the president of Youngstown State University.
Rulli is expected to take office in July, adding another GOP vote to the House Republican's slim majority. Currently without Rulli, the U.S. House of Representatives has 218 Republicans, 213 Democrats and four vacancies.
Kripchak and Rulli will face off again in November for the full two-year term.
More election results from Tuesday: Trump-endorsed Nancy Mace wins South Carolina's congressional primary
Who is Michael Rulli?
Michael Rulli has been a state senator representing a district in the eastern part of Ohio around Youngstown since 2018.
He is the former president of the Leetonia Exempted Village School District school board and the director of operations for his family's grocery stores, Rulli Brothers, with about 200 employees.
Rulli has criticized Donald Trump's conviction for falsifying business records, calling the proceedings a "kangaroo court" that could "be the destruction of the republic."
Rulli is pro-life, supports closing the border, and does not believe human activity causes climate change.
Rulli lagged behind recent Republican wins in the district
Rulli's win is not a surprise in the Republican-leaning district, but his winning margin was notably smaller than some other Republican leaders recently elected.
Rulli beat Kripchak by fewer than 10 percentage points with 98% of the votes counted, according to the Associated Press.
Incumbent Bill Johnson won 74.4% of the vote against a Democratic challenger in 2020. In 2022, he still won by more than 30 percentage points, garnering 67.7% of the vote according to Ballotpedia.
Ohio overall went for Trump over Biden by eight percentage points, but Rulli's Republican-leaning district showed an approximate 30 percentage point win for Trump, according to AP.
J.D. Vance, the Republican Ohio senator who's also a candidate for Trump's running mate, won many counties included in the 6th Congressional district by more than 30 percentage points in 2022.