Republicans across Ohio are testing the degree to which Donald Trump’s blessing — explicit or not — can push ideologically aligned candidates through next week’s primaries that will set up fall contests deciding control of the House and Senate.
In a state that Trump carried twice by 8 points, even those congressional candidates who once questioned the apparent leader of the party have courted his support and largely mirrored the presumptive presidential nominee’s talking points on the campaign trail.
“The Trump endorsement has become the Tyrannosaurus Rex of Republican primaries,” said Mark Weaver, an Ohio-based Republican strategist.
Once a swing state, Ohio has increasingly trended Republican, with a large working-class population drawn to Trump’s populist and isolationist rhetoric. Sen. J.D. Vance, who became nationally known for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, about growing up poor in Middletown, Ohio, rode to
However, the state’s Republican party still has a more pragmatic strain as evidenced by the success of Gov. Mike DeWine, who keeps Trump at arms length and who won re-election in 2022. The state’s voters also in 2023 overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to abortion access.
Where Republicans will need to tread lightly is in the state’s many suburbs — mostly clustered around “the three C’s” of Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus — where swing voters may shy away from candidates too close to the top of the ticket.
“Someone running in those districts in the general won’t be talking much about Trump,” Weaver said.
But in some House GOP primaries and in the Senate race, staying close to Trump remains a campaign asset, including the northwest Ohio district where a number of candidates are vying to take on longtime Democratic incumbent Rep. Marcy Kaptur.
In 2022, Kaptur beat back a challenge from JR Majewski, an Air Force veteran who protested in support of Trump outside of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He lost to Kaptur by 13 points last year in the Republican-leaning district anchored in Toledo after reports questioning his military service record prompted Washington Republicans to pull their support.
Majewski this year again launched a campaign for the seat but dropped out after failing to receive support from Trump and national Republicans. Two other GOP candidates remain in the race and have clung to Trump to varying degrees.
Republicans in Washington eager to prevent another Majewski-Kaptur matchup and initially rallied behind Craig Riedel, a former state representative who lost to Majewski in the primary in 2022.
But he lost key supporters after far-right activist Charlie Kirk leaked audio of Riedel bragging about his disdain for a Trump’s endorsement and arrogance. House Republican leadership like Conference Chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) and National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (N.C.) withdrew their support.
“I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that if he were miraculously to be the winner, he will not receive Donald Trump’s support in the general,” Majewski said in an interview outside an American Legion outpost in suburban Perrysburg before he suspended his campaign.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) subsequently helped recruit Derek Merrin, a Toledo-area state legislator who waged an insurgent campaign for the Columbus speakership last year. Congressional Leadership Fund, the top-spending super PAC for House Republicans, is now running a TV ad showing Trump next to Merrin in hopes of boosting him over Riedel in a bid for an electable nominee in November. Majewski has also endorsed Merrin.
Riedel was undeterred as he stumped in Defiance County recently. He pitched voters at a northwest Ohio bar — some wearing Trump’s signature “Make America Great Again” caps — on his pledge to finish “Trump’s wall” on the southern border and support for his tariffs on foreign steel.
Riedel in an interview said his previous critique was “water over the dam” and that he has backed Trump’s bid for re-election.
“I have a different way of communicating, that’s all,” Riedel said. “But I totally support President Trump 100%.”
Kaptur in an interview in her Washington office attributed Trump’s appeal in her district, which he carried by 3 points in 2020, to the loss of manufacturing jobs she blames on the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA.
“He didn’t do anything for us,” Kaptur said, citing Trump’s record on taxes and the trade deficit. “The one thing he has is his ability to kind of entertain and show rage.”
Senate Primary
Trump has weighed in more directly in the Republican primary to take on Sen. Sherrod Brown, endorsing car dealer Bernie Moreno’s bid to unseat one of the handful of Democrats representing a state Trump previously won.
Moreno was initially critical of Trump, calling him a “maniac” and criticizing his efforts to sow doubt on the validity of the 2020 election.
During a candidate debate in Findlay, Ohio last month, Moreno said that he built a relationship with Trump in 2022, before bowing out of a bid for an open Senate seat at Trump’s request in favor of Vance.
“I’m very happy I was wrong,” Moreno said. “He knows that I’m the one that’s going to have his back.”
Moreno then boosted Trump financially. He and his wife contributed over $146,000 last year to political groups backing his return to the White House, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
A few months later, Trump endorsed Moreno, praising the “successful political outsider” for his support for Trump’s agenda.
Since then, Moreno and Club for Growth Action, a super PAC that backs fiscally conservative candidates, have together spent over $6.3 million on TV and digital ads touting Trump’s endorsement, according to AdImpact.
Moreno is facing Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Sen. Matt Dolan, who has not sought Trump’s support in his two bids for Senate.
“I will be a great ally of President Trump’s when he’s in the White House and I’m serving in the US Senate,” LaRose said at the debate, citing his support of Trump’s first two presidential campaigns and his work on Trump’s inauguration.
Dolan told reporters after the debate Moreno and LaRose “bent over backwards to try to get his endorsement.”
“I don’t have to worry about” answering for Trump’s pledges to seek retribution against political enemies if he’s returns to the White House, Dolan said.
But when asked if he would have accepted Trump’s endorsement if he got it, he responded: “Sure. It wouldn’t change who I am.”
Brown, in an interview in Washington, declined to comment on the value of Trump’s backing in the race.
“I don’t get into analysis like that. Watch the primary, see what happens on March 19th,” he said. “I know that candidates like to brag about their endorsement, but that’s not really my thing. I’m not a pundit and I really don’t think much about all of that.”
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