Trump-backed J.D. Vance will win Ohio GOP Senate primary, CNN projects
Even as most candidates in the race ran toward former President Donald Trump, the primary is the first Senate contest of the year to test the power of his endorsement.
While Trump did not endorse in the Ohio gubernatorial primary, he played a big role in the contest to replace retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
“It’s OK to change your mind. In fact, you should change your mind when the facts change and I think that’s the truth about my view of President Trump,” Vance said Monday.
Trump’s endorsement of Vance created a jolt of momentum for the author, helping him roughly double his support between a Fox poll in March and another one in April.
But most of the other top GOP candidates vying for Ohio’s Senate seat — including former state treasurer Josh Mandel, businessman Mike Gibbons and former state party chair Jane Timken, who all sought Trump’s endorsement — hammered Vance for his past statements about the former President, arguing that they raised questions about his authenticity as a conservative.
Addressing Vance’s past criticism during a tele-rally for him on the eve of the election, Trump said Vance has “said some negative things about me, but he’s made up for it in spades.”
“I think I can say that he’s 1,000% with us,” the former President added.
Mandel, in turn, got an assist in the final days on the campaign trail from Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who urged Ohio Republicans to pay less attention to endorsements and more to the consistency of a candidate’s record as a conservative.
Ohio gubernatorial primaries
The governor, who has built deep ties in Republican circles over many years of public service in Ohio, won national acclaim in the early days of the pandemic for his careful handling of the rise in Covid-19 cases. But as pandemic restrictions became more polarizing, he became a frequent target of the right and of Trump, which appeared to make him vulnerable as he set out to win a second term as governor.
In Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, there’s a rematch between Democratic Rep. Shontel Brown and Nina Turner. Brown won the support of Biden as well as some moderate-aligned outside groups, but Turner, a former Ohio state senator who was a key player on the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, had hoped to galvanize…
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