JD Vance maintains a slight advantage before the vote on Tuesday after the support he received from the former US president.
Ohio Republicans are voting today Tuesday to choose the candidate they will run for the Senate elections to be held in November of this year. It is a close race that is believed to show whether former US President Donald Trump remains in control of the party.
JD Vance, the Trump-backed author and venture capitalist, entered Election Day with a slight edge. On Monday, Real Clear Politics polling averages showed Vance ahead at 26 percent, former state treasurer Josh Mandel at 22.5 percent, Matt Dolan at 21.5 percent and Mike Gibbons with 15 percent.
Polls show that these four candidates, out of seven, have a realistic chance of winning Ohio’s primary election, which will determine who advances to the race to be the state’s junior senator later this year.
The race opened up last year when Rob Portman, the sitting Republican senator, announced that he would not seek re-election.
Pundits predict that if Vance wins, it will be seen as a sign that the former president still has control over the party and its voters, especially considering Vance was trailing in the polls until he received Trump’s endorsement. But if he loses, Trump’s opponents are likely to seize on the loss as proof that the former president is no longer an infallible behind-the-scenes power.
Jessica Taylor, an analyst at Cook Political Report, said: “This is the first major race where Trump’s endorsement is on the line. He made a risky pick with JD Vance, and this is a test of whether his endorsement alone can change a career.
Vance, who criticized Trump in 2016 as an “idiot” and privately compared him to Adolf Hitler, spent the final days of the election campaign emphasizing his standard-bearer profile of the former president.
He appeared on the campaign trail alongside two of Trump’s most prominent and controversial supporters in Congress: Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has previously promoted conspiracy theories, and Matt Gaetz, who is under investigation for possible child sex trafficking.
Despite this, it appears that Trump’s support has seemed to falter at times. Last weekend, the former president got Vance’s name wrong during a speech at a rally, telling his supporters: “We support JP, right? JD Mandel, and he’s doing great.”
Still, Mandel has been doing his best to reclaim the mantle as Trump’s natural political heir, telling Fox News on Monday: “There is no one who has led America First policy in Ohio like I have.”
Dolan, by contrast, appears to have benefited from being the only Republican in the race to distance himself from the former president; he has risen from 6 percent three weeks ago to being one of the favorites. Dolan, a state senator, has refused to endorse Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him, and in turn, Trump has said that Dolan was the only candidate he could not endorse.
“Even if Trump’s candidate loses, almost everyone has tried to get close to him,” Taylor said. “The only one who hasn’t, and whose victory would be a huge blow to Trump, has been Dolan.”
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