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      Ahead of Senate Primary Election, Ohio Republicans Embrace the Bombast

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      The slugfest for the Republican nomination for Ohio’s open Senate seat has buried the brand of good-natured, country-club conservatism that was once a hallmark of the state.COLUMBUS, Ohio — Republicans running for the seat of Ohio’s retiring senator, Rob Portman, appear determined to bury the soft-spoken country-club bonhomie that was once a hallmark of the party in this state, and replace it with the pugilistic brand of conservatism owned by Donald J. Trump and now amplified by the new band of Buckeye bomb throwers.The race descended into a brutal slugfest as the leading candidates, the author-turned-venture capitalist J.D. Vance, the former state treasurer Josh Mandel and a self-funded businessman, Mike Gibbons, entered the final weekend before Tuesday’s primaries accusing one another of being insufficiently right-wing or disloyal to the man in Mar-a-Lago.Ohio used to be known for the quiet conservatism of the state’s celebrated former senator George Voinovich and its current governor, Mike DeWine; for the Merlot-swilling happy-warrior days of the former House speaker John A. Boehner; for the moderation of John Kasich, a two-term governor; and for the free-trade, free-market ideology of Mr. Portman himself.Instead, affections for such Ohio leaders are now being weaponized — in broadsides from the candidates and advertisements by their allies — as evidence that rivals are paying only lip service to Mr. Trump and his angry populism.“Josh Mandel: Another failed career politician squish,” a new ad from a super PAC supporting Mr. Vance blared on Ohio television sets on Friday, calling Mr. Mandel, who is mounting his third Senate run, a “two-time loser” and “a moderate for the moderates.”After so much vitriol, Ohio’s primary will begin to shed light on just how much power the former president can still wield from his exile. But in the final days of campaigning, the leading contenders left no doubt about his ideological hold on the party.At an evangelical church near Dayton on Friday, Mr. Mandel campaigned with Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who sought to blunt the impact of Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Vance two weeks ago. “At the end of the day, it’s not going to come down to who endorsed whom,” Mr. Cruz said before he and Mr. Mandel brought an older crowd to its feet with stem-winding paeans to conservatism and criticism of Democrats.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Some in the crowd of more than 100 worried that the endorsement of Mr. Vance had significantly lowered Mr. Mandel’s odds of victory. “I think it went down quite a bit,” said Paul Markowski, a retired police officer in a Trump 2020 cap. He said he had not forgiven Mr. Vance for comments he made in 2016 denouncing Mr. Trump and saying that some of his support was driven by racism.“I could get over him not supporting Trump,” Mr. Markowski said. “But when he bad-mouthed us, the voters, that pissed me off.”Mr. Vance, for his part, pressed his attack on Mr. Mandel, who had vied for the former president’s endorsement with ads calling himself “pro-God, pro-gun, pro-Trump.” Mr. Vance’s spokeswoman, Taylor Van Kirk, called Mr. Mandel “a phony, fraud and sellout, who claims to be ‘anti-establishment’ in public, but throws President Trump and the entire MAGA movement under the bus to the establishment behind closed doors.”Josh Mandel, a former Ohio treasurer, insists he is the true standard-bearer for Mr. Trump’s “America First” movement.Dustin Franz/Getty ImagesIn turn, the one Republican who has said the party needs to move on from the former president, State Senator Matt Dolan, castigated Mr. Vance for bringing members of the party’s extremist wing, Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida, into the state on Saturday — not because of their extreme positions, but because they are “outsiders” who are “telling Ohioans how they should vote.”In the rush to the right, Mr. Gibbons, who had styled himself a businessman in Mr. Trump’s mold and was once the front-runner in the Senate contest, pledged his fealty to a right-wing movement, called the Convention of States, to rewrite the Constitution to restrain federal power.All of the major candidates in the Republican Senate primary have insisted they are the true conservatives in the race, but only one, Mr. Vance, has the official imprimatur of the former president. That means the judgment that Republican voters render on Tuesday will go a long way to show whether even conservative candidates like Mr. Mandel and Mr. Gibbons can overcome a cold shoulder from Mar-a-Lago.