Donald Trump stumps for Ohio Senate candidate Bernie Moreno.

What happened

Trump-backed political neophyte Bernie Moreno handily won Ohio’s Republican primary this week, signaling the former president’s total control over the GOP and the decline of the traditional Republican establishment. A Colombia-born son of immigrants and former luxury-car dealer, Moreno defeated Secretary of State Frank LaRose and State Sen. Matt Dolan, who was endorsed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine. Moreno, who claims the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump, accused Dolan of insufficiently supporting Trump’s hard-line immigration policies. His campaign was embroiled in controversy last week after the Associated Press reported that Moreno has posted a 2008 ad seeking sexual encounters with men on an adult website. Moreno said the ad was a prank by an intern, and denounced the story as “a sick attack by desperate people.” He’ll now face Sen. Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s only remaining Democrat in a statewide office, in November.

Ohio has become increasingly inhospitable to Democrats, but voted in favor of abortion rights and legalizing marijuana last year. Democrats spent millions on a TV ad broadcasting Trump’s endorsement of Moreno to boost the candidate, thinking he’d be the easiest target in the general election. If elected, he’d become one of the country’s richest senators. Yet less than $2.4 million of the $9.7 million he raised for the primary remains. Brown has been re-elected twice since 2006 and has $13.5 million for the upcoming campaign, which could determine control of the Senate.

What the columnists said

“Ohio is Trump country,” said Ed Kilgore in New York magazine. Moreno won because he went “loud and proud extremist MAGA,” defeating Dolan, “a standard-brand Republican conservative with some moderate leanings.” Trump has a “high likelihood” of once again winning Ohio in November—he carried the state by about 8 percentage points in both 2016 and 2020. If Moreno also wins, Ohio will have “a matched set of MAGA senators in J.D. Vance and Moreno.” That would mark “a significant devolution of the state that was the ultimate deadeven battleground as recently as 2004.”

Ohio is “one of the GOP’s best pickup opportunities of 2024,” said Audrey Fahlberg in National Review. Moreno, though, has emerged from a bruising primary in which Dolan ran ads calling him “creepy” and “damaged goods.” Ohio Republicans “insist that fears about a battered nominee are overblown,” with one state leader saying that the negativity hadn’t “sunk in” because “not a lot of people were paying attention” to the primary.

“Trump and his allies are fully bought-in on the GOP’s horse in this race,” said Riley Rogerson in The Daily Beast. This was a contentious primary fight, but “it will likely pale in comparison with the battle between Moreno and Brown.” Brown remains popular and is a “formidable incumbent, boasting a stocked campaign war chest.” Yet, with “Trump in his corner, Moreno will bring the full force of the MAGA political machinery down” on him.