For years, there has been a fierce struggle taking place within the Ohio Republican Party, pitting the old establishment wing versus the burgeoning Donald Trump/J.D. Vance wing. On Tuesday, the latter prevailed, perhaps by a knockout blow, as Trump-endorsed car salesman Bernie Moreno easily won the GOP Senate primary against two more traditional Republicans. And if what happened in the 2022 midterms is any indication, Team Trump’s victory gives Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, a boost in his pivotal re-election bid this fall.
Why? Because in 2022, we got a close-up comparison of how these two types of Ohio Republican candidates fare in a general statewide election. And it wasn’t even close.
2022 results made it clear that Ohio general election voters greatly preferred the more establishment GOP candidates.
Incumbent Gov. Mike DeWine, a former senator, congressman and state attorney general, ran the traditional establishment Republican campaign. While conservative on numerous issues, he was largely viewed through the lens of having been proactive and responsible during the Covid pandemic. On the strength of that brand, he won in a blowout.
Ohio’s 2022 Senate race veered in the opposite direction. A Trump endorsement and some outside money gave an underperforming Vance a late bounce and a narrow primary win. And from that primary win on, Vance did not run in that establishment lane familiar to so many Ohioans (who decisively elected more moderate Republicans such as Rob Portman and George Voinovich). Vance ran far to the right of it, sticking firmly to the Trump lane.
Of course, Vance too went on to win, besting Tim Ryan. But 2022 was a terrible year for Democrats in Ohio, with abysmal turnout in urban areas that are essential to them prevailing. So, in hindsight, no Republican was going to lose.
But while DeWine won by 25 points, and all other statewide Republican candidates won by margins in the teens or 20s, Vance won by just 6 points. That was a dramatically worse underperformance than even other Trump-aligned Senate candidates, such as Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker.
In Ohio elections, where the margin at the top of the ticket usually carries through to the bottom of the ballot, a 20-point spread between candidates of the same party is a stunning drop-off. All over the state —most prominently in the suburbs — Ohioans who voted for DeWine and other Republicans voted against Vance on the same ballot.
Bottom line: Those 2022 results made it clear that Ohio general election voters greatly preferred the more establishment GOP candidates to the extreme Trump/Vance lane.
Which brings us back to last night, where Ohio’s Republican base all too eagerly defied that clear warning sign. In fact, last night offered a repeat of 2022.
If Vance’s 2022 underperformance is any indication, Moreno’s win just made Sherrod Brown’s path to victory a little easier. Like Vance, Bernie Moreno was running a lackluster campaign. Trump’s endorsement was essentially his entire message, and Trump’s personal involvement (a late rally in Dayton) created a late surge that clearly bailed him out from a narrow polling deficit just a few weeks ago. And Moreno all too eagerly occupies the same Trump lane that Vance jumped into two years ago — even openly criticizing the very Republicans (like DeWine) who, ironically, not only have fared better in general elections, but also whose blow-out wins in 2022 enabled Vance to win at all. The biggest difference this cycle versus 2022 is that while Trump is clearly the favorite to win Ohio, he won’t win it with anywhere near the margin that DeWine did in 2022. (He won by 8 points in 2020). That means a Senate GOP underperformance anywhere near 2022 doesn’t just translate into a much narrower win like Vance’s, but could spell the difference between winning and losing outright. And of course, Moreno faces an incumbent: Sen. Sherrod Brown, an even stronger statewide brand than Tim Ryan was two years ago. (Opposite of Vance, Brown overperformed other Democrats on the statewide ticket in 2018). Moreno, on the other hand, looks to be a weaker candidate than Vance was entering the fall election. To be clear, this is Brown’s toughest re-election campaign yet. Brown and his party have work to do to inspire Democrats to turn out in far greater numbers than they did in 2022, while winning over independents and Republicans who aren’t sold on the need for a second senator more eager to serve Trump than serve Ohio. And President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and the national campaign must compete in Ohio to keep things as close as possible at the top, largely by inspiring a presidential-year turnout among Democrats. But if Vance’s 2022 underperformance is any indication, Moreno’s win just made Brown’s path to victory a little easier, especially if some of the bad blood from the GOP primary carries over into the general. And once again, Trump looks to have hand-picked a candidate who makes Democrats’ odds of a Senate majority just a little bit brighter.
David Pepper
David Pepper is a former elected official in Ohio, the past chair of the Ohio Democratic Party, and the author of several books on democracy, “Laboratories of Autocracy” and “Saving Democracy.” He now serves as a Senior Fellow at the Kettering Foundation. 
