OH-01: Democrats just landed an unusual candidate in Ohio's 1st District: Rabbi Robert Barr, who, according to the Washington Post's Mark Oppenheimer, is just the third rabbi ever to run for Congress. Oppenheimer notes that, by one measure, Barr is the most traditional rabbi to do so, since he actually presides over a congregation and has done so since 1980. (The other two "running rabbis" were Dennis Shulman, whom you may remember as the blind rabbi who lost a 2008 race to now-former GOP Rep. Scott Garrett, and Shmuley Boteach, a one-time reality TV celebrity who took just 25 percent as a Republican against Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell in 2012. Both contests took place in New Jersey, and neither rabbi had ever held a pulpit.)
Barr's synagogue, though, is decidedly untraditional: Though he was ordained as part of the Reform movement (the largest Jewish denomination in America), the congregation he leads is not part of any of the major branches of Judaism but rather is identified with a small movement that Oppenheimer says is "loosely called humanistic Judaism." None of this is likely to matter on the campaign trail, though Oppenheimer points out that there's a small but growing contingent of members of Congress who describe themselves as "religiously skeptical, humanist or unaffiliated"—a trend that mirrors what's happening in the United States as a whole.
As for the race itself, Barr faces some serious obstacles. Since winning his seat back in the 2010 wave, GOP Rep. Steve Chabot has won re-election comfortably three times, particularly since his fellow Republicans made his Cincinnati-based seat redder in redistricting. Ohio's 1st would not, however, be out of reach for a Democrat in a good year, since Donald Trump carried it by a 51-45 margin. Indeed, at least one other Democrat, state Rep. Alicia Reece, is still considering a bid, and several others haven't ruled out the prospect, including former Rep. Steve Driehaus, who unseated Chabot in 2008 before getting booted himself the following cycle.