Ohio Senate Primary - who is the most MAGA?

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If Republicans want to take back control of the U.S. Senate in November, they need to win at least one vulnerable Democratic seat while holding onto open Republican-held seats in Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Step one is nominating viable candidates in each of these states. If the upcoming Ohio primary is any indication, that may be a tall order. The Republican Senate contest has devolved into an intermittently vicious race with no clear front-runner. Nearly every candidate is frantically signaling their devotion to Donald Trump, as his endorsement would be a game changer. But the ex-president may not weigh in before the May 7 primary.

The dynamics of the Ohio GOP Senate primary were set a year ago at Mar-a-Lago, as Politico reported at the time:
It was a scene right out of “The Apprentice.”

Investment banker Mike Gibbons, former state treasurer Josh Mandel, auto dealership tycoon Bernie Moreno, and former state party chair Jane Timken all made their cases for The Boss’s support. One observer at the meeting compared the tense 15-minute audition to The Hunger Games The most intense pitch came from Mandel, who has transformed himself from a moderate Republican into a fire-breathing extremist endorsed by Ted Cruz and the Club for Growth. “Mr. President,” he reportedly told Trump, “I only know two ways to do things: either not at all or balls to the wall. I hired a bunch of killers on my team. I’m a killer, and we’re going to win the primary and then the general.”

The primary got even Trumpier when Hillbilly Elegy author and former venture capitalist J. D. Vance entered the race in July 2021. Vance has been struggling to overcome anti-Trump remarks he made in 2016 — mostly by embracing “populist” nationalism more fervently than anyone this side of his friend Tucker Carlson.

All of the candidates (other than Dolan) have gone over-the-top MAGA in messaging too. Mandel constantly refers to himself as “Pro-GOD, pro-GUN, pro-TRUMP.” Timken (who has managed to snag an endorsement from retiring incumbent Rob Portman) calls herself “The Only True Pro-Trump, America First Candidate,” and Gibbons makes a distinction presumably designed to indemnify himself if Trump endorses someone else: “It’s not about Trump. It’s about America First and the ideas and the things that he accomplished.” Gibbons nonetheless trudged down to Florida to touch the hem of Trump’s garment a couple of weeks ago. All these candidates, to one extent or another, have echoed Trump’s stolen-election claims about 2020.

Sparse public polling shows the Ohio primary race as unresolved, though the free-spending Gibbons and the well-known Mandel have led most recent surveys.

Trump-watchers aren’t sure if Trump is waiting to see either which candidate turns out to be the biggest sycophant or who is most likely to win. The former president could endorse multiple candidates or opt to endorse no one at all — particularly since Dolan, the one major candidate who has refused to kowtow to Trump, doesn’t seem like much of a threat.

As the candidates wait for undecided voters to make up their minds, and for Trump to speak, the contest is getting mighty testy. At a debate on March 18, the two apparent front-runners, Gibbons and Mandel, got into a nose-to-nose confrontation that the moderator had to intervene to stop.

Surely, the viewer who enjoyed the moment most was Representative Tim Ryan, who is almost certain to be the Democratic Senate nominee. While Ohio has become a red state in recent years, the state’s senior senator, Sherrod Brown, has shown how a left-of-center working-class “populist” message can work in this rustiest of the so-called Rust Belt states.