Trump candidate wins Republican primary
● Senate contender triumphs in Ohio in test of ex-president’s influence
US Senate candidate JD Vance, who is backed by Donald Trump, won the Republican primary vote in Ohio on Tuesday, in an early test of the former president’s sway over his party as he eyes a possible White House run in 2024.
Trump upended the Ohio race last month by endorsing author and venture capitalist Vance ahead of the November 8 congressional elections, catapulting him ahead of former state treasurer Josh Mandel, also a staunch Trump supporter.
With almost all ballots counted, Vance led the Republican field with 32% of the vote, followed by Mandel with 24% and state lawmaker Matt Dolan with 23%, according to Edison Research.
Though Vance’s victory is a sign of Trump’s endorsement power, every other major candidate besides Dolan had lobbied for Trump’s support while advocating for his policies and parroting his false claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
“It was a big night for Trumpism in the Ohio Republican Party.
“Not just in Vance’s win but in a field that was dominated by candidates trying to outTrump each other,” University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven said.
“It was still a close race. He wasn’t able to shut this race down with a simple wave of his magic wand.”
Vance, author of the Hillbilly Elegy and a former Trump critic, will face Democratic US Representative Tim Ryan, who won his Senate primary as had been expected.
“I have absolutely gotta thank the 45th, the president of the US, Donald J Trump,” Vance told the crowd at his election party in Cincinnati, before criticising unnamed media outlets which he said had sought his and Trump’s defeat.
“It ain’t the death of the America First agenda.”
Trump has not announced his plans for 2024, but regularly hints he intends to mount another presidential campaign.
Ryan, who briefly ran for president in 2020, has focused his campaign on working-class voters and the rejuvenation of manufacturing while taking a hardline on China and courting Trump supporters.
After winning Tuesday’s primary, he sent out a fundraising ad calling Vance an “out-oftouch millionaire”.
“I want us to be the manufacturing powerhouse of the world. I want us to help this country leapfrog China,” Ryan told supporters.
“We can do it by coming together.”
Vance led the field in almost all the counties where most ballots had been counted, from deeply conservative rural counties to suburban areas that could be crucial to his hopes of beating Ryan.
Vance’s lead was especially wide in places like Clermont County, a suburb of Cincinnati, where he led Mandel 35% to 22%, with almost all ballots counted.
Vance also had a large lead in rural Athens County in southern Ohio, one of the state’s few counties won by US President Joe Biden in 2020.
Non-partisan election analysts favour Republicans’ chances of winning in November to keep retiring Senator Rob Portman’s seat.
Tuesday’s contests, which included a Democratic rematch for a US House seat in Ohio and primaries in Indiana, kicked off a series of critical nominating contests in the coming weeks, including primaries in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Georgia.
The influence of Trump, who has endorsed more than 150 candidates this year, will help determine if Republicans, as expected, reverse their slim deficit in the House and also take control of the Senate, which is split 50-50 with Democrats owning the tiebreaking vote.
A loss of control by the Democrats of either chamber would allow Republicans to block Biden’s legislative agenda.