Former President Trump heads to Ohio Saturday to support the Republican Senate candidate he’s endorsed in the state’s increasingly contentious GOP primary.
Donald Trump is aiming for a repeat performance.
Two years ago, the former president backed JD Vance in Ohio’s crowded and combative Republican Senate nomination race, boosting Vance to victory in the GOP primary a couple of weeks later.
Fast-forward to the present and Trump is returning to Ohio this weekend to once again support the Republican Senate candidate he endorsed in the state’s increasingly contentious GOP primary.
Trump, who earlier this week clinched the Republican presidential nomination and is now his party’s presumptive 2024 nominee, will headline a rally in Dayton, Ohio, Saturday for businessman Bernie Moreno.
Trump’s trip will come three days before the state’s March 19 primary. The rally was announced Monday night by Buckeye Values PAC, a pro-Moreno group.
The move came hours after state Sen. Matt Dolan, one of the two other major GOP Senate primary contenders, along with Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, was endorsed by two-term Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a former longtime U.S. senator and state attorney general.
Late last week, Dolan, a former top county prosecutor and Ohio assistant attorney general whose family owns Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians, also landed the backing of former Sen. Rob Portman. DeWine and Portman are considered top members of Ohio’s Republican old guard or establishment.
“Matt Dolan has a vision for the future. He listens. He fights. And he knows how to get results for Ohio,” DeWine said in endorsing Dolan.
And DeWine has said Dolan’s the strongest Republican candidate to defeat longtime Democrat Sherrod Brown in November.
Dolan, who along with Moreno is making his second straight bid for the Senate in Ohio, has highlighted that he’s a supporter of Trump’s policies but not the former president’s personality. Dolan is the only one of the three major candidates not to seek Trump’s support.
