The results Tuesday will provide the first real clues to a couple of endlessly debated political questions.
When political neophyte J.D. Vance first entered the race in Ohio to succeed retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman, he seemed a longshot. Former state Treasurer Josh Mandel was the odds-on favorite in the Republican primary race, and other candidates were more familiar to Ohio voters, including state Senator Matt Dolan and former GOP state chairwoman Jane Timken. But the calculus of the race changed in mid-April, just weeks before this Tuesday’s primary, when former President Donald Trump endorsed Vance. The May 3 primaries in Ohio and in neighboring Indiana effectively kick off the 2022 election season. Only Texas has voted so far, back in March, while a dozen states go to the polls this month and Texans return for runoffs. The results Tuesday will provide the first real clues to a couple of endlessly debated political questions: how much influence does Trump actually wield within his party? What level of turnout will the two major parties be able to inspire in the first post-Trump midterms? Conventional wisdom has it that Republicans are salivating to get to the polls, with an eye toward drubbing the Democrats in the fall; Democrats, by contrast, are worried that their base is apathetic at best, and that turnout will be weak. More than any other, the Ohio Senate race will be scrutinized endlessly for what it could portend. Trump won the state comfortably, twice. If Vance prevails, and then wins in November, Trump’s inclination to run again in 2024 will be reinforced. His advisers say he hasn’t made a decision yet, but a strong showing by candidates he has endorsed, in Ohio and across the country, would likely convince him to seek the presidency for a third time. However, if Vance and other Trump candidates lose, „then [Trump] may rethink,“ said one of his political advisers not authorized to speak on the record. Trump’s endorsement of Vance stunned and angered the other candidates in the field and Republicans around the country. Vance in 2016 had been a „never Trumper,“ and many believed the famously thin-skinned Trump wouldn’t be able to forget that. With the exception of Dolan — who has criticized Trump for his ongoing claims that the 2020 election was stolen — all the Republican senatorial candidates in Ohio eagerly sought the former president’s backing.
