Marcia Fudge Democratic Shontel Brown Democratic On March 10, 2021, Marcia Fudge resigned her seat in the United States House of Representatives, after being confirmed by the United States Senate to serve as the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Biden administration.

Governor Mike DeWine set the primary date for August 3, concurrent with the special election in Ohio's 15th congressional district.

[3] Turner filed paperwork to register a committee by the name of "Nina for Us" with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on the day the Fudge appointment was announced.

[4] On December 10, Fudge's nomination was made official; five days later, Turner announced her candidacy in the special election for Ohio's 11th congressional district.

[7] On February 19, The Plain Dealer and Cleveland.com Editorial Team called on Brown to resign as Cuyahoga County Democratic Party chair in order to avoid conflicts of interest, and to "restart the process of amassing local endorsements from scratch" as a candidate and not a "powerful local chair".

[10] By mid-June, Seth Richardson of The Plain Dealer considered Turner the sole front-runner, as expected support for Brown's campaign had not materialized.

[12] In late June, several senior and more moderate Democrats publicly announced their support for Brown; these endorsements were noted as resulting in large fundraising hauls for Turner,[13] but they caused Brown to rise substantially in the polls, though her fundraising totals remained behind Turner's.

[14] In July, Brown was referred to the Ohio Ethics Commission over allegations made in an article in The Intercept that she had used her influence to award government contracts to campaign donors.

A press release from the Brown campaign says that their internal polling also showed that Turner's loss could be attributed in part to her comparison of voting for then-candidate Joe Biden to "eating half a bowl of shit".

Representative Hakeem Jeffries described this institutional success as a marker Democratic voters' disinterest in the more strident ideological rhetoric of the leftist faction.