“President Trump is a major factor in this state,” said Alex Triantafilou, the longtime chairman of the Hamilton County Republican Party, which includes Cincinnati. “He just is. He still motivates our base in a way that some people think is waning, but it’s not from my perspective.”Still, to call Tuesday’s Republican primary a referendum on the future of Trumpism — in Ohio and beyond — would go too far. The state’s low-key Republican governor, Mr. DeWine, does not appear to be threatened in his quest for re-election by a primary challenger, Jim Renacci, whose “Putting Ohio First” campaign adopted MAGA themes in its attack on Mr. DeWine’s pandemic-control efforts. Mr. Trump declined to endorse Mr. Renacci, seeing no prospect for victory.The former president’s attacks did chase the one Ohio Republican who voted to impeach him, Representative Anthony Gonzalez, into retirement, and he buoyed a former White House aide, Max Miller, who is running for an Ohio House seat, despite an accusation from one of Mr. Trump’s press secretaries, Stephanie Grisham, that he had physically abused her.But in other contests, such as a heated Republican primary in northwest Ohio, mainstream Republicans are expected to prevail against conservative showmen like J.R. Majewski, who painted his vast backyard into a 19,000-square-foot Trump election sign and posted a video of himself walking through a shuttered factory with an assault-style rifle.In the bellwether Senate race here, however, Mr. Trump’s influence is undeniable. The state was once a reliable birthing ground of center-right Republicans, such as Mr. Portman, Mr. Boehner and Mr. DeWine, who has been in Republican politics for 45 years, as a House member, senator, lieutenant governor, attorney general and governor.But the free-trade, free-market and pro-legal immigration sentiments that were once hallmarks of the party have been washed away by Trumpism.And the Ohio primary will kick off a four-week period that will reveal much about Mr. Trump’s sway with the party — and just how transferable his continued popularity is to others. After Ohio, his preferred picks in Nebraska, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia will all be tested in heated primaries.Mike Gibbons, who styled himself as a businessman in Mr. Trump’s mold, was an early front-runner in the Senate race.Dustin Franz for The New York TimesMr. Vance, buoyed by the endorsement bump and leading in a Fox News poll, is scarcely tacking to the center, confident in the support of the Republican base. On Saturday, he will barnstorm through Ohio with two figures from the right fringe of the party, Ms. Greene and Mr. Gaetz. On Sunday and Monday, he will be joined on the campaign trail by two other figures firmly in the former president’s camp, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri and Charlie Kirk, the bombastic leader of the far-right Turning Point USA.But after trailing in the primary contest for months, Mr. Vance enters the final stretch as something of a front-runner, with the other candidates training their fire on him. Providing air cover for Mr. Mandel, the business-backed political action committee the Club for Growth is broadcasting an advertisement repeating attacks that Mr. Vance made in 2016 against Mr. Trump and his supporters, suggesting the former president made a mistake with his endorsement.A pro-Vance super PAC, heavily funded by Peter Thiel, the Trump-aligned financier that Mr. Vance works for, fired back Friday with an ad running in Columbus, Dayton and Cleveland that portrays Mr. Mandel as a “squish.” Mr. Mandel’s embrace by the Republican nominees for the presidency in 2008 and 2012, John McCain and Mitt Romney, are treated in the advertisement like a scarlet letter, and kind words from Mr. Kasich might as well have come from Nancy Pelosi.“Josh Mandel, he’s for them, not us,” the narrator intones, a clear message that Tuesday’s primary is geared toward the Republican extremes, not the sort of voters who once backed Mr. Kasich and Mr. Romney.Mr. Gibbons, still in the hunt for the nomination, will trot out yet another Trump ally, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, on Monday to attest to his conservative bona fides. In a series of statements on Friday seemingly issued to appeal to the far right, Mr. Gibbons declared that a “dire need of real change” meant he would support a convention to rewrite the Constitution, and said that a new effort by the Department of Homeland Security to combat disinformation would be “a de facto ‘Ministry of Truth’” to crush dissent.Jonathan Weisman reported from Columbus, Ohio, and Trip Gabriel from Dayton. More

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      For J.D. Vance, ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ Was the Question, and Trump Was the Answer

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      “We are going to break up the big tech companies, ladies and gentlemen, we have to do it,” J.D. Vance hollered at a rally for Donald Trump in Ohio last weekend. “You cannot have a real country if a bunch of corrupt scumbags who take their marching orders from the Communist Chinese tell us what we’re allowed to say and how we’re allowed to say it.”Mr. Vance, a 37-year-old memoirist and venture capitalist who is running in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio, is new to politics. But he was recently fortified by Mr. Trump’s endorsement in a hotly contested race, and his language on that bright and breezy afternoon was suitably bold.Amid a nodding crowd of men and women in Trump T-shirts and MAGA hats, Mr. Vance’s gray suit may have looked a bit funereal, but his applause lines were decidedly un-stodgy. He assailed Joe Biden as a “crazy fake president who will buy energy from Putin and the scumbags of Venezuela but won’t buy it from middle class Ohioans,” who live in a top fracking state.Donald Trump told a frenzied crowd in Ohio in April that J.D. Vance was a “fearless MAGA fighter.”