Investment banker 4th GOP candidate in U.S. Senate race
Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland investment banker and real estate developer, announced Tuesday he would again run for Senate after unsuccessfully pursuing the office in 2018.
Gibbons becomes the fourth Republican to officially enter the 2022 race to succeed retiring Sen. Rob Portman, a Republican who announced in January he wouldn’t seek a third term. Gibbons has never held elected office, but ran for Senate in 2018 in an attempt to challenge Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, losing in the primary to Republican President Donald Trump’s handpicked choice, then-Rep. Jim Renacci.
“I’m running for Senate because we need to get our economy back on track,” Gibbons said in a statement. “We need to rein in runaway federal spending. We need to secure our borders, stand for life, and defend our 2nd Amendment rights.”
Gibbons, a Cleveland native who grew up in Parma, is the senior managing director of Brown Gibbons Lang & Company, a Cleveland investment firm. He’s been active serving on boards in the community as well as in Ohio Republican politics, including as Ohio finance co-chair for Trump’s 2016 campaign.
When he ran for Senate in 2018, he initially challenged then-Treasurer Josh Mandel — who is running a third time this year. After Mandel dropped out of the 2018 race, the Republican Party, along with Trump, asked Renacci, who was running for governor, to switch to the Senate race.
Renacci won the primary, with Gibbons picking up 38 counties and 32% of the vote in a losing effort. Renacci would go on to lose to Brown by 6.8 percentage points, making Brown the only statewide Democrat elected to partisan office.
Gibbons’ entry into the race was anticipated following his announcement last month that he was embarking on a “listening tour” of Ohio. The independently wealthy Gibbons has not said whether he would self fund his campaign.
The other three Republicans in the race so far are Mandel, former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Jane Timken and Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno. Other Republicans including Reps. Steve Stivers and Bill Johnson as well as author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance are also weighing entering the race.