Supreme Court Declines to Put Former DNC Candidate on Ohio GOP Primary Ballot

A federal appeals court previously declined to intervene in the dispute.

The Supreme Court in Washington on Feb. 21, 2026. Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times

The U.S. Supreme Court on April 9 declined to reinstate Samuel Ronan, who previously ran for office as a Democrat, on the Republican ballot in an upcoming May 5 primary election for the U.S. House in Ohio.

The court’s ruling took the form of an unsigned order. The court did not provide reasons for its decision. No justices dissented.

The ruling means Ronan’s name will not appear on the ballot for the Republican nomination for Ohio’s District 15 for the May 5 election. Ronan was challenging the incumbent, Rep. Mike Carey (R-Ohio).

A voter filed a protest against Ronan, claiming that Ronan, who has changed party affiliation over the past decade, bore no allegiance to the Republican Party.

Ronan previously ran for the Republican nomination for Ohio’s District 1 in 2018.

In 2017, he was a candidate for chair of the Democratic National Committee, and in 2016, he ran unopposed for the Democratic Party nomination for District 62 of the Ohio House of Representatives.

After Ronan was placed on the May 5 primary ballot by the Franklin County Board of Elections on Feb. 17, the Ohio secretary of state removed him on March 19. A federal district court said in an April 6 ruling that “the public interest would not be served by allowing a candidate to appear on the ballot after the State has determined he falsified his declaration of candidacy.” Later the same day, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declined to intervene in the case.

Officials removed Ronan from the ballot “based solely on the content of his political speech,” after concluding that his past statements were not consistent with Republican principles, Ronan’s attorneys said in an emergency application to the Supreme Court.

However, Ronan’s was not a “‘strategic candidacy’ or some kind of trick,” the application said.

Ronan acknowledged that he was once a Democrat, and he now wants “to win over Republican voters by advocating his values—values he believes Democrats have forsaken,” the application said.

It also stated that President Ronald Reagan, President Donald Trump, and hundreds of other former Democrats have done the same.

Ohio Solicitor General Mathura Sridharan said Ronan is a Democrat and has spent a decade trying to have Democrats “primary Republicans in deep red districts, as Republicans.” His campaign manager has said their intent was to “torpedo the Republican Party from within,” according to Sridharan.

Officials were justified in removing Ronan from the primary ballot for being untruthful on his candidacy form about being a member of the Republican Party and being willing to honor that party’s principles, which is a violation of Ohio’s good-faith candidacy-declaration requirement, Sridharan said in a brief.

Ronan’s attorney, Mark R. Brown, said he and his client are “disappointed” in the new ruling.

Brown told The Epoch Times that the process was unfair and that Carey was allowed to “surreptitiously sabotage Ronan’s ballot access by secretly enlisting the Ohio Republican Party to protest Ronan.”

During the evidence-gathering phase of the lawsuit, Ronan found out the Ohio Republican Party “protested him at the request” of Carey’s campaign, according to the application.

The Epoch Times asked Carey’s congressional office to comment but received no response by publication time.

Franklin County Prosecutor Shayla Favor welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The district court and Sixth Circuit were correct to conclude that the county board of elections protest hearing did not violate due process, Favor told The Epoch Times.

“In conducting protest hearings, the Board acts in a quasi-judicial capacity, and the courts properly recognized that Mr. Ronan received a fair and impartial hearing,” she added.

The Epoch Times reached out to Sridharan but received no response by publication time.