“Scumbag” is a word that seems to have entered Mr. Vance’s public vocabulary only recently. It didn’t appear in “Hillbilly Elegy,” the tender 2016 autobiography in which he described his clannish and troubled Kentucky-descended family.Ohio hillbillies — some of them natives, some of them migrants from Kentucky and West Virginia who manned Ohio’s factories in the last century — are Mr. Vance’s people. He wrote about them in his memoir without condescension or squeamishness: his drug-addicted and erratic mother, who asked him for a cup of his clean urine one morning when she expected to be drug-tested at work; the various boyfriends, husbands, police officers and social workers her misadventures brought into the family’s life; his tenacious grandmother Mamaw, who, as he recalled more recently, “loved the Lord” and “loved the F-word” and owned 19 handguns.These people helped him on his way from the blighted Ohio steel town of Middletown to the Marines, Ohio State and Yale Law School.A television ad for J.D. Vance’s Senate campaign.Published on the eve of the 2016 elections, “Hillbilly Elegy” made Mr. Vance, then 31, a literary sensation. It sold more than three million copies, and is still a staple of high school and college curriculums. Pundits most likely speed-read the book for its sociological “takeaway,” a description of the left-behind whites who then seemed instrumental in rallying the Republican Party behind Mr. Trump and would soon put him in the White House.While the author of “Hillbilly Elegy” retained a lot of the exotic patriotism of his kinfolk, even to the extent of choking up whenever he heard “Proud to Be an American,” he drew the line at their chosen candidate. In spirited interviews, articles, tweets and text messages throughout the 2016 election season, Mr. Vance described Mr. Trump as “reprehensible” and an “idiot.” He didn’t vote for him. Many of Mr. Vance’s cosmopolitan literary admirers must have been consoled to think that discerning citizens could see through Mr. Trump, even in the parts of the country most taken with him.But Mr. Vance backed Mr. Trump in 2020. And now, a week before the Republican primary on May 3, Mr. Trump has traveled to Ohio to tell a frenzied crowd that, even though Mr. Vance once said a lot of nasty things about him, he is a “fearless MAGA fighter” and “a great Buckeye.” And here comes Mr. Vance, bounding onstage to call Mr. Trump “the best president of my lifetime.”Mr. Vance’s readers may feel let down and misled. So too, in their own way, may his Republican primary rivals in Ohio, who have been professing their fidelity to Trumpism, only to see their leader confer his blessing on a Johnny-come-lately. The conservative Club for Growth, which backs the former Ohio treasurer Josh Mandel, has spent millions on campaign ads that replay every Trump-skeptical thing Mr. Vance said half a decade ago. When Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Vance was first rumored, dozens of Mandel allies even petitioned the ex-president to reconsider.Fans of “Hillbilly Elegy” may feel let down by J.D. Vance’s support for Donald Trump.Mr. Vance’s Trumpian turn has left a wide variety of people wondering whether it arises from sincere conversion or cynical calculation. But there is something more complex going on.Readers of “Hillbilly Elegy” who find Mr. Vance’s campaign rhetoric a jarring departure may actually be misremembering the book. His Mamaw railed at the so-called Section 8 federal subsidies that allowed a succession of poor families to move in next door. Southern whites were migrating to the Republican Party, Mr. Vance wrote, in large part because “many in the white working class saw precisely what I did, working at Dillman’s,” a neighborhood grocery. There, thanks to food stamps, he wrote, “our drug-addict neighbor would buy T-bone steaks, which I was too poor to buy for myself but was forced by Uncle Sam to buy for someone else.”If Mr. Vance and the people who populate his book were bursting with political impulses, they had as yet no political program, so their impulses meant nothing. Before Donald Trump, there was no place in the country’s political imagination — or its heart — for the poor whites he described. Mr. Trump changed that — nowhere more so than in Ohio. A lot of political gestures today don’t have the same meaning that they did five years ago.J.D. Vance is new to politics. But he was recently fortified by Donald Trump’s endorsement.Ohio has produced seven presidents and, until last fall, had a reputation as an electoral bellwether. In the 14 presidential elections between Lyndon Johnson’s victory in 1964 and Donald Trump’s in 2016, Ohio sided with the winner every time. In Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory, however, it lurched wildly to Mr. Trump, giving him an eight-point victory in the state. Some states voted more heavily for Mr. Trump, but none has been more transformed by him.Mr. Vance is running for the Senate seat held for two terms by Rob Portman, a Republican who is retiring, and Mr. Trump’s endorsement has been the great prize in the Republican primary. At times the race has seemed less an election than an audition. The various candidates, including Mr. Vance, traveled to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for fund-raisers and consultations and solicited the help of Trump allies and family members. (Donald Trump Jr. was an early Vance backer.)Each of the Republican candidates in the primary has built his or her campaign around an implicit hypothesis about how to appeal to Mr. Trump, and thus about what Trumpism is in the first place. Jane Timken, former chair of the state Republican Party, tried to win over Mr. Trump by hard work and loyalty. In 2017, she led the Trumpian project