The president came into 2020 considering the state a lock, but his performance in managing the pandemic and delivering on his promises from four years ago could put it in play.
President Trump traveled Thursday to the crucial battleground of Ohio, hoping to highlight efforts the bolster the economy after the damage done by the spread of the coronavirus and to announce new executive orders to make drug prices more affordable. But he could not escape the reality of the landscape he is facing: Before Mr. Trump arrived, the state’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, tested positive for the coronavirus during a routine screening for people meeting the president. The sudden change in plans — Mr. DeWine had been expected to greet Mr. Trump at the airport when the president arrived — mirrored the president’s shifting fortunes in a state that coming into 2020 had seemed unassailable on Mr. Trump’s electoral map. But the failures in his response to the pandemic have changed the forecast for November in Ohio. Several polls in the state have shown the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., running close to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump could still win in Ohio, a state that has been won by Republicans seven times since 1972 and that has been a strong predictor of the national winner. But the cost in “resources, attention and manpower is likely to cost him another needed state,” said Nicholas Everhart, the president of Content Creative Media, a Republican national ad-buying firm based in Ohio. Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign has laid out tens of millions of dollars for a fall advertising blitz there. “On Jan.1, there was not a serious consultant on the Republican or Democrat side who thought Ohio was an up-for-grabs presidential swing state,” he said. Mr. Everhart said that a number of factors have made the state more competitive for Democrats, even though Republicans fared relatively well there in 2018. “The economic fallout of the pandemic, though, seems to have caught Ohio up with Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, particularly in the Columbus and Cleveland suburbs,” Mr. Everhart said, describing shifts in political support. And a local corruption scandal that has seen federal racketeering charges filed against the Republican speaker of the House in Ohio could have a toxic effect for other Republicans in the state, Mr.
