• OH-Sen: Donald Trump announced on Monday that Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance would be his running mate, a move that could empower one of the few remaining Republicans who hasn't ardently embraced MAGA.
That occasional skeptic is Gov. Mike DeWine, who'd choose a new senator should Vance win the vice presidency. A special election would be held in November of 2026 for the final two years of Vance's term, with the winner facing reelection in 2028 for a full six-year term.
DeWine, who is himself a former U.S. senator, might have a very different idea of who should represent the Buckeye State in the upper chamber than Trump does: In March, DeWine endorsed state Sen. Matt Dolan in the nomination contest for Ohio's other U.S. Senate seat, a move that came months after Trump backed wealthy businessman Bernie Moreno.
Primary voters, though, cared far more about Trump's preferences than what their governor wanted, as Moreno beat Dolan 50-33 to win the right to take on Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown. (Brown himself won his seat in 2006 by unseating none other than DeWine.)
This year's primary was by means the first time that Trump and DeWine have come into conflict, though. While the governor was Trump's state co-chair in 2020, he infuriated his party's master shortly after Election Day by acknowledging that "Joe Biden is the president-elect." Trump responded by tweeting, "Who will be running for Governor of the Great State of Ohio? Will be hotly contested!"
DeWine did indeed struggle to keep the base happy, in part because of the pandemic safety measures he promoted, but his bid for reelection wasn't anywhere as hotly contested as Trump might have hoped. DeWine won the GOP primary with just 48% of the vote in 2022, but former Rep. Jim Renacci was a distant second with 28%, and the incumbent easily secured reelection that fall.
Ever since, DeWine and Trump have regularly been at odds. While almost every Republican official in the country ardently defended Trump following his conviction in his hush-money trial in New York earlier this year, all DeWine would offer the media was a "no comment." DeWine was more vocal on Monday with a statement praising Trump for making "a great choice" in a running mate.
Despite his warm comments, the 77-year-old DeWine, a longtime member of what remains of the GOP establishment, has little in common with Vance, a 39-year-old whose 2022 Senate race was his first bid for office. The two, however, once shared a similar distaste for one prominent Republican: Donald Trump.
"I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn't be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he's America's Hitler," Vance once wrote in a private Facebook message, eight years before he joined Trump's ticket.
There will doubtless be immediate speculation as to who might succeed Vance if his campaign for national office is successful, but we're not going to indulge in it. First, Vance still has to win. Second, and just as important, this is an election with a single voter, Mike DeWine. We'd love to be able to poll the race, but like all pollsters, we are struggling with our response rate.