of breaking then-Gov. John Kasich’s grip on the state Republican Party.The former state treasurer, Mr. Mandel, appears to have been guided by the idea that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Having made his name promoting transparency in state accounts and other old-style mainstream Republican priorities, he now torques ordinary conservative dispositions into categorical imperatives. (“I think illegal immigrants should be deported, period,” he said at a debate in March, specifying that he meant “every single illegal.”)Rallygoers joined in the pledge of allegiance.J.D. Vance grew up in Middletown, Ohio.Mr. Vance’s ultimately successful route to Mr. Trump’s favor was a bit subtler. To him the core of the Trumpian project isn’t intraparty power struggles or demagogy; it’s reconnecting politics to ordinary people. Mr. Vance tries to do this in a lot of different ways. For one thing, he calls for breaking up the nation’s cozy political system. After laying out a list of Mr. Trump’s triumphs to the MAGA crowd last weekend, Mr. Vance insisted, “The thing that Trump revealed, more than any policy achievement, is that we are living in an incredibly corrupt country.”What does it mean, Mr. Vance likes to ask listeners, that six of the highest-income ZIP codes in the United States are in metropolitan Washington? How do legislators get so rich on the relatively modest salaries they make?Mr. Vance also grasps, as Mr. Trump does, the deep discontent with political correctness, and the hunger for someone unafraid to stand up to it. If there was a moment in Mr. Vance’s campaign where his fortunes seemed to turn it was his release of a TV ad that began: “Are you a racist? Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trump’s wall.”The ad took voters by the collar. The sense among Ohioans at town halls that they are being cast as “bad people” for holding contestable but reasonable political views is palpable. They have reason to think their lives and careers can be damaged by the merest imputation of racism. A person like Mr. Vance who is willing to crack a joke about the term “racist” is someone fearless enough to follow into battle.From Mr. Trump’s perspective, it cannot have harmed Mr. Vance that he was willing to burn his boats this way. Donald Trump Jr., traveling with Mr. Vance in the week his father endorsed him, drew a contrast between Mr. Vance and other Republicans who “crumble the moment the media falsely accuses them of being ‘racist.’”Donald Trump Jr., here in Ohio with J.D. Vance, was an early backer.The barrage of televised attacks on Mr. Vance for his previous anti-Trump remarks may even have provided him with a Trumpian credential, as one who can handle nonstop negative publicity. This is not to say that Mr. Vance lacks his own formidable supporters: Peter Thiel, a Trump supporter in 2016 and a Vance friend, has reportedly made $13.5 million in campaign contributions to Protect Ohio Values, a Super PAC backing Mr. Vance.The ads that were meant to deny Mr. Vance the Trump endorsement set up an institutional confrontation that may also have worked in his favor. The Club for Growth, the Washington-based anti-tax group backing Mr. Mandel, was responsible for the ads exposing Mr. Vance’s anti-Trump remarks in 2016. But back then the Club itself was among the most Trump-hostile of Republican groups.It continues to pursue a largely supply-side, limited-government, free-trade agenda, at a time when the Trumpified Ohio G.O.P. has grown so suspicious of corporate progressivism (or, if you will, “woke capital”) that it distrusts even the Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Vance’s aides took to calling Mr. Mandel’s backers “The Club for Chinese Growth.”Then one day about two weeks ago, Mr. Vance was having a milkshake with his son when his phone rang and a voice on the other end said, “Hey, this is Donald Trump.”Mr. Vance himself has a theory about why he got the Trump endorsement and his rivals did not. It is that he treated Mr. Trump not just as a person to be flattered or parodied but also as the source of an actual political program to be carried out.“A mistake that a lot of the other guys made is that they think that ‘America First’ is a slogan or a talking point,” he told the Dayton reporter Chelsea Sick recently. “But there’s actually a substantive agenda behind it.”Whether globalization has been good or bad is not a complicated question for most Ohioans. That agenda involves trade policy, drug policy, securing the Mexican border and steering clear of unnecessary foreign wars. Some of the other candidates were unaware of how seriously Mr. Trump takes those things.“He’s a smart guy,” Mr. Vance continued. “So, unfortunately, you can’t just say nice things about Donald Trump in public. You actually have to align yourself with an agenda.”The heart of that agenda is resistance to globalization. If you wanted a one-word answer to why Mr. Trump has so rocked Ohio politics it would be: Nafta. The North American Free Trade Agreement of 1993 remains a symbol of the institutional adjustments that, over the course of a generation, turned the United States from a manufacturing economy into a service economy.Whether free trade and globalization have been good or bad for the United States is a complicated, multivariate calculation. But it is not complicated for most Ohioans. The state’s manufacturing power was once so prodigious that you almost suspect you’re reading typos when you see it quantified: Did G.M. really more