HAMILTON, Ohio — Republican incumbent Sara Carruthers has retained her seat in the newly redrawn Ohio 47th House District.

Carruthers was running against 19-year-old Democrat Sam Lawrence. This will be her third term as state representative.

The 47th district includes the cities of Hamilton and Oxford and the townships of Hanover, Fairfield, Reily and Oxford.

Carruthers won with 65% of the vote, while Lawrence received 35%.

Carruthers has served on the committees dedicated to behavior health and recovery, house finance and families, aging and human services.

In a concession statement on social media, Lawrence said while he didn't get the results he wanted, he was still proud of the campaign he ran.

"To every single one of you who followed along, volunteered, and donated, and to my staff — Thank you so very much," Lawrence wrote.

During his campaign, Lawrence had criticized Carruthers for donations she had received after she introduced a bill.

Carruthers introduced a bill in November 2021 that would appropriate $300 million in American Rescue Plan Act funding to Ohio nursing facilities. Soon after her proposal, she received $52,000 in campaign donations from those connected to nursing homes.

Her opponents — including Lawrence — said the donations were a sign of corruption in Ohio. Carruthers disagreed and said the matter was investigated as she turned over phone messages, emails and calendar records, which she said showed zero connection to the donors.

Lawrence — who is a political science student at Miami University — said his number one priority as representative would have been to address corruption, specifically the fallout from the House Bill 6 scandal, which involved a $61 million bribery scheme that was the largest public corruption case in Ohio history.

Lawrence believes that the House Bill 6 scandal was only a fraction of the corruption in Ohio politics in Columbus.

"I decided to run because I see a lot of these issues that are going on, and not just in the federal realm, but in the Statehouse," Lawrence said. "I paid close attention to politics very early on (in his life), and I realized that a lot of these decisions really do affect our lives; I think that's something people my age really don't understand a lot."

Lawrence also wanted to focus on environmental policy, which is something he believes almost 100% of young people agree on.

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