to run in the newly redrawn Ohio's 27th House district and was reelected in 2002 with 82% of the vote. In 2004, she was reelected to a third term unopposed. In 2006, she was reelected to a fourth term with 87% of the vote. Term limits kept Beatty from seeking another term in 2008. Tenure After Chris Redfern left to become chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, Beatty was named minority leader. She served in that capacity during the Ohio 127th General Assembly. She was the first female Democratic House leader in Ohio history. U.S. House of Representatives 2012 election and tenure On March 6, 2012, Beatty defeated former Congresswoman Mary Jo Kilroy, Columbus city councilwoman Priscilla Tyson, and state representative Ted Celeste 38%–35%-15%-12% to win the Ohio 3rd congressional district Democratic primary. She received early support from the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus, Columbus Mayor Michael B. Coleman, and various other Central Ohio political figures, including Representative Tracy Maxwell Heard and former Representative W. Carlton Weddington. Between 2013 and 2020, five of the 88 bills Beatty sponsored became law, all wrapped into broader bills. In 2020, she noted she had "helped to secure" local funding for the revitalization of parts of Dayton and research at Ohio State. 2020 election Starting in late 2019 and into early 2020, Beatty was campaigning for her fifth term as the representative of Ohio's 3rd congressional district. She faced her first primary challenge since she was elected in 2012, with The Columbus Dispatch writing that the "winner of the Democratic primary almost certainly will go to Washington representing the heavily Democratic district." At the end of 2019, it was reported she had $1.7 million in her campaign account. In February 2020, she was criticized for accepting campaign contributions from financial services PACs while also overseeing the House Financial Services Committee. According to OpenSecrets, at the time, Beatty had raised $5.1 million as a candidate for the U.S. and Ohio Houses, of which $1.5 million was from the finance, insurance and real estate industries. In her defense, she argued she had a "record of grilling bank executives who come before her committee and that much of the money from those PACs came from lower-level employees," and that while Congress needed campaign finance reform, the PAC contributions were "legal under current rules". In March 2020, The Intercept reported that Beatty and her husband sold one of their