than 16 million Chevy Impalas and Pontiac Firebirds and other models at its Lordstown plant in the Mahoning Valley between 1966 and 2019, when the plant ceased production? Did the Lorain works, an hour and a half away, really produce 15 million Ford Fairlanes, Mercury Cougars and so on, between the Eisenhower administration and 2005?Simply scuppering the infrastructure that made such achievements possible — along with the decent-paying jobs that knit together the whole culture of the state — looks profligate to Ohio eyes. Each of these plants also had a constellation of businesses around it, some small but others vast. Armco, where J.D. Vance’s grandfather worked, rolled steel for automobiles.This is by now an old story, but in Ohio the arrival of Donald Trump has made it a thoroughly different story. For three decades after Nafta passed, no major-party presidential nominee dared raise his voice against it — until Mr. Trump, who had always railed at Nafta, came along.As long as the state’s main grievance was closed to debate, the essential conservatism of the state’s electorate was hidden under a blanket of apathy and cynicism. For a while, Democrats alone voiced misgivings about globalization — Representative Marcy Kaptur in her lakefront district; Senator Sherrod Brown; and Representative Tim Ryan, the likely Democratic candidate for the seat Mr. Vance is contesting. That made conservative Ohio look like more of a swing state than it actually is.Whether Mr. Trump effectively stopped anything related to globalization can be debated. But his arrival on the scene was, for Ohioans, an electroshock, a vindication, a license for rebellion.MiddletownMarionInterstate 71, outside ColumbusSheffieldMr. Vance can be expected to have a feel for this. As he often says on the campaign trail, the decline of Middletown coincides with his lifetime. At a campaign event in Beavercreek, near Dayton, Kim Guy, a retired nurse, stopped at the front door before leaving and patiently explained why she was supporting Mr. Vance. She didn’t mention this or that policy or whether his change of heart was credible. “He lived it,” is the main thing she said. “He had to get down to ramen noodles the last week of the month. The rice with warm milk. He lived it.”A Vance supporter at the recent Trump rally.A home near the steel mill in Middletown.Before Mr. Trump’s arrival on the scene, Mr. Vance’s hillbillies fit poorly into the prevailing political framework for helping the downtrodden. Perhaps those people could be seen as another of the inexplicably overlooked minorities who, in the half-century since the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have from time to time come to the country’s attention — a kind of mission land to which the newest gospel of compassion, progress and rights hadn’t yet spread.But that perspective was always distant from the way Mr. Vance saw the world. “A compassion that assumes a person is disadvantaged to the point of hopelessness is like sympathy for a zoo animal,” he wrote in the Catholic journal The Lamp in 2020, “and I had no use for it.”Events since 2016 have presented Americans with another option — a Republican Party reoriented around the priorities of Donald Trump. Mr. Vance does not look out of place in the heart of that party. In early April he was the only candidate to win the endorsement of Ohio Right to Life, an anti-abortion activist group. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the often outlandish Republican of Georgia, endorsed him, too. Asked at a debate to disavow her, Mr. Vance replied that he would not, because he had been taught that you shouldn’t “stab your friends in the back.”That kind of talk is all over “Hillbilly Elegy.” It is practically his Mamaw’s philosophy of life.At his appearance in Beavercreek, Mr. Vance spoke about his mother, clean for seven years, and how the fentanyl on today’s streets might have killed her had she still been using. Eventually he would get around to denouncing the “nonstop violence, sex-trafficking and drugs” at the Mexican border and calling for the building of Mr. Trump’s wall, but for a moment his conversation took on a softer note.“I love this country,” he said. “I love that it’s not just a country for everybody who does everything right, but it’s also an America for the giving of second chances. It’s for people who keep getting back on the horse.”No state has been more transformed by Donald Trump than Ohio has.It can be difficult, even disorienting, to think of Donald Trump as having provided certain Americans with recognition, a second chance, a possibility of renewal. But he has. A politics that was unavailable has been made available. Under such circumstances accusing Mr. Vance of not backing Trumpism during the Obama administration is like accusing someone of not backing the New Deal during the Hoover administration or not backing gay marriage during the Reagan administration.Mr. Vance’s liberal admirers and conservative opponents are not wrong to feel that something has changed since his book came out in 2016. But it isn’t Mr. Vance. It’s the country.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republican Primaries in May Will Test Trump’s Continued Pull

