If you need more evidence that ex-President Trump remains extremely popular and influential in the Republican Party, take a look at Ohio.
In the battle for the 2022 Republican nomination for the Buckeye State Senate seat, there was a race for the two top Republican candidates declared to embrace Trump in a state he comfortably won in 2016 and 2020.
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“I’m running for the United States Senate to defend him, just like when I stood by President Trump and supported the American First agenda,” said former Ohio Republican President Jane Timken on Thursday, in a video announcing his attempt to retire from Republican Sen. Rob Portman. “As your senator, I would move forward on Trump’s agenda without fear or hesitation.”
“I’m a mom and I’m a fighter and I’m getting ready to fight for America First’s agenda and be a champion for all Ohioans.”
Hours later, touting his Trump good faith, Timken emphasized in an interview with Fox News that “no one worked more for Trump and his agenda than I did.”
Timken entered the race a week after Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer and Navy veteran who served in the Iraq war, became the first major candidate to enter the race.
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“I’m going to Washington to fight for President Trump’s First Agenda of America,” Mandel emphasized in a tweet announcing his candidacy. It was a phrase he repeated in an interview with Fox News.
And highlighting his Trump credentials, Mandel said: “I was the first state employee to support President Trump in 2016. I was one of his top fundraisers in Ohio in 2020.”
Mandel’s campaign manager, Scott Guthrie, highlighted in a statement that “Mandel is the only blatantly pro-Trump candidate in this race.”
And targeting Timken, Guthrie added that “while other candidates said they ‘didn’t know’ how they would vote for President Trump’s impeachment, Josh Mandel took a firm and open stand against the false and unconstitutional impeachment.”
It is no surprise that Timken and Mandel are struggling to be the candidate supported by Trump – and both are seeking their endorsement. Trump beat the state by 8 points in his victory in the 2016 presidential election – and by the same margin last November in his defeat in re-election.
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Timken says she was “handpicked” by Trump in 2017 to head the Ohio Republican Party. Aiming at former two-term Republican governor John Kasich, who was one of Trump’s most vocal Republican critics, Timken told Fox News that “as president of the Ohio Republican Party, I cleaned the home of Kasich’s establishment.”
Hours after Timken entered the race on Thursday, Mandel tweeted a photo of Timken with Kasich in the Ohio presidential primaries in 2016, which was Kasich’s only victory in his failed Republican attempt by the White House.
Timken supported his home state governor in the Republican Party primaries that year before supporting Trump in the general election. And Mandel supported Senator Marco Rubio of Florida before supporting Trump.
Kasich quickly accessed Twitter to tweet a photo of him and Mandel together in the 2012 campaign, when Mandel was running for the first time in the Senate, an election he lost to Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.
Mandel retweeted the photo and criticized Kasich, who remains a Republican.
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“Thanks for the message … it was a little unexpected, but I thank you and I will always work with my colleagues across the hall,” wrote Mandel.
Paul Beck, a veteran Buckeye-based political scientist and emeritus professor at The Ohio State University, noted that “it makes sense for Republican candidates to seek and endorse Trump’s endorsement.”
He suggested, “Timken probably has a better chance of getting Trump’s support because she was the handpicked choice to chair the Republican Party here in Ohio.”
On Friday, Timken received an endorsement from former Trump political advisor Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, a high-ranking economic adviser to then President Trump.
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At least half a dozen other Republicans in Ohio are considering a race to succeed Portman. That list includes Congressman Steve Stivers and JD Vance, the venture capitalist who is known for his best-selling memoir, “Elegy of the Hillbilly”.
Trump has given no indication at this point that he will weigh in the Ohio Senate primaries, but he vowed to remain a kingmaker in a party he overhauled and ruled during his four years in the White House. Corey Lewandowski, a top Trump adviser, told Fox News last month that the former president would be “actively involved” in the Republican Party primaries.
The race to embrace Trump in Ohio comes when the latest national polls indicate that the former president remains extremely popular with Republican voters and when he targets the Republicans who crossed him or did not support his efforts to overthrow his defeat for President Joe Biden.
“There is no doubt that Trump remains the most dominant force in the Republican Party now, as a former president who has chosen not to leave the political stage when his term ends,” said former Republican strategist Colin Reed Fox News. “As long as he keeps the idea of running or intervening in the primaries open, he will be the 800-pound gorilla in the room, especially in states like Ohio, which tend to red so quickly.”
With Democrats defending their minimal majority next year, the Republican Party plans to win back the Senate. Part of that strategy begins with maintaining the chair controlled by Republicans in Ohio.
Reed, a veteran of the Republican presidential and Senate campaigns, warned that ‘looking ahead, it is not a ticket for Republicans to win the majority. Any party that loses the presidency goes through a period in the desert when new leaders are looking for ways to fill the power vacuum. But in this case, the new boss is the same as the old one because of Trump’s reluctance to leave the right stage.