Pink Rose Society

Akron Statehouse Battlegrounds 2026

Summit County's competitive Ohio House seats — two open, single-digit suburban districts that are the county's real legislative fights.

The seats

  • HD-31 — Mike Kahoe (R) vs. J. Noah Spinner (D). Open: Republican Bill Roemer is term-limited. Covers northwest Summit (Hudson, Stow, Richfield, Bath); the seat ran R+6 in 2024. Battleground.
  • HD-35 — Vik Sandhu (R) vs. Samantha Salamon (D). Open: Republican Steve Demetriou left it to run for the Senate. Covers Twinsburg, Northfield, and Aurora; the seat ran R+5 in 2024. Battleground.
  • HD-34 — Derrick Hall (D, incumbent) vs. Craig Shubert (R). A lean-Democratic watch seat (D+6 in 2024).

The Akron-core seats are not competitive: HD-33 (Veronica Sims, D) is safe Democratic and HD-32 (Jack Daniels, R) is safe Republican.

Why it matters

Both battlegrounds are open Republican-held seats in the single digits — the kind of suburban turf that decides whether Democrats can chip at the House supermajority. Together with the open SD-27, they make Summit County's suburbs a real 2026 arena, more contested than Toledo's safe map though narrower than Cincinnati's cluster.

Sources