Several other states across the country held their primary elections on the same day, notably Illinois, Arizona, and Florida. But no state received quite as much national attention in their elections as Ohio. This was because of Ohio’s highly contentious race for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate.
Ohio’s current Democratic U.S. Senator, Sherrod Brown, is up for re-election this year. Brown votes 98.5% of the time with the extremely unpopular incumbent President Joe Biden. Despite this, Brown fancies himself a moderate, blue-collar Democrat who bucks his own party, and has been able to stir this conception among many moderates in Ohio due to his cautious rhetoric on the issues.
In a state which has voted for President Trump two times in a row, by wide margins in both 2016 and 2020, Brown has been a top target for Republicans hoping to flip the balance of the U.S. Senate back into GOP control. But as time has proven, the ideological composition of the GOP’s Senate caucus will make all the difference for enacting the America First conservative agenda under a second Trump administration.
President Trump, along with other ideologically-aligned conservative leaders like Ohio’s other U.S. Senator J.D. Vance and Arizona’s Kari Lake endorsed Bernie Moreno for the nomination to take on Brown in November. Moreno, a successful businessman from Northeast Ohio, embraced tough stances on issues like the migrant crisis at the southern border, and the elite political class’s willingness to send taxpayer money to Ukraine in their conflict against Russia.
The establishment Republican apparatus in Ohio countered with the campaign of Cleveland-area State Senator Matt Dolan, who gained notoriety for his family’s responsibility in the renaming of the Cleveland Indians baseball team. Dolan, after losing the Republican U.S. Senate nomination in 2022 to now incumbent Senator Vance, hoped to make a comeback by running to the center of Moreno on the issues. Dolan campaigned in support of taxpayer aid to Ukraine, and gained the endorsement of Ohio’s current Republican Governor Mike DeWine, who himself has strayed from conservative stances on issues such as Covid-19 restrictions and transgenderism.
Leading up to the primary on February 19th, both Moreno and Dolan appeared neck and neck in polling, with Dolan leading some polls. President Trump made the split-decision move to campaign in Ohio on behalf of Moreno, being a featured speaker at a massive rally held by pro-Moreno Buckeye Values PAC in Dayton on the Saturday before the primary. Moreno then did a statewide series of local rallies with featured guests Senator Vance and Kari Lake.
On election day, Ohio Republicans responded by nominating Bernie Moreno for the U.S. Senate with an unprecedented majority of the vote. Moreno won every county in the state, including urban counties which Dolan won during his first campaign for U.S. Senate in 2022.
The overwhelming results of Tuesday’s primary not only spur optimism for Republicans in being able to replace Sherrod Brown with Bernie Moreno in the November general election, but they affirm the support Ohio Republicans hold for Trump’s America First political agenda and those who adhere to it.
