Voters in each of Ohio's 15 congressional districts will have choices to make for who appears on the ballot in their district in the general election in November. But voters in the 6th Congressional District will have to make that choice twice.
The 6th District’s seat was left open after former Republican Rep. Bill Johnson stepped down in January, part-way through his seventh term in Congress, to become president of Youngstown State University.
The open seat has attracted two Democrats and three Republicans hoping to compete for the seat.
However, for the March primary, voters in the 6th District are being asked to choose a candidate to represent their party for a special election in June to fill the remainder of the term and a candidate for the general election in November for the next Congress. Voters can pick the same candidate for both the special and the general election, but they aren't required to.
Who are the candidates?
Two Democrats and three Republicans are competing for their party’s nomination for both the special election in June and the general election in November. Learn more about each candidate.
Rylan Finzer
Democrat Rylan Finzer recently moved from Bedford Heights, where he worked, back to Perry Township in Stark County where he was born and raised. He has worked in the cannabis industry for three years and recently started his own business. The experiences of being a small business owner and a son of a Navy veteran encouraged him to run for office, Finzer said.
“Seeing what is happening with our health care system in the VA and just within our country in general, I believe we need to work together to solve these issues and not tear each other apart,” he said.
Finzer refers to his own experience living in Perry Township in pinpointing what he sees as one of the biggest issues in the district: lack of jobs.
“I left because of the reason that many of the other young folks in the district are leaving,” Finzer said. "They're trying to find good paying jobs, and those jobs just can't be found in the district right now."
Bringing more energy sector jobs to the area is one of his top priorities, he added. Increasing infrastructure funding and protecting women’s reproductive rights and Social Security and Medicare are also on Finzer’s to-do list.
“We're supposed to have a government of, by and for the people, but I think most Americans now can agree and see that we're dealing with a government of, by and for the corporations,” he said. “We must be that small grassroots voice that is speaking up.”
Michael Kripchak
Democrat Michael Kripchak was born and raised in Youngstown.
He worked as a research science and acquisitions officer at the Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts after graduating from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 2004. He then moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in entertainment before attending graduate school at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.
After starting a business in Erie, Pennsylvania, Kripchak moved back to Youngstown when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. He now works at a local restaurant and consults on government contracts, he said.
“I don’t feel I’m a typical Democrat,” Kripchak said. “I don’t want to take my talking points from the national Democratic influencers. I’m focused on the farmers. I’m focused on manufacturing.”
If elected, he said his top priority is to bring high-paying jobs to the area through strengthening unions and encouraging innovation in the Ohio River Valley.
“That includes bringing in advanced composite materials production using the bones of our industry that are already here — using the strength and the work ethic of the people that are already here, to manufacture the materials of tomorrow,” Kripchak said.
Rejuvenating the education system and supporting local farmers are also important to Kripchak.
“Farmers have the right to own the seeds that they plant, they have the right to repair the equipment that they use and then need to be free of the worry of this debt spiral that so many of them are falling into today,” he said. “And we do that by working on the farm bill.”
Kripchak said it was the events at the capitol January 6, 2021 that inspired his run for office.
“The long and short of it is that too many people have died, both civilian and military, to get our country to where we are today as a world leader representing freedom around the world for us to just throw it away to authoritarianism,” he said.
Michael Rulli
Republican Ohio Sen. Michael Rulli is in his second term representing the 33rd Senate District which covers Mahoning and Columbiana counties, according to a bio on the Ohio Legislature's website. His family has lived and owned a business in the Mahoning Valley for generations. Today, he lives in Salem.
His campaign website indicates he previously served as president of the Leetonia School Board and received the Torch Award from the Better Business Bureau in 2017. Rulli lists education, a stable economic climate and safe communities as top priorities.
Rulli did not make himself available for an interview despite repeated requests.
Reggie Stoltzfus
Republican Ohio Rep. Reggie Stoltzfus has represented the 50th State House District since his election in 2019. Located in the Northwest corner of the 6th Congressional District, the 50th covers only a portion of the larger congressional district. Stoltzfus said he is working hard to get his name out there.
“It's 11 counties, so we've been visiting every county,” he said. “Lot of road time. It's a big district. We've been meeting a lot of people.”
If elected, Stoltzfus said he plans to prioritize the economy by capitalizing on the oil and gas supply in the 6th District and getting the national debt under control.
“We're expected to balance our checkbooks. We’re expected to pay our taxes,” he said. “The federal government just doesn't do that, and we've got to get the federal government back on track and get them fiscally responsible.”
Curbing illegal immigration is also important to the health of the economy, Stoltzfus added.
“When folks come across the border illegally, they take jobs from people in the 6th District and across the United States. That's a problem,” he said. “We’ve got to stop that, so the opportunities of Americans are not being taken away by people that are not their kids.”
His top priorities reflect the people’s concerns, Stoltzfus said.
“Those are issues that people on the ground are talking about,” he said. “They want to see our nation get debt-free, essentially, and have a balanced budget.”
Rick Tsai
Republican East Palestine resident Rick Tsai has been a chiropractor for 30 years and has his own practice in Darlington, Pennsylvania. But after witnessing what he viewed as corruption during the aftermath of the Norfolk Southern train derailment in 2023, Tsai decided it was time to run for office.
“I keep saying that East Palestine is a microcosm of what we see in our local and state and federal government, and I think deceit and corruption hold back prosperity,” he said.
Witnessing the issues caused by the derailment firsthand inspired many of his plans for office, Tsai said. This includes supporting the Railway Safety Act and advocating for safe fracking.
“I believe as Americans we need to know what chemicals they're using to put in the ground,” he said. “That's not going to make us anti-natural gas but tell us what you're putting in the ground so if something happens, we know who's responsible.”
He also advocates for addressing problems with the economy, supporting education and controlling the border.
Tsai does not see himself as a politician, but he said he knows changes in government must be made.
“I'm doing this because I feel a need for someone to do it and not have the embedded politicians jump seats,” Tsai said. “This is how politics should be. It should be the common people, and I believe I'm a common person.”
About the 6th
The 6th Congressional District covers the state’s Appalachian region from Youngstown to Marietta. The entirety of Carroll, Columbiana and Mahoning counties are in the district, as well as parts of Stark and Tuscarawas counties. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2022 American Community Survey, more than 700,000 people live in the district, 87% of whom are white.
Most of the population is working class, with household income between $35,000 and $50,000 annually. About 40% of the population is 25 and older and has a high school diploma. Two percent did not graduate high school.
The 6th District includes part of southeast Ohio which contains most of the state’s oil and gas wells. That makes the district an important mining region. More than 6,500 residents work in the agriculture and natural resource industry, 55% of whom work in mining, quarrying or gas and oil extraction.
The district's politics
Although district lines were redrawn in 2022, Sabato’s Crystal Ball still rates the 6th District as safely Republican. Of the more than 500,000 registered voters in the district, about 19% are Republican, and 13% are Democrats, according to an Ideastream Public Media analysis of Ohio Secretary of State records.
“Ohio 6 covers a lot of territory that has really become much more Republican in recent years, particularly with the emergence of Donald Trump as the leader of the Republican Party,” said Kyle Kondik, managing editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virgina’s Center for Politics. “In fact, under the old iteration of Ohio 6 that was in place during the 2010s, no congressional district in the entire country moved further toward the Republicans at the presidential level.”