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      If you doubt the power of Donald Trump’s endorsement, look no further than the Ohio Senate race.Since April 15, when Trump backed J.D. Vance in the Republican primary, the venture capitalist and author of “Hillbilly Elegy” has zoomed to the top of the public polls. Vance jumped from 11 percent of likely voters in March to 23 percent now, according to Fox News.The real test of Trump’s party boss mojo, however, is fast approaching: actual elections, beginning with Ohio’s on Tuesday. Trump has endorsed candidates in at least 40 Republican primaries that are taking place in May, my colleague Alyce McFadden has tabulated. Most of these contests involve an incumbent who faces no serious challenger. But in statewide races from Pennsylvania to Georgia and Idaho to North Carolina, Trump’s imprimatur could prove decisive.Republicans are watching these races closely for signs that Trump’s hold over the party is waning. Privately, many G.O.P. operatives view the former president as a liability. And while he has shown a unique ability to energize the party’s base and turn out new voters, those operatives are still dreading the likelihood that he runs again in 2024, anchoring candidates up and down the ballot to an erratic, divisive figure who was rejected by swing voters in 2020.Everyone knows Trump still has juice. But nobody is sure just how much juice.“The risk for Trump is that if the candidates he has endorsed end up losing, his influence over Republican primary voters looks substantially diminished,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime Republican pollster.Already, there are signs of what one G.O.P. strategist called a “re-centering” of Republican politics — with Trump as the party’s strongest voice, but no longer its sole power broker.In Alabama, he withdrew his endorsement of Representative Mo Brooks, an ardent Trump loyalist who has floundered as a Senate candidate. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, Trump’s top 2016 foe, has endorsed his own slate of candidates, as have conservative groups like the Club for Growth. And Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, is drawing rapturous receptions within the party as he gears up for a likely presidential run in 2024.The stakes for American democracy are high. In Georgia, Trump is trying to unseat Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, two Republicans whose refusal to help overturn the 2020 election results have made them the former president’s top targets. In both cases, Trump is backing challengers who have embraced his false narrative of a stolen election.Trump’s endorsement is no magic wand. In a recent poll by Quinnipiac University, 45 percent of Republicans said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate endorsed by Trump, whereas 44 percent said it would make no difference.“Every candidate has to lose or win their race themselves,” cautioned Ryan James Girdusky, an adviser to a super PAC supporting Vance.With that caveat in mind, here’s a look at the key primaries to watch:J.D. Vance appears to be on the rise in Ohio after Trump endorsed him.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesOhio Senate, May 3Vance was looking wobbly before Trump’s endorsement. His fund-raising and campaign organization were anemic; his past comments, such as his comparison of Trump to “cultural heroin,” were hurting him.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Now, G.O.P. strategists largely expect that Vance will win the primary. Support for Mike Gibbons, a businessman who spent more than $13 million of his own money on ads, is crumbling. Most of his voters appear to be migrating toward Vance rather than Josh Mandel, the other leading candidate in the race, said Jeff Sadosky, a former political adviser to Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring.But Mandel, a well-known quantity in Ohio conservative politics, appears to be holding his ground.“If Vance wins, it’ll be because of the Trump endorsement,” said Michael Hartley, a Republican consultant in Columbus who is not backing any of the candidates.Mehmet Oz is locked in a tight primary race for Senate in Pennsylvania.Hannah Beier/ReutersPennsylvania Senate and governor, May 17In some ways, Pennsylvania offers the purest test of Trump’s appeal.Trump recently endorsed Mehmet Oz, the celebrity doctor, in the Republican Senate primary. But unlike in other states, the public polls haven’t moved much. Democratic strategists still see David McCormick, a wealthy former hedge fund executive and the other leading Republican candidate, as a potent threat.“No one here thinks it’s locked up,” said Christopher Nicholas, a Republican consultant in Harrisburg, though the Oz campaign’s internal polling has shown a shift in the doctor’s favor.Trump has yet to endorse a candidate for governor here, but his shadow looms large. He issued an anti-endorsement to Bill McSwain, a former U.S. attorney who served in the Trump administration, calling him “a coward, who let our country down” by not stopping “massive” election fraud in 2020.Two other candidates are ardent backers of his stolen election claims: former Representative Lou Barletta, whose campaign is managed by former Trump advisers; and Doug Mastriano, a state lawmaker and retired colonel who helped organize transportation to the “Stop the Steal” rally on Jan. 6.With Trump cheering him on, Senator David Perdue is trying to oust Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia.Audra Melton for The New York TimesGeorgia, May 24The biggest test of Trump’s influence will come in Georgia, where control of the machinery of democracy itself is on the ballot.It was Georgia where Trump pressured the state’s top elections official to “find 11,780 votes” to