Trump’s endorsement power is real
People in Trump’s orbit are preparing for his dominion over the GOP to take a hit in primaries scheduled for later this month. The candidates he’s supporting for governor in Georgia and Idaho are both running far behind more establishment-minded incumbents, and several other Trump-endorsed candidates are in toss-up races. Trump isn’t likely to win them all.
But J.D. Vance’s victory in the Ohio Senate primary on Tuesday was an unmistakable victory for Trump. Unlike in the Texas primaries, where the former president backed a raft of successful Republicans — but mostly made safe choices — Trump took a risk on Vance.
In mid-April, when Trump issued his endorsement, Vance was running behind in most polls. And the field included several viable contenders, including former Ohio state treasurer Josh Mandel, former state Republican Party chair Jane Timken, state Sen. Matt Dolan and businessperson Mike Gibbons.
It’s fair to say Trump’s endorsement put Vance over the top. That matters for two reasons. First, we’re still early in the primary season, and Republicans in other states are closely watching Ohio. The Vance victory will keep the premium on Trump’s brand, while Trump-critical Republicans will have every incentive not to draw many distinctions with the former president.
Second, Trump is obsessed with his win-loss record in the midterms. His victory in Ohio, the first major test of his influence, is setting a tone.
The GOP’s 2024 center lane is going to be thin
The best case for a Republican presidential candidate not attached at the hip to Trump in 2024 is that Trump doesn’t run, and that a massive field of Trumps-in-waiting cannibalize one another, leaving a lane open for a more traditionalist Republican.
That scenario got its first real test in Ohio on Tuesday, and for the establishment, the results weren’t promising.
With Vance, Mandel, Timken and Gibbons clobbering each other over who was the Trumpiest, Dolan, who distanced himself from Trump, appeared to have space open to him with a non-MAGA hardliner crowd.
Only it wasn’t big enough. A state senator who spent more than $10 million of his own money on the race, Dolan rejected Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen and, unlike his competitors, said it was time for Trump to stop talking about 2020. He got a late jolt of momentum in the primary as a result, jumping up in public polling.
But he didn’t win. Or even come close. With 96 percent of the expected vote in, Dolan was running third, behind Vance and Mandel, pulling about 23 percent of the vote. That’s a low ceiling for a centrist Republican in 2024.
Dolan isn’t a pure test of the anti-Trump Republican. He was a supporter of Trump, after all, voting twice for the former president. But it’s the closest thing we’ve seen this election cycle to a different prototype for 2024 — and it ended poorly for the candidate tied least tightly to Trump.
Trump’s long game
Trump probably has one more chance to run for president, in 2024. But the 75-year-old former president is putting an imprint on the party in the midterms that could last for decades, regardless of whether he runs again.
Vance, his endorsed candidate in the Ohio Senate race, is only 37. Max Miller, a former Trump aide who won his House primary in Ohio in a landslide, is in his early 30s. In a northeast Ohio House race, Trump-backed attorney Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, who is 30, was running ahead in early returns. Rep. Ted Budd, who has a comfortable lead in North Carolina’s Senate primary, which will be held later this month, is 50.
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