A West Price Hill man is accused of punching an Ohio assistant attorney general after asking her for money, according to arrest documents and officials.

Jermaine Johnson, 50, is charged with misdemeanor assault after Cincinnati police say he punched Kathleen Fischer in the face July 1, according to court records.

Fischer was injured in the attack but was not hospitalized, arrest documents show.

Fischer is a senior assistant attorney general in the consumer protection section of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office. She spent more than a decade as an assistant prosecuting attorney in the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office before taking on her new role in 2025.

Fischer is also the daughter of Ohio Supreme Court Justice Pat Fischer, who hails from Fort Thomas.

Arrest documents list Fischer as the victim of the attack. An attorney general’s office spokesman and Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office spokesman also confirmed Fischer was the victim of the attack.

Fischer told police she was walking on Sycamore Street outside the prosecutor’s office around 4:30 p.m. when she ran into Johnson, arrest documents show. Johnson asked Fischer for money and as she continued to walk away, he punched her in the face, documents state.

A Cincinnati police officer then found Johnson two blocks away shortly after.

Johnson gave police a “conflicting statement” but told officers he may have accidentally hit her.

Ohio is shaping up to be a top battleground state this year, and MS NOW’s election team now characterizes its Senate race as a Toss Up.

We are updating the race based primarily on multiple high-quality polls showing a very tight contest, as well as the candidates running and the broader political environment.

The contest is technically a special election to fill out the remainder of Vice President JD Vance’s term. Republican Jon Husted, who was appointed to the seat after Vance took office in 2025, is running to defend it for the first time.

The candidates and structural forces

While Ohio is still often thought of as a bellwether state, it has voted reliably Republican in recent presidential elections. The state has shifted to the right during President Donald Trump’s political rise, backing him in all three of his presidential campaigns.

Ohio’s last few Senate races, however, have been more competitive. Vance won by six points in 2022, while Republican Bernie Moreno beat Democrat Sherrod Brown by less than four points in 2024, narrowly ousting Brown from office after he served three terms in the Senate.

Brown’s showing two years ago is more impressive than it might seem at first blush. A relatively well-liked senator with working-class appeal, he was likely dragged down by his party’s brand. He came close to hanging onto his seat in an unfavorable environment for Democrats. That four-point loss meant he ran ahead of Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump by 11 points.

And 2026 looks to be a much better environment for Democrats.

Trump’s approval rating and the GOP’s favorability ratings are underwater amid an unpopular war and widespread economic dissatisfaction. Brown is running again, and polls indicate he has a real shot at flipping the seat.

The polls

No single poll should be viewed as definitive, but a clear pattern has emerged in recent weeks. A Fox News poll made waves four weeks ago, showing Brown with a lead outside the poll’s margin of sampling error. Since then, two more high-quality polls have shown a very competitive race: one commissioned by AARP and fielded by a bipartisan team of pollsters, and the other released this week by the New York Times and Siena College. Both show a three-point race, which is well within the margin of error, and they differ on which candidate is ahead. This is what polling in a true toss-up race looks like.