overturn the presidential election results, a phone call that is under investigation. Trump is hoping to oust Raffensperger, the secretary of state, who was on the receiving end of that phone call. The former president has backed Representative Jody Hice, who supports Trump’s debunked election fraud claims. Court documents released by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot place Hice at a meeting at the White House to discuss objections to certifying the election.In the governor’s race, Trump dragooned former Senator David Perdue into trying to unseat Kemp, the incumbent.Perdue, who lost to Jon Ossoff, a Democrat, in 2021, has dutifully made 2020 the theme of his campaign. But polls show Kemp comfortably ahead, suggesting that dwelling on the past is not a path to victory despite the power of Trump’s endorsement.Lightning roundA few other primaries we’re watching:May 10: In West Virginia’s Second Congressional District, redistricting has pitted two Republican incumbents against each other. Trump endorsed Representative Alex Mooney, who voted against the bipartisan infrastructure law, while Gov. Jim Justice is backing Representative David B. McKinley, who voted for it.May 17: In North Carolina, Trump’s preferred Senate candidate, Representative Ted Budd, is surging in the polls against former Gov. Pat McCrory and Representative Mark Walker. May 17: Gov. Brad Little of Idaho faces a primary challenge from a field that includes his own lieutenant governor, Janice McGeachin, who has Trump’s endorsement. The two have feuded bitterly, to the point where McGeachin issued her own executive orders while Little was traveling out of state. McGeachin also has a history of associating with extremists. In February, she gave a virtual speech at an event sponsored by white nationalists, leading to calls for her resignation.Alyce McFadden contributed reporting.What to readReporting from Columbus, Ohio, Jazmine Ulloa notes a new fixation in G.O.P. messaging: the baseless claim that unauthorized immigrants are voting.Jonathan Weisman, from Toledo, Ohio, reports that Democrats are in jeopardy because they can no longer rely on firm support from unions.Patricia Mazzei explores how, under Gov. Ron DeSantis, Florida has become a laboratory for right-wing policies.Emily Cochrane spoke with Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska about whether her centrist credentials will appeal to Republican voters in November.how they runMadison Gesiotto Gilbert, a Republican House candidate in Ohio, was endorsed by Trump.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThis Ohio House race has everythingIt’s a shining example of Democrats’ challenges in 2022, the confusion caused by whiplash over new congressional maps and, yes, the power of a Trump endorsement: This is the race for Ohio’s 13th Congressional District.The district — whose lines are changing and whose current representative, Tim Ryan, is running for Senate — is one of just a few in Ohio expected to be competitive in the fall.President Biden would have carried this newly drawn district by just three percentage points, making it a must-win for Democrats as they face challenges in maintaining their House majority.“If 2022 is as bad for Democrats as most everybody else, myself included, expects it to be, Republicans will flip this district,” said Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican strategist in Ohio who grew up in the area.An added wrinkle is that the boundaries of the district aren’t technically final: Ohio’s redistricting process has been tied up in the courts, and the State Supreme Court could still rule against the current maps. But most experts believe that the lines will remain in place through the general election.For Democrats, the primary election on Tuesday should be straightforward. Emilia Sykes, a state representative and former minority leader, will be the only Democrat on the ballot. The Sykes name is well known in the Akron area, where her father, Vernon Sykes, remains in the state legislature. His wife, Barbara, also once served in the state House.On the Republican side, Trump endorsed Madison Gesiotto Gilbert, a conservative commentator who worked on Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. She faces Shay Hawkins, a Republican who narrowly lost a state House race in 2020. He’s the only candidate who has aired a campaign TV ad, but he trails Gilbert in fund-raising. A third Republican to watch, Gregory Wheeler, has an endorsement from The Plain Dealer.No candidates have had much time to make a mark. They learned their district lines — tentatively — just a few weeks before early voting started. And with the primaries split, with state legislative voting postponed to later this year, turnout is a big question.Some of the usual efforts to inform voters about important dates, like when to register and the deadline for early voting, didn’t happen this year with details in flux, said Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, which is in litigation over the maps in front of the Supreme Court.“The delay and the fact that we have to have a second primary for the State House maps is really confusing for voters,” Miller said.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Ohio Senate Race Pits Trump and Son Against Big G.O.P. Group

