For all the valid speculation that this year’s Republican primaries are poised to turn into a political disaster for Donald Trump that knocks him down a peg or two in the party, the former president is on track to score a rather consequential victory in Ohio.
Public polling and private prognosticators point to J.D. Vance winning the Republican nomination for Senate in the Buckeye State this coming Tuesday, when voters in this key Midwestern battleground head to the polls to pick their standard-bearers for the fall campaign. Vance, the venture capitalist and bestselling author who remade himself from bourgeois Trump critic to populist Trump cheerleader just in time to run for Senate, picked up the former president’s endorsement this month and immediately shot to the front of a crowded pack of Republican contenders.
The May 3 primary is “his to lose,” conceded a Republican operative in Ohio who would have preferred a different candidate.
Vance is a dynamic campaigner with an inspiring story. He rose from dysfunctional family poverty in rural Ohio to serve in the Marines in the Iraq War and graduate from The Ohio State University and Yale Law School. Vance later became a wealthy financier working for Peter Thiel, a Republican megadonor and preeminent West Coast venture capitalist. And he wrote about it eloquently in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, which was made into a movie by Netflix. Yet none of this seemed to matter much to Republican primary voters in Ohio.
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Since launching his campaign last May, until Trump endorsed him (and even with the support of millions Thiel donated to a pro-Vance super PAC) the first-time candidate was stuck in the pack of Republicans vying to replace the retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman. In his most recent disclosure with the Federal Election Commission, Vance reported raising $2.5 million since the start of his campaign, with nearly one-third of that coming courtesy of a personal loan he made to his campaign. That investment shows real commitment, and Vance was hardly the only self-funder in the primary. But it’s not as if he was a grassroots sensation.
So, what’s changed? What happened prior to a Fox News poll conducted April 20-24 that showed Vance leading with 23%? Trump’s endorsement, that’s what.
This goes to show the power of the 45th president’s seal of approval and the close relationship he continues to enjoy with grassroots Republicans — no matter how much trouble he might have later this spring in the GOP primaries in Georgia and Pennsylvania and what losses there by candidates he endorsed might reveal about the limits of his grip on the GOP ahead of a possible presidential bid in 2024.
In case you’re interested, the rest of that Fox News poll read like this: Previous front-runner and former state Treasurer Josh Mandel (18%), wealthy businessman Mike Gibbons (13%), state Sen. Matt Dolan (11%), and former Ohio GOP Chairwoman Jane Timken (6%.) Also, in case you’re interested, the Club for Growth has not given up on Mandel, creating a very interesting subplot as the graybeard of conservative advocacy groups goes head-to-head against Trump.
The former president, and especially his son Donald Trump Jr., have not been shy about hammering the Club for Growth for its apparent intransigence, even as the group is probably responsible for saving Trump’s bacon in North Carolina. There, the Trump-endorsed Rep. Ted Budd looked on the verge of losing to former Gov. Pat McCrory in the GOP Senate primary on May 17 until the club, which also endorsed Budd, poured millions into the race on his behalf.
Budd now leads the race by an average of more than 12 percentage points. With that, to the field …
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Upset Alert. In California, the Republican candidate for state controller has been endorsed by the Los Angeles Times. Newspaper endorsements aren’t what they used to be. But for Lanhee Chen, chief policy aide to Mitt Romney during his 2012 presidential campaign, every little bit helps. Especially if, like Chen, you’re a Republican running for statewide office in California, the bluest of blue states, which has not elected a Republican to any such office in well over a decade.
“Many Californians will balk at the idea of voting for a Republican,” the editorial reads quite accurately. However, the paper goes on to say Chen is not your typical scary Republican. “But one way to restore some sanity to the GOP is to elevate Republicans, like Chen, who operate in the world of facts.” Scoff, laugh, dismiss, whatever. But that’s the sort of permission structure many California voters are going to need if they are to consider voting for Chen and give the Republican any chance to win.
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West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District. Rep. David McKinley, forced by redistricting into a Republican primary against fellow Rep. Alex Mooney, is refusing to back down amid opposition from former President Donald Trump, who endorsed his rival. As my colleague Juliegrace Brufke reported in her dispatch from the Panhandle community of Shepherdstown, West Virginia, McKinley, during a town hall with voters, defended his decision to certify President Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on Jan. 6, 2021, while standing by his support for a bipartisan infrastructure deal that was spearheaded and negotiated by Trump’s successor.
That McKinley is compelled to defend upholding the outcome of an election and explain his support for legislation that could be a boon to West Virginia says something about the state of the Republican Party in 2022. If McKinley holds off Mooney in a state where Trump is popular, that would say something, too.
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2024 Watch. Something curious happened in Michigan this week. Republicans in the state House of Representatives in Lansing expelled a top Trump ally from their caucus. Matt Maddock was not just somebody Trump happened to endorse. The state legislator was effectively running to become the next speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, the legislative body Trump looked to in the aftermath of his loss to Biden in 2020 to overturn his loss in the state by shifting its electoral votes from the president-elect to the defeated commander in chief. Meanwhile, Maddock’s wife is Meshawn Maddock, the vice chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party and Trump’s top consigliere in the state — it’s Meshawn Maddock who has had a hand in the several endorsements Trump has made in Republican primaries there.
Officially, Maddock was defenestrated for sharing confidential information about his Republican colleagues, a violation of caucus rules. That’s according to the Detroit News. But my Michigan sources say Republicans in the state house had grown tired of Maddock recruiting candidates to run against them and raising money to further those efforts as part of his plan to win control of the speaker’s gavel. This action, taken despite Maddock’s connection to Trump, reveals the limits of the former president’s influence, at least since leaving the White House. In a related matter, one less Trump acolyte in a position of power in Lansing could turn out to be a big deal in late 2024 or early 2025, depending on the outcome of the next presidential election and the name of the GOP nominee.
