The races featured an early test of Trump’s influence and an intraparty Democratic fight.
Tuesday’s Indiana and Ohio primaries included a revealing test of former President Donald Trump’s influence, several competitive primaries in redistricted House seats, and an intraparty Democratic rematch. These primaries, ultimately, set up candidates for what’s poised to be a contentious general election this fall, when Republicans could well retake the House majority. Here are the winners and losers from Tuesday’s Senate, House, and gubernatorial races. Winner: Donald Trump reportedly called himself a “gambler” in his approach to endorsing primary candidates, many of whom weren’t necessarily favored when they got his endorsement. On Tuesday, the first of his big gambles paid off when Trump-backed candidate and Hillbilly Elegy author J.D. Vance won the GOP nomination to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio. Polls prior to Trump’s endorsement had shown Vance middling in the seven-way race, but that late nod, plus an injection of cash from Vance backers, pushed Vance ahead. There was plenty for Trump to like along the way to this win: He blessed Vance just over two weeks ago, and prior to that, most of the field made private entreaties to Trump and publicly competed for who could align themselves most closely with the former president. Vance, previously a severe critic of Trump, spent months openly stating that he had been wrong about Trump. During Trump’s presidential campaign and shortly after, Vance referred to him as “America’s Hitler” and “a moral disaster” and suggested in 2016 that he might vote for Hillary Clinton if Trump seemed likely to win. Vance then did an about-face as he launched his political career, lauding Trump as the best president of his lifetime. While Vance’s victory will help bolster Trump’s claim to be a kingmaker in the party, it’s not clear it will be predictive of other GOP primaries. Though Vance almost certainly wouldn’t have won without Trump, he didn’t win by a huge enough margin to draw any decisive conclusions. Some Republicans have also predicted a tough month of primaries ahead for some of Trump’s other gambles including Pennsylvania Senate candidate Mehmet Oz (a.k.a. TV personality Dr. Oz) and former Sen. David Perdue of Georgia, who’s trailing in polls in his challenge against the state’s incumbent Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. Nicole Narea Loser(s): The other Trumpian candidates running for Ohio Senate The GOP primary in Ohio got remarkably vicious — at one point it almost got physical — considering how much most of the contenders agreed on. Four of the five viable candidates spent considerable time courting Trump, touting how much they had done for him while in office or how much they had liked him all along, while Vance went out of his way to say how wrong he had been when he was saying all those nasty things about Trump.
