The presidential primary season may be over with President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump heading for a rematch, but several down-ballot races are up for grabs that will determine control of Congress. Ohio’s primary on Tuesday will decide which Republican takes on Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown in November, as well as congressional contests key to the GOP House majority. This series, Buckeye Blitz, will examine the politics behind the races and the issues that will drive 2024 turnout. Part One, below, looks at how the Ohio Senate primary represents the stark choices facing the future of the Republican Party.
COLUMBUS — The Republican candidates for Senate in Ohio don’t disagree on much.
All three call themselves staunch conservatives who want to secure the border, restrict abortion, and cut taxes.
But the race is presenting voters with a familiar contrast in the age of Donald Trump, one between the traditional Republicans who have softer edges on both style and substance and those embracing the brawler mentality of the former president.
The first lane is represented by Matt Dolan, a wealthy state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. He’s staked out subtle differences in policy, shying away from the idea of mass deportations for illegal immigrants and the notion of a federal abortion ban.
Meanwhile, entrepreneur Bernie Moreno has run with the same anti-establishment, yield-no-ground bombast that defined Trump’s 2016 run for the White House. Framing himself as an outsider, he wants to make the campaign an indictment of the political class and paints his rivals as fake Republicans ready to “cave” to the Left.
That has led to some notable breaks in policy. Dolan supports continued aid to Ukraine, while Moreno, running under the banner of Trump’s “America First” agenda, does not.
But the sharpest difference is persona. The mild-mannered Dolan distances himself from the former president’s bluster and is the only one of the three who did not seek his endorsement.
“His personality? It’s not me. His political style? It’s not me. But his policies that make your life better, make America stronger, make Ohio stronger — that is me,” he said last week in the final debate of the primary.
Implicit in that statement is an acknowledgment of just how much the party has changed since Trump first ran for president in 2015. Even those who represent a different breed of Republican, one who gravitates toward moderation and civility, are reluctant to alienate his base of voters and find common ground on the accomplishments of his four years in the White House.
Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who is ideologically somewhere between the two other candidates, made that plain when he entered the race. He endorsed Trump within days, emphasizing their “common vision of America’s potential,” but drew the same line as Dolan. In an interview last year, he told the Washington Examiner that he refuses to be a “cheap knockoff” of the former president.
Moreno couldn’t be happier with the reluctance. It has allowed him to pitch himself as the MAGA candidate in the race, aided by a coveted Trump endorsement he received in December.
Moreno’s politics are something of a reinvention, and he had to overcome his own past hesitation on Trump. But his tactics have amplified an inevitable GOP split screen. Dolan plays the pragmatic centrist and Moreno the Trump loyalist.
That rift was put into sharper relief over the last week as Dolan received endorsements from two Republican heavyweights. Rob Portman, the former Ohio senator who retired from Congress in 2022, announced his support. Three days later, so did the state’s governor, Mike DeWine.
The endorsements, taken together with a polling surge in the final days of the race, have put wind in Dolan’s sails. He and Moreno are trading the lead ahead of the Tuesday primary, with LaRose slipping to third.
They also underscore how the race is more than a choice between two stylistically different candidates. It’s a proxy war between two wings of the party.
Both Portman and DeWine emphasized Dolan’s conservative credentials in announcing their support, but it’s their willingness to buck the party line that makes Dolan a more natural fit ideologically.
Portman developed a reputation as a bipartisan deal-maker during his eight years in the Senate, in his final term helping Democrats pass a $1 trillion infrastructure law. DeWine, whose political career spans more than 40 years, also has a pragmatic streak. He’s thought of as one of the most “pro-life” governors in Ohio’s history but earned the scorn of conservatives, and the former president, for vetoing a bill to restrict gender transitions for minors.
That veto was ultimately overridden by the Republican-led legislature.
The two leaders have come to Dolan’s aid in the campaign’s homestretch. Portman appeared at a meet-and-greet in Cincinnati on Wednesday, while DeWine will be featured at an election eve event in Columbus.
Each released a statement on Friday attacking national Democrats for flooding the airwaves with $3 million in advertising meant to elevate Moreno, who performs worse in polling against Sherrod Brown, the incumbent Democratic senator.
“Ohio Republicans should see this for what it is — a cynical attempt by Chuck Schumer and the Democratic power brokers to choose our nominee,” Portman said.
Moreno has brought his own star power to the race. He’s stumped with a rotating cast of Republicans in Trump’s orbit, from South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem to the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr.
On Saturday, Trump himself rallied outside of Dayton on Moreno’s behalf, hailing the entrepreneur as an “American first champion” who would defend his agenda in the Senate.
If Moreno wins, as multiple Ohio strategists predict he will, it would mark another defeat for traditional Republicans.
Just two years earlier, Portman was replaced in the Senate by Trump populist J.D. Vance (R-OH), who prevailed in a crowded primary that included Dolan as well as Portman’s preferred successor, former Ohio party chairwoman Jane Timken.
That race was part of a larger hallowing of the political middle that occurred in the Senate last cycle. Along with Portman, aisle-crossing Republicans such as Roy Blunt of Missouri and Richard Burr of North Carolina retired and were replaced with more conservative members. The same could happen this year in states like Utah.
“This is the issue in this election,” Moreno said at the rally on Saturday. “This is the last gasp of breath of the swamp, RINO establishment in Ohio, and I need you on Tuesday to stab it right in the heart.”
But there is something about the races in Ohio that makes the rightward shift even more pronounced.
Ohio has become red, thanks in large part to Trump, but for decades was a quintessential swing state. DeWine can be thought of as a pragmatist, but that is especially so of his predecessor, former Gov. John Kasich.
The transition has been, at times, uneasy. DeWine himself won a second term as governor in 2022, but he faced criticism for his lockdown policies during the pandemic and was challenged in the primary by three pro-Trump Republicans who may well have defeated him had they not split the MAGA vote.
Tuesday’s Senate primary will offer voters another referendum on the direction of the party; however, one Ohio Republican strategist cautioned against making too much of the ideological split. Dolan presents himself as a conservative on television, not a centrist, the strategist noted, with ads heavily focused on the border, confronting China, and other issues meant to appeal to the base.
“What you say on the stump, it doesn’t reach that many voters. What you tell people in advertising really does,” said the operative, who is not involved in the Senate primary.
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The strategist pointed to Ukraine as one of the few sincere ideological divides and attributed the rest to image.
“This is where it’s typically viewed as, you know, MAGA versus ‘Old Guard.’ But I think what’s really happening more than anything else is, it’s style over substance,” the strategist said.
