Ohio — 14th District

CLEVELAND - Three Democrats hope voter backlash against President Donald Trump will help them wrest Ohio’s 14th congressional district seat from Republican U.S. Rep. Dave Joyce, who has held it since 2013.

Joyce, of South Russell, is seeking his eighth term. He faces a May 5 Republican primary challenge from former Trumbull County Commissioner Niki Frenchko of Warren, who argues he isn’t conservative enough. If he beats back that challenge, he’ll face one of the three Democrats hoping to turn around a district the Cook Political Report rates as R+10 — and that hasn’t sent a Democrat to Washington since 1995.

The Democratic candidates are former Ohio Supreme Court Justice Bill O’Neill, who unsuccessfully sought the seat in 2008 and 2010; former Euclid council member Maria Jukic, who unsuccessfully tried to file for the seat as an independent in 2024; and Moreland Hills craft brewer and restaurateur Carl Setzer. All three live in Cuyahoga County, which is outside the district. Ohio law does not require candidates to live in the congressional district they want to represent. None had reported raising any money when Federal Election Commission reports were last filed, representing fundraising through the end of 2025.

Bill O’Neill - Democrat O’Neill, a retired Army officer, former Ohio Supreme Court justice and registered nurse, is making his third bid for the area’s congressional seat. He says its new boundaries mesh better with turf he served on the bench as an appellate judge, so he’s optimistic it will improve his chances.

“I’m running again because I can’t walk away while our government is being destroyed,” says O’Neill, denouncing cuts to the Medicaid budget to fund “tax reductions for millionaires and billionaires,” and claiming government systems including health care, the military and the courts are “under attack right now.”

He said his military background, legal expertise and healthcare experience uniquely equip him to take on Joyce, saying “all three of those skills are needed in Washington today.”

In addition to seeking the congressional seat multiple times, O’Neill unsuccessfully ran for governor in 2017. During that campaign, he drew international attention for a social media post where he revealed he had been “sexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females.” He later apologized.

O’Neill is running a self-described “no money from nobody” campaign. He has launched a volunteer program called Bill’s Brigade, in which supporters are asked to personally deliver campaign literature to 20 Democratic neighbors.

“This race is going to be dictated by Donald Trump,” says O’Neill. “I don’t think Donald Trump is very popular right now with the independent and Democratic voters, and that’s enough for me to win.”

Economy: O’Neill said the economy under President Biden was strong and that the Trump administration has damaged it. “Right now, the stock market’s up and people cannot afford food.” He says Medicare for All is central to his economic platform because of the financial burden healthcare costs place on working families, and said that bringing healthcare under a federal system would free employers and workers from the volatility of private insurance markets.

Immigration: O’Neill says he supports giving people in the country a pathway to citizenship. He says millions of immigrants are “being productive citizens, they’re doing work, they’re paying their taxes” yet have to live in fear of ICE, which he described as an “abomination” that needs to be reined in. He supports securing the border, slowing the pace of arrivals, and getting “bad guys” out of the country, but said the United States has been absorbing immigrants for 200 years. “This is the land of the free,” he said. “We’re all immigrants, unless you’re a Native American.”

U.S. intervention in Iran: O’Neill described the attack on Iran as “unconstitutional” and called Joyce’s support for the military strikes without congressional authorization “fundamentally wrong.” “One man does not have the right to start a war and imperil our young people,” O’Neill continued.

Maria Jukic - Democrat Former Euclid council member Jukic says she decided to run for Congress after federal agents killed Renee Good in Minneapolis. It added to her growing sense of alarm at Trump administration actions she believed to be unconstitutional, and her sense that Congress wasn’t standing up to the abuses.

“I was outraged by the egregious and reckless behavior of these agents and was sickened by the reality of seeing swarms of armed, masked, lawless secret police operating with impunity on the streets of America,” she said.

