COLUMBUS, Ohio — Sen. Rob Portman is ready for anything, including running for re-election on a Donald Trump-led ticket.
The Ohio Republican is looking to run his own race. Thus far, Portman’s team has built a top-notch fundraising apparatus, with $13.5 million in the bank, topping opponent and former Gov. Ted Strickland by a 5-1 margin, with a particular focus on the Democrat’s career as an “ineffective congressman” and his gubernatorial record, which Portman heavily contrasts with his work in Washington.
“We’ve constructed a campaign to be able to win regardless of who is at the top of the ticket,” Portman told the Washington Examiner at his Columbus headquarters after criss-crossing Ohio for his campaign’s Super Saturday. “We started this long before Trump ascended.”
“We’re going to be running a different kind of campaign than most Republicans. But you know what? We would have anyway,” Portman said, admitting he never predicted Trump would get this far. “If it was Jeb Bush, we’d run a different kind of campaign. So I think we’re prepared to win regardless.”
Publicly, the campaign wants to contrast Strickland and Portman’s records.
Strickland lost his gubernatorial re-election fight to John Kasich in 2010. During an event in Columbus Saturday, Rep. Pat Tiberi noted that Portman “passed more bills last week” than Strickland’s entire House career, pointing to the senator’s push to curb drug abuse.
However, they are aware of the challenges Trump poses for his re-election bid.
“I’m not naive enough to think that just because we run a perfect campaign, there won’t be some headwinds if the top of the ticket doesn’t do well,” Portman said, adding that he’s consistently run ahead of the ticket in both his Senate and House contests.
While Trump’s race could affect Portman’s, some Ohio Republicans are thankful for his spot on the ticket heading into November, with him serving as a “firewall” of sorts for down-ballot candidates and a protector of the party’s heavy majorities in the state legislature in Columbus.
“The assumption that I’m not buying into is there’s this talk that particular candidates are going to hurt down-ticket,” said Matt Dolan, who’s running for a state senate seat in suburban Cleveland. “With Rob being so prevalent in Ohio, irrespective of the top candidate, he is such a good representative of the Republican Party that we won’t have this feeling of, ‘oh, I’m not voting for any Republicans.’ They’ll be like, ‘well I’m not voting for that guy, but I still support Rob.'”
One place where Portman is placing a lot of emphasis is with millennials, a group typically not warm to Republicans. At a trio of his events on Saturday, field offices in Suburban Cleveland, Dayton and Columbus were crawling with college and high school students phone-banking and setting out with walk sheets to knock on doors, with he and his campaign realizing that they could be key to a win over Strickland.
“I’m going on campus a lot. We’re not going to give up on the millennials. Most Republicans have. They don’t go on campus anymore. Mitt Romney never went on Ohio State’s campus. Barack Obama went there four times. I think it made a big difference,” Portman said noting that Obama won over 60 percent among young voters in 2008 and 2012 in Ohio. “We’re not going to let that happen.”
The Trump factor still lingers, with the potential for the GOP race still being in flux heading into the GOP’s July convention in Cleveland still a unique possibility. But with “red meat” tending to prevail in 2016 thus far, Portman hopes his race could be one of the few centered around substance rather than political flair.
“We really want to control our own destiny,” he said. “We’re doing things that are really different to be able to do well regardless.”
