Republican Senate battle in Ohio creates jitters over Trump’s nominee
With just days to go before the election, Ohio’s three-way Republican Senate primary has turned into a food fight, fueling concerns about former President Donald J. Trump’s favored candidate, Bernie Moreno.
Tuesday’s contest to decide who will take on Senator Sherrod Brown has been contentious for months, with Mr. Moreno, a wealthy former car dealer who has never held elected office, struggling to outpace his rivals, State Senator Matt Dolan and Secretary of State Business to avoid Frank. LaRose. But a handful in recent weeks independent studies have indicated that Mr. Dolan, a more traditional conservative with deep pockets of his own, is gaining popularity.
On Monday, Mr. Dolan received the approval from Governor Mike DeWine of Ohio — after receiving support last week from another statewide Republican, former Sen. Rob Portman. That same day, Mr. Trump’s campaign announced that the former president would appear alongside Mr. Moreno in Dayton on Saturday, which was widely interpreted as a sign that Mr. Moreno could benefit from an eleventh-hour boost. (The former president had planned to attend a meeting in Arizona but was diverted over concerns about Mr. Dolan’s surge in internal polling, according to two people familiar with the planning.)
In the home stretch, Mr. Dolan and the groups backing him have outspent both Mr. Moreno and Mr. LaRose, blanketing the airwaves with attacks highlighting inconsistencies in Mr. Moreno’s record that could be important in a Republican primary, like the more liberal views about immigration that he has embraced in the past. At the same time, Mr. Moreno and his backers have portrayed Mr. Dolan as not supportive enough from Mr Trump.
“This is between the steadfast, consistent conservatives of the last 20 years versus the more upstart, populist, Donald Trump-inspired candidates,” said Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican strategist in Ohio who has not endorsed the policy. one of the candidates.
He called Mr. DeWine and Mr. Portman “conservative, popular politicians who have done a lot of good” in Ohio, adding: “That still counts for something, that’s what we’re seeing, and it’ll be interesting to see how much it counts.”
Republicans have seen this year as their best chance yet to defeat Mr. Brown, the only Democrat to retain a statewide position in Ohio. After Mr. Trump won the former battleground state by overwhelming margins in 2016 and 2020, Ohioans sent J.D. Vance, who won his own nasty primary with Mr. Trump’s support, to the Senate in 2022. challenged by a ticket headlined by President Biden, who remains unpopular in Ohio.
Democrats have made no secret of their desire to compete with Mr. Moreno, who has already been the subject of a barrage of negative ads questioning his conservative bona fides and headlines drawing attention to legal issues involving his companies.
This week, a Democratic group began running an ad highlighting Moreno’s tough stance and close ties to Trump, something Democrats say will be easier to counter in a general election. Mr. DeWine, in a message on XThe interference indicated that Democrats “know he is the weakest candidate to defeat Sherrod Brown this fall.”
Bitterness over the muddled Republican fight has made its way to Washington, where Republican leaders and strategists have privately and preemptively assigned blame. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who disagreed with Mr. Trump over the selection of Republican primary candidates in 2022, casually said that “it would be nice to have a baseball owner here” in the Senate, according to one person with direct knowledge. of the comment. (The Dolan family is a majority owner of the Cleveland Guardians.)
At a meeting of Senate Republicans on Tuesday, Mr. McConnell went further and appeared to question the former president and Mr. Vance’s expressions of support for Mr. Moreno.
“Let’s hope Trump and JD get this right,” Mr. McConnell said, according to two people familiar with the conversation, before adding that “Bernie doesn’t look too attractive.” Mr. McConnell’s comments prompted a swift response from Mr. Vance, who one person said was in the room. A spokesman for Mr. McConnell declined to comment.
Mr. Moreno has attributed the recent attacks and negative reports to his commitment to challenging the status quo, even among Republicans. He posted a message on Friday a video about X from Donald Trump Jr., another prominent financier, who told him during a campaign stop that there were “a lot of people working hard against you.”
“I wear attacks like a badge of honor,” Mr. Moreno wrote. “It means I’m a threat to the establishment.”
Reagan McCarthy, a spokeswoman for Mr. Moreno, said Mr. Dolan was “trying to mislead voters and distract from his anti-Trump, left-wing record.”
“Ohio voters will not be fooled by these desperate and vicious attacks and will nominate the only true conservative in this race on Tuesday: Bernie Moreno,” she said.
