COLUMBUS, Ohio — With the state’s primary just days away, Ohio Republican Senate candidate Jane Timken, a former state party chairwoman, is hoping to cut through the “confusion” of the contentious primary in a pitch to undecided voters, she told the Washington Examiner.
The race for the Republican nomination in Ohio, a state crucial to Republicans’ efforts to win a Senate majority in the midterm elections, is still fluid in its final days. The field also includes author J.D. Vance, who has been endorsed by former President Donald Trump, former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, businessman Mike Gibbons, and state Sen. Matt Dolan.
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A recent Fox News poll showed Vance in the lead, but with a full quarter of respondents still undecided. But another recent poll by Blueprint Polling found Dolan in first place, followed closely by Vance. The surge for Dolan surprised some political observers, as Dolan, also a part-owner of the Cleveland Guardians, has cast himself as a supporter of Trump’s agenda but condemned his unfounded claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
In an interview, Timken was optimistic about her chances.
“I think there’s a significant number of undecided voters, and I think at the end of the day, this is going to be about who turns their voters out,” she said. “My voters are sticking with me.”
Timken argued the race should be about “who’s best to defeat Tim Ryan,” the Ohio congressman and front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
“It’s critically important to keep this seat,” she said.
As a candidate, Timken has sought to thread the needle between her support for Trump and her support from some quarters of Ohio’s Republican political establishment, including an endorsement from the state’s outgoing Sen. Rob Portman.
“Sen. Portman has endorsed me,” Timken said. “He’s taken a look at this race and said, ‘This is the person I want to keep the seat.” Timken also said she has “been in the trenches fighting for those America First policies.”
In interviews with self-identified Ohio voters last week, many told the Washington Examiner that they were disgusted or disillusioned by the contentious Republican primary. Asked how she would respond to those voters, Timken acknowledged it has been a nasty process.
“You’ve seen two of the candidates almost come into fistfights at the debate,” Timken said in reference to a moment at a recent debate in which Mandel got in Gibbons’s face.
“There’s candidates in this race who are all about themselves and like to hear themselves talk, or want to wake up every morning and try to get themselves canceled on social media or say the most outrageous thing,” Timken said. “That’s not true leadership.”
Timken said she was “disappointed” by Trump’s endorsement of Vance but argued, “He supported me to become chair of the Republican Party” in Ohio.
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“It doesn’t change the fact that I delivered Ohio for President Trump,” she said.
