Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges has decided to cast his ballot for Donald Trump on Nov. 8 after publicly feuding with the GOP nominee’s campaign this month.
Borges was cut off from the Trump campaign less than two weeks ago after he criticized the billionaire’s behavior amid the release of an audio tape in which Trump made several sexually explicit comments about women.
“I spoke with Mr. Trump on Thursday and he is very disappointed in Matt’s duplicity,” Robert Paduchik, the director of Trump’s Ohio campaign operation, wrote in a letter to the state’s GOP central committee on Oct. 16. “It’s no great secret that Chairman Borges was never fully on board, but his actions over the last week demonstrate that his loyalties to Governor John Kasich’s failed presidential campaign eclipse his responsibility as chairman of the Ohio Republican Party.”
Paduchik also accused Borges of having an “insatiable need for publicity.”
Nevertheless, in an email to GOP insiders Sunday, Borges announced he would be supporting the party’s presidential nominee in the upcoming election, citing his overwhelming concern about a Hillary Clinton presidency.
“I will be supporting a straight Republican ticket – starting with Donald Trump for president,” he wrote, in an email obtained by the Cincinnati Enquirer. “A Hillary Clinton presidency would be a disaster for our country.”
“The prospect of her winning is just unacceptable to me,” he later added in a statement.
Borges said much of his decision to support Trump stemmed from previous conversations he has had with the candidate, during which he felt he was being “honest with me.”
“He’s listened. He’s taken advice. I haven’t agreed with everything he’s said, and I’ve said so – even to him,” the state party chairman told the Enquirer. “In all my interactions with him, it appears he’s been honest with me, which is something I know Hillary is incapable of.”
The Ohio GOP central committee, led by Borges, endorsed Kasich in the GOP primary. And when tensions between the Trump campaign and Ohio governor reached a new peak at the Republican National Convention in July, Borges was quick to absolve Kasich of any blame.
“[John Kasich] created the environment for the GOP to thrive. He’s never made my job difficult. In fact, he’s made it easier,” he tweeted on the final day of the convention in Cleveland.
