Meet Don Leonard
I know what it feels like to be standing on the outside of the American Dream looking in. I’m the son of a loving and heroic single mom. Growing up, we saw times when all her resourcefulness and hard work wasn’t enough to keep poverty and homelessness at bay. This childhood taught me the value of personal responsibility. But I also learned the importance of social safety nets, devoted public school teachers, and a measure of dumb luck.
Against all odds, I’ve lived my version of the American Dream. After college, I spent two years with the U.S. Peace Corps in South America. I met my wife while I was a post-doc at Tulane University in Louisiana. For the last ten years, she and I have been blessed to be teachers at Ohio State. As a professor of city and regional planning, my day job was to empower students to think for themselves and reach for their dreams.
My daughter was born at the OSU Medical Center on a frigid night in January of 2025. For three precious weeks I shut out the outside world and focused on caring for my wife and playing disc jockey for endless daddy-daughter dance parties.
By the time I returned to my classroom, the world was almost unrecognizable. Ohio lawmakers were attacking free thought on campus through the passage of Senate Bill 1. Trump’s sloppy tariff war was threatening to drive up prices, crash the supply chain, and wipe out everyone’s retirement savings. Meanwhile, masked federal agents were abducting legal residents off of American streets. All while the courts and Congress looked the other way.
My wife and I looked at our newborn baby and wondered what kind of country she was going to grow up in.
We decided we had to do something.
I am running to represent everyone in Ohio’s 15th Congressional District. I will show up for town halls even when the conversations get tough. I think that’s when we need democracy the most.
If you send me to Washington, I will call out cowards and stand up to bullies. But I will also reach out to fair-minded members of the political opposition from a place of civility. I was raised conservative. Today I am a proud Democrat. But regardless of what you believe or who you voted for, I will never question your moral character just because we don’t see eye to eye on everything..
Working with my constituents at home and my colleagues in Washington, I will fight relentlessly for an economy that’s fair, prosperous, and sustainable—so that Buckeye babies like my daughter can dare to dream ever bigger dreams.