Dowlin had run ads calling attention to DeWine leaving his pregnant wife and their two children for a mistress working as a lobbyist.

McEwen ran television ads that lamented DeWine's "desperate, untrue attacks" but did not attempt to refute them, instead focusing on how he would continue to advance the idea of Ronald Reagan.

However, spokesmen for Ohio's Deborah Pryce, chairman of the House Republican Conference, the body which decides such matters, denied McEwen would automatically get his former seniority back.

McEwen had high-profile endorsements from Focus on the Family leader James Dobson, former United States Attorney General Edwin Meese, Cincinnati Bengals player Anthony Muñoz, American Family Association president Donald Wildmon, Citizens for Community Values anti-pornography crusader Phil Burress, and former New York congressman and 1996 vice presidential candidate Jack Kemp, who came to the district to campaign for him.

Jean Schmidt was criticized in ads paid for by the Club for Growth, the Washington, D.C.–based group associated with Grover Norquist which campaigns for lower taxes and actively works for the defeat of Republicans it considers insufficiently conservative.

Its president told The Cincinnati Enquirer that Schmidt had "a pretty good record" in Columbus and that the OTA's political action committee had endorsed her.

In one mailing to voters, she promised to "reduce our taxes", "keep our nation safe", advocated "a responsible energy policy", and for "promoting family values."

Schmidt's campaign literature noted her pro-life voting record, her opposition to gay marriage, her high ratings from the National Rifle Association, and that she "opposes an activist court system that acts against our conservative values."

Her literature also featured her endorsement by Phil Fulton, a pastor who fought the court ordered removal of tablets containing the Ten Commandments from the grounds of schools in Adams County.

He also faced complaints from his constituents that he spent too much time on his Congressional campaigns and meeting high Democratic officials such as Bill Clinton rather than attending to local issues.

Victoria Wells Wulsin, a doctor from Indian Hill, was the head of a charity, SOTENI International, that was funding an AIDS prevention campaign in Kenya.

Her platform was not one that would win many fans in the conservative Second District: pro-choice, pro-gay rights, opposing the Iraq War, and calling for the repeal of the tax cuts that George W. Bush had advocated and Congress had passed.

Jeff Sinnard, a civil engineer who proudly noted he was a "stay-at-home dad", was the most conservative Democrat in the field, quoting the Bible on his web-site and expressing his opposition to gay marriage and abortion: "I endorse a reverence for human life and dignity from conception to natural death."

Many party leaders expressed their gratitude for Sanders for his past service but backed Paul Hackett, an attorney from Indian Hill.

Timothy Burke, chairman of the party in Hamilton County, said "The blunt reality is that Charles Sanders can't win the 2nd District seat."

Victoria Wells Wulsin, a doctor from Indian Hill who ran a charity helping AIDS patients in Africa, also sought the nomination; the Hamilton County endorsement dismayed her.

John Green, a political science professor at the University of Akron told USA Today "It's a real steep uphill climb for Hackett.

Jane S. Anderson, an adjunct professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati who has unsuccessfully run for the Cincinnati city council and the Ohio House as a Democrat, told the Associated Press Martin Gottlieb of the Dayton Daily News wrote a Republican landslide in the district was "a self-fulfilling prophecy": Hackett attracted national attention to what had always been considered a safe Republican district.

The National Republican Congressional Committee, the official Republican Party body that helps candidates for the United States House of Representatives, announced on July 28 it was spending $265,000 for television ads in the Cincinnati market, covering the western part of the district, and $250,000 for ads in the Huntington, West Virginia, market, covering the eastern half.

A mailing to voters by the DCCC reiterated these statements under the headline "Who Voted for the Taft Sales Tax Increase—the Largest in Ohio History?"

After her primary win, Schmidt flew to Washington, D.C., to attend fundraisers and have a campaign commercial shot featuring her with George W. Bush.

Schmidt also won the endorsements of the Southern Ohio Board of Realtors and the Fraternal Order of Police Queen City Lodge #69.

The Coalition Opposed to Additional Spending and Taxes [1], a Cincinnati-based group founded by Tom Brinkman (who lost the GOP primary to Schmidt), began running ads in the last week of July urging voters to skip the election.

COAST's president, Jim Urling, told The Cincinnati Enquirer that this might help elect Hackett, but "we think it will be easier to remove a Democrat next year than an incumbent Republican posing as a conservative."

The Daily News said Schmidt's attacks on Senators Mike DeWine and George Voinovich–Schmidt had asked "what kind of men do we have in Washington representing us right now?

One refuses to back the president and the other is crying on national television"–were "remarkably classless" and "seemed to be saying that voters who like legislators who exercise occasional independence from their party should not vote for her."

Some of her comments can lack tact, and she relies too often on anecdotal evidence to prove a point," but endorsed her: Controversy arose over whether Schmidt had failed to list gifts received when she was in the Ohio General Assembly on her financial disclosure statements.

The Clermont County Democratic chairman, Dave Lane, told the Dayton Daily News "Here we are in the reddest of red districts and it was very, very close."

Her boss, Charlie Cook, told the Los Angeles Times Hackett's "rubber stamp" charge had resonated with Ohio voters.

Mark Steyn, a conservative Canadian columnist, wrote in the Irish Times "Paul Hackett was like a fast-forward version of the John Kerry campaign" who "artfully neglected to mention the candidate was a Democrat."