In addition to pitting factions of the Republican Party against each other — the old guard versus Trump loyalists — the race has provided a test of Trump’s influence rarely seen in this year’s Republican Party primaries.
In 2022, Mr. Trump endorsed several Senate candidates in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Georgia, who won primaries with his support but lost competitive general elections, allowing Democrats to retain control of the Senate. This time, Mr. Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican Senate campaign arm, aligned more closely, largely avoiding painful primaries.
But the NRSC declined to grant an approval in Ohio. The three Republicans and groups supporting them have collectively spent more than $30 million since January 2023, according to AdImpact, a media tracking company. In the final weeks of the campaign, Mr. Dolan and the groups backing him spent several million on advertising against his rivals.
Jim Renacci, a former Republican congressman who ran against Mr. Brown in 2018 and remained neutral in the primary, said Mr. Dolan “seemed to be heading in the right direction, and the other two candidates don’t have the resources. in my opinion to slow him down.
But Mr. Dolan’s support may have a ceiling: He declined to endorse Mr. Trump during the Republican Party’s presidential primaries, backing “Trump policies” rather than the former president personally, before saying he Mr. Trump would “support” once it was clear he would be the nominee. His reluctance could prove troublesome among a primary electorate that overwhelmingly supports Mr. Trump.
“What they see in me is someone who actually gets things done, actually executes, has an agenda, knows the issues, and doesn’t just walk on other people’s backs,” Mr. Dolan said in an interview. a shot at Mr. Moreno.
Brown’s campaign — which raised $5.7 million in the first two months of this year, more than his potential opponents combined — is banking on the continued resonance of his working-class message as Democrats eagerly watch the Republican power struggle .
“Republicans in this race are more focused on fighting each other than fighting for the people of Ohio,” said Katie Smith, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Democratic Party. “No matter which untested rich man makes it through this expensive slugfest, he or she will enter the election damaged, with significant baggage and a steep hill to climb.”
Throughout the contest, Mr. Moreno has portrayed himself as the outsiders’ candidate while leaning on high-profile endorsements, appearing out with Mr. Trump’s eldest son and Mr. Vance, as well as Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota and Vivek Ramaswamy, the former Republican presidential candidate.
Mr. LaRose, the least wealthy of the candidates, has used his background in the U.S. military and his years of government service to portray himself as a conservative fighter, especially on issues like abortion. And Mr. Dolan has presented himself as a consensus-oriented Republican with a softer approach to dealing with undocumented immigrants and access to abortion.
Yet all three men — and the super PACs that support them — have become personal, as many of their policy positions are virtually indistinguishable from one another. Mr. LaRose and Mr. Moreno have joined forces to attack Mr. Dolan as disloyal to Mr. Trump, while both Mr. Dolan and Mr. LaRose have accused Mr. Moreno of shifting his views on everything from gun control to Mr. Trump himself. .
In interviews with nearly two dozen voters at events attended by all three candidates just over a week before the election, the majority said they had not yet decided who to vote for on Tuesday.
Mr. LaRose, once seen as a front-runner and the only candidate to win statewide races, has gone after his opponents after backing two failed attempts to restrict abortion access in Ohio and failing to win passage from Mr Trump. But at a Republican pancake breakfast last Saturday in Cincinnati where all three candidates spoke, Mr. LaRose urged attendees to think about who they “trust” the most.
“That word ‘trust’ is something that transcends people’s big ad buys worth millions of dollars, it transcends a group of famous people supporting someone, and it gets to the heart of the question: When you walk into a voting booth, who do you trust to to represent you in Washington, DC?” Mr. LaRose said in an interview after the event.
Ms. Noem, who supported Mr. Moreno, told voters in Columbus on Monday that she had come “on direct orders” from Mr. Trump, before issuing a warning: “You don’t want to elect a candidate who has a primary like Donald Trump. won’t get here at 1000 percent in November.
But for some voters, like Mitzi Baird of Elyria, Trump’s word wasn’t enough. She showed up to a Lincoln Day dinner at Vermilion confident she would support Mr. LaRose, but continued to lean on Mr. Dolan despite being a “strong supporter” of Mr. Trump.
“I had the feeling that Moreno was there campaigning for Trump, and not for himself,” Ms. Baird said. “I know Trump supported him, but he has to say what he’s going to do – we know what Trump is going to do.”
Michael C. Bender reporting contributed.