President Trump is blitzing Ohio television with nearly $1 million advertising to combat sagging support that Republican insiders in the state blame on the contrast in crisis leadership voters are drawing with GOP Gov. Mike DeWine.
The ads are running in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, and Dayton as the Trump campaign moves aggressively to address the president’s sudden vulnerability in a state that has trended solidly red. The rising fortunes of presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden are a byproduct of dissatisfaction with the president’s handling of the coronavirus and recent civil unrest. Ohio Republicans say Trump’s volatile leadership has looked even worse to voters because of comparison to DeWine’s steady hand.
“Spending resources at this level in June, on TV, means they’ve likely seen a tightening of the race in Ohio,” said Nick Everhart, a Republican consultant with the Ohio firm, Content Creative Media, which advises GOP candidates across the country. “It’s wise to spend now to remedy the situation.”
The Trump campaign flatly rejects claims that the president is in trouble in Ohio.
“Ohioans recognize that President Trump is the leader we need to rebuild our economy and keep our streets safe,” spokeswoman Courtney Parella said Monday. “We have no doubt that Ohio will deliver for President Trump this fall.”
But a Fox News poll showed Biden ahead 45% to 43%. Recent moves by the Trump campaign suggest the president’s political lieutenants are seeing similar numbers in internal polling. On May 28, the Trump campaign bought close to $1 million in broadcast advertising to run through June 10, including $201,000 in Cincinnati, $222,000 in Cleveland, $368,000 in Columbus, and $88,000 in Dayton.
In 2016, Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton by 9 percentage points in Ohio, a strong showing in a traditional presidential swing state typically won by narrow margins. In midterm elections two years later, although Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown won reelection, Ohio Republicans otherwise survived the blue wave that washed over much of the rest of the country. That initially led both Democrats and Republicans to approach 2020 without much thought about Ohio.
The coronavirus pandemic, combined with protests and riots over the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white Minneapolis police offer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes, has brought Ohio back into focus. DeWine is broadly popular for his management of the twin crises, and his balanced, serene, consistent approach has put the provocative Trump in stark relief. The dichotomy in styles has caused establishment-minded suburban voters in Ohio to reconsider their support for Trump.
Many were skeptical in 2016 but could not bring themselves to pull the lever for Clinton. Biden, the former vice president, is a more palatable choice. Their drift is threatening to put Ohio in play down the stretch of the fall campaign, according to a senior Republican official in Ohio.
“Part of the problem is that we’ve had a governor who has been very consistent and calm,” this Republican said. “The president’s been lurching back and forth between presidential leadership and taunting liberal opponents and acting in a divisive manner.”
Republicans active in the president’s campaign in Ohio expect him to outlast Biden.
They say the resources he has sunk into the state surpass anything they have seen in recent presidential elections. They emphasize that his support among working-class voters who, for decades, had backed Democratic candidates is robust enough to compensate for a drift away from Republicans that has accelerated in the suburbs.
Some Republicans also expect that the consequences of unfavorable comparisons with DeWine will ease as the country gets deeper into the reopening of the economy and fears of the coronavirus recede. But to the extent the recent dip in the president’s numbers have forced his campaign to pay closer attention to the state, Ohio Republicans say that has been welcome.
“I don’t think the president needs to be scared about Ohio,” said Alex Triantafilou, chairman GOP of Hamilton County, adjacent to Cincinnati. “But he needs to have a robust campaign to lock down the electoral votes here.”
