This Republican and Democrat Are Finding Common Ground in Ohio

Ohio politics has given Gene Krebs and Sean Logan plenty of reasons to drift apart. Instead, it keeps bringing them back together.

Gene Krebs is a former Republican state legislator, a seventh-generation farmer, and a longtime Ohio public servant whose roots are grounded in rural life, family, and local community. Sean Logan is a former Democratic state legislator who came out of a staunch labor household, shaped by a different political tradition and a different set of lived experiences.

They have served in different parties, represented different constituencies, and disagreed plenty over the years. But today, through Better Choices for Ohio, they are working side by side to advance election reforms that would give more Ohio voters a meaningful voice in the elections that shape their lives.

The initiative is built around a straightforward idea: Ohio’s elections should offer voters more choices, more competition, and outcomes that better reflect the will of the people. Better Choices for Ohio supports replacing closed, low-turnout primaries with an open primary system where every voter can participate, followed by a general election designed to identify the candidate with the broadest support.

For Gene and Sean, that work is not theoretical. It comes from years of friendship, years of public service, and years of watching a political system that too often rewards division over problem-solving.

A partnership built before the reform fight

Gene and Sean’s relationship goes back to their time in the Ohio House, where they first worked together on farmland preservation in the 1990s.

That issue could have easily become just another partisan project. At the time, Gene’s party had recently taken control of the Ohio House, which meant he was often the first person invited to speak about the issue or take the lead publicly. But Gene refused to make farmland preservation a one-party effort.

Sean remembers Gene insisting that the work be done the way their “seventh grade civics teacher would have taught them.” When Gene was invited to speak or lead on the issue, Sean recalled, Gene would say: “No, we’re doing this together. My bipartisan counterpart needs to be invited.”

That choice mattered. It made the work stronger because it made the coalition broader. It also helped shape the way Sean saw Gene — not just as a colleague from the other party, but as someone willing to share ownership of a good idea if that gave the idea a better chance to succeed.

Years later, that same spirit is at the center of their election reform work.

The question that brought them back together

Gene’s path to election reform began with a different question. After years of working on poverty issues, he found himself wondering why it was so difficult to get elected officials to pay attention to issues that were broad-based, urgent, and clearly in need of repair.

That question eventually led him to elections. If lawmakers were not responding to widely felt needs, Gene began to wonder whether the problem was not just the people in office, but the incentives that put them there.

Sean came to the issue through a more personal moment.

In late September 2016, he was talking with his mother about the upcoming presidential election. Voting mattered deeply to her, including as an expression of her faith. But she was distraught by the choices in front of her.

“And you know, it struck me then that our primaries are artificially limiting our choices in the fall,” Sean said.

Soon after, Sean reached back out to Gene. Gene had already started organizing a small group around election reform. Sean wanted in. The two former lawmakers found themselves asking the same question: What would it take to give Ohio voters better choices?

Meeting voters where they are

Gene and Sean met with voters, election administrators, legislators, scholars, and reformers. They studied what had worked in other places and what Ohioans seemed ready to consider. They also paid close attention to the concerns they heard about trust, transparency, and whether voters could easily understand how their ballots would be counted.

Over time, their attention turned to the model now being advanced by Better Choices for Ohio: an open primary followed by Top 3 + Head-to-Head voting in the general election. In that system, voters participate in an open primary, the top three candidates advance, and the general election ballot lets voters choose between each possible head-to-head matchup.

For Sean, part of the appeal is that the voter experience remains straightforward. “There’s just two more ovals that the voters have to blacken,” he said. “It’s A versus B, B versus C, and A versus C.”

For Gene, the key is transparency. Voters should not feel like the math is hidden from them. They should be able to see how a result reflects the will of the electorate.

Readers who want to see how the model works can explore Better Choices for Ohio’s demonstration here: See Top 3 + Head-to-Head in action.

Why the primary matters

For Gene and Sean, the work begins with a shared concern about Ohio’s primaries.

In too many races, they argue, the primary is the election that matters most. And when participation in those primaries is limited, many voters are left feeling like the real decisions have already been made before November.

That problem is especially stark for younger voters. According to State Affairs, among registered Ohio voters under 35, just 4.6% are affiliated as Republican and 3.5% as Democratic. The remaining 92% are unaffiliated — a sign, Logan argues, that the next generation is not finding a home in either major party.

Gene and Sean do not see that as an abstract data point. They see it as a warning sign — and an opportunity.

If young voters are not choosing either party, then the answer cannot simply be to tell them to pick a side. The answer has to include asking whether the system itself gives them a reason to participate.

What they hear from voters

Gene and Sean have spent years talking with Ohioans about reform. Some conversations are energizing. Others are frustrating. Sean says some people do not even want to think about changing the rules of the game. For others, the idea of reform can sound complicated or unnecessary at first.

But the more they listen, the more they hear a deeper frustration.

Sean describes days when he and Gene attend meeting after meeting, then call each other on the drive home struck by how many people are “really, truly hungry.” Hungry for better competition, broader representation, more fairness, and more choices in the process.

They also hear concern about the way current incentives shape elected officials’ behavior. As Sean put it, “the way the current elected officials lose their job is to be outflanked on either side.”

That dynamic is not healthy for voters, candidates, or governing. It pushes leaders to worry more about the next primary challenge than about the full community they represent.

The humility to keep learning

One of the most striking things about Gene and Sean is that they do not present themselves as people who have always had the answer.

They are unusually candid about the fact that their thinking has evolved. In politics, changing your mind is often treated as weakness. Gene and Sean talk about it more like responsibility: listen to voters, listen to election officials, study what works, and be willing to adjust.

That may be the most human part of their story.

Two former lawmakers. Two parties. Two different political traditions. Two people who have spent enough time in politics to know how broken it can feel — and enough time working together to believe it can still be better.

Gene and Sean are not asking Ohioans to stop disagreeing. They are asking whether the state can build an election system worthy of those disagreements: one that gives more voters a voice, more candidates a fair shot, and more communities a reason to believe the process belongs to them.

To learn more about their work, visit Better Choices for Ohio.

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