First, le fils. Next, le pere.

Let this be the first shot in the war against the 7 Dwarfs.

Tuesday night, Jean Schmidt learned there is life after death in politics, while Hamilton County commissioner Pat DeWine was getting a lesson of his own - that nearly $1 million and a famous name don't guarantee victory.

Sending a message?

As impressive as Schmidt's victory was, so too was the fall of Hamilton County Commissioner Pat DeWine, who finished a distant fourth, even in his home county.

DeWine entered the race as the clear favorite, with his name recognition and his fundraising ability, but fell far short of his goal of going to Congress.

See our political class in action:

One thing was clear from Tuesday's primary - whether they voted for Schmidt or McEwen or Tom Brinkman Jr., the party's most fervently conservative voters dominated the Republican primary.
And they clearly sunk DeWine's candidacy.

This was nothing like a typical election; it was not a November ballot topped by a presidential or gubernatorial contest and trailing a long list of local offices and issues to decide.

It was held in the middle of June, with the kids out of school, families busy guzzling gas on family vacations, and only one thing on the ballot for voters to decide.

This was an election for hard-core, serious voters - voters motivated by issues or dedication to one candidate or another, and willing to dodge the thunderstorms that raced across the entire district during the prime late-afternoon voting time.

"The people who are going out to vote in this election are people who are really serious about this," said former Adams County commissioner Bob Semple of Winchester, who backed McEwen in the race. "This is not an election where people come out and vote for somebody just because they remember his name."

Therein lay DeWine's basic problem - he started this campaign with near universal name recognition - earned on his own in Hamilton County, bequeathed to him by his father, U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, in the rest of the district. That name meant instant ability to raise staggering sums of money - nearly $1 million, nearly three times the loot that other major candidates were able to amass.

But what he lacked from the start was a constituency, a large mass of highly motivated voters who would come out in the middle of June to vote for him because of his position on issues or because of long-standing support of him as a public official.

Tuesday night, after his defeat became apparent, DeWine said he had "realized 10 days ago that this would be a difficult race. But we continued to work hard."

Many voters were upset over DeWine's personal life - the fact that he left his wife and children two years ago while having an affair with another woman, something the candidate said repeatedly during the campaign he took full responsibility for.

"Family values and the fact that he never really spoke out strongly against abortion" were the factors that led 31-year-old Jason Bedell, a seminarian at Mount St. Mary's Seminary of the West, to reject DeWine and cast his ballot for Brinkman Tuesday.

Others objected to the fact that DeWine seemed to be job-hopping. Last year, while serving on Cincinnati City Council, he ran for Hamilton County commissioner and won. Six months later, he was running for Portman's seat in Congress.