She spent 24 years in healthcare administration at Cleveland Clinic — most recently as director of arts and medicine — before being laid off last year. An attorney, she also has background in international humanitarian work, having worked in Croatia during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

Jukic says Joyce “has lost his way” and “abandoned his responsibility to act as an independent branch of government.” She is upset with his votes against a resolution directing the president to stop military action in Iran without congressional authorization, his support for the “One Big Beautiful Bill,” and for backing GOP legislation that she said would suppress voting. She also criticized his numerous votes to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

Jukic said she would be the first woman to hold the seat and that her background in healthcare, law and local government makes her well-suited to serve in Congress. She said she has been in Lake County and the district nearly every day during the campaign.

“I am ready to take our shared values to Washington and fight for the middle ground that brings us all together,” she says.

Economy: Jukic said that Trump’s “illegally” imposed tariffs and the conflict in Iran must both stop to bring down prices of gasoline and consumer staples. She also calls for increasing the minimum wage, investing in infrastructure, providing direct assistance to struggling families and reforming tax policy to ease burdens on working families. Longer-term solutions require addressing decades of wealth transfer from the working class to the wealthy, she says, arguing that large corporations, hedge funds, private equity and other special interests have exploited American workers.

Immigration: Jukic said ICE must be “reined in, retrained, and restructured,” arguing the agency is violating the constitutional rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. Indiscriminately detaining people based on their appearance and in pursuit of daily quotas “is immoral, illegal, and anti-American,” she said. She backs a citizenship pathway for immigrants and calls for expanding immigration court resources, developing legal pathways for needed workers to enter the country, creating temporary visas for seasonal workers and improving processes for refugees and asylum seekers.

U.S. intervention in Iran: Jukic called the attack on Iran “blatantly unconstitutional, illegal, and immoral.” She called out Joyce and other congressional Republicans for what she described as cowardice in failing to assert their constitutional authority and demand an end to the conflict. She applauds Pope Leo XIV’s recent call for “reasonable, sincere, and responsible dialogue” in place of military threats.

Carl Setzer - Democrat Setzer is perhaps the most unusual candidate in the field. Born and raised in Painesville, he left Northeast Ohio at 18, eventually founding China’s first craft brewery in Beijing — Great Leap Brewing — with his wife, growing it into one of the largest craft operations in the country before losing the business during the COVID-19 pandemic when private equity investors triggered a ratchet clause in their agreement. He returned to the Cleveland area, where his wife launched a nationally recognized modern Chinese restaurant, Abundance, in Cleveland Heights.

Setzer said what drew him into the race was a combination of personal history, civic alarm and a specific understanding of the district’s hardened conservative communities that he says other candidates lack. He grew up in what he described as a radicalized evangelical church in Lake County — Shiloh Christian Church — and said the experience gave him insight into why voters in rural parts of the district have become increasingly angry and alienated, and how to reach them.

“It requires community, it requires empathy, and it requires not calling them a moron because you’re mad at them, because that just makes them believe in their thing even more,” says Setzer.

ICE’s killing of Minneapolis protestors and concerns about his own family also motivated his run. His wife is a newly naturalized citizen and his son, born in Beijing to an American father, has a U.S. consular birth certificate.

“A couple of executive orders could take my family of four US citizens down to two and possibly just one,” he said.

Setzer said voters who hear his story tend to find it compelling and argued that a more conventional candidate will lose to Joyce by 25 points.

“I can go to rooms that Democrats usually don’t go to, and convince people that have never voted for a D to vote for a D,” Setzer says.

Economy: Setzer said the first priority is stabilizing economic policy, which he said has been upended by unpredictable tariffs and shifting rules. “One of the worst things you can do for the economy is make it unreliable,” he said, adding that uncertainty about tariffs makes it impossible for manufacturers in the district to project costs, staffing and pricing. His central platform position is expanding Medicare to cover all W-2 and 1099 workers — a strategic starting point he believes would build a working-class coalition and reduce the healthcare anxiety that suppresses productivity. “Once they feel that cortisol level drop,” he said, “their IQ points naturally go up when you’re not under stress and anxiety.”

Immigration: Setzer would like to see an overseas contract worker designation that would let businesses legally hire foreign workers for jobs Americans aren’t available to fill, while requiring those workers to pay into the tax system. He also called for streamlining the path to citizenship. He described his own wife’s naturalization process as exhaustive and humiliating and said the country should return to the swift processing of immigrants that it practiced through most of its history.