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      The Club for Growth has lined up behind Josh Mandel. Donald J. Trump and his eldest son, Donald Jr., are backing J.D. Vance. Tuesday’s outcome will be a crucial test of the former president’s sway.Not long after Donald J. Trump was elected president, the Club for Growth, a conservative anti-tax group that had opposed his 2016 campaign, reinvented itself as a reliable supporter, with the group’s president, David McIntosh, providing frequent counsel to Mr. Trump on important races nationwide.But this spring, as Mr. Trump faces critical tests of the power of his endorsements, an ugly fight over the Ohio Senate primary is threatening what had been a significant alliance with one of the most influential groups in the country.The dispute broke into plain view days ago when in support of Josh Mandel, the former Ohio state treasurer, for the Republican Senate race, the Club for Growth ran a television commercial showing the candidate Mr. Trump has endorsed, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance, repeatedly denouncing Mr. Trump in 2016.Mr. Trump’s response was brutish: He had an assistant send Mr. McIntosh a short text message telling him off in the most vulgar terms. The group, one of the few that actually spends heavily in primary races, responded by saying it would increase its spending on the ad.That escalation drew an angry response from Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, who had spent months urging his father to support Mr. Vance and has invested his own energy and influence on Mr. Vance’s behalf.The standoff over the Ohio primary encapsulates some of the critical open questions within the Republican Party. Mr. Trump has held enormous sway despite being less visible since leaving office, but other power centers and G.O.P.-aligned groups over which he used to exert a stranglehold are asserting themselves more. And his ability to influence the thinking of Republican voters on behalf of other candidates is about to be tested at the ballot box.Until now, even after the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to keep him in office, many Republican candidates have fallen over themselves to court Mr. Trump’s endorsement. That’s proven especially true in Ohio, where the primary for the Senate has been dominated by candidates like Mr. Mandel and Mr. Vance, who have emulated Mr. Trump’s reactionary politics.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.The Ohio contest has also divided Mr. Trump’s own circle, as rival candidates have hired various formal and informal advisers to the former president in hopes of influencing his eventual endorsement.Much like Mr. Vance, Mr. McIntosh and the Club for Growth opposed Mr. Trump in 2016, but the group then recast itself as closely aligned with him.By the time Mr. Trump left office, Mr. McIntosh was frequently speaking with him by phone and visiting him at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club in Florida, according to an aide to Mr. McIntosh. His frequent attempts to sway Mr. Trump’s thinking on politics reached the point that it rankled others in Mr. Trump’s circle, which is constantly in flux and populated by people seeking influence.In a brief interview after receiving the text message from Mr. Trump’s aide last week, Mr. McIntosh minimized the dispute over Ohio, noting that the former president and the Club for Growth had both endorsed Representative Ted Budd, a Republican in North Carolina running for the Senate, a race on which the group has spent heavily.“I very much view this as one race where we’re not aligned, we’re on opposite sides, which doesn’t happen very often,” Mr. McIntosh said of the clash over Ohio.Still, the Club for Growth also stuck with Representative Mo Brooks in Alabama’s Senate primary after Mr. Trump withdrew his own endorsement.The dispute over the group’s attack on Mr. Vance touched a nerve with both Mr. Trump and his eldest son.The former president has long taken special delight in bringing to heel Republicans who, having criticized him, are forced to acknowledge his supremacy in the party and bow and scrape for his approval. That was the case with Mr. McIntosh, and also with Mr. Vance, who courted the former president with the help of the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the billionaire Peter Thiel, as well as that of Donald Trump Jr.All of which explains why the Club for Growth’s ad showing Mr. Vance expressing scorn for Mr. Trump in 2016 aggravated not only the former president, but also his son.The younger Mr. Trump, who is trying to flex his own political muscle within the Republican Party, treated the tiff between his father and Mr. McIntosh as an opening to attack the group and also to try to tear down Mr. Mandel.When he visited Ohio this week on Mr. Vance’s behalf, the younger Mr. Trump attacked Mr. Mandel by name for his support for a no-fly zone in Ukraine, and also criticized the Club for Growth, saying, “They spent $10 million in 2016 to fight Donald Trump,” and suggesting the group was “soft on China.”The Senate candidate J.D. Vance is ahead in private polling, according to strategists — a fact that Mr. Trump can point to even if another candidate ultimately wins, experts said.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe younger Mr. Trump also said he might oppose candidates newly endorsed by the Club for Growth unless it stops running the ads about Mr. Vance and removes Mr. McIntosh from the group’s board, according to an adviser who spoke anonymously.Liam Donovan, a Republican strategist and former top aide at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said that while Mr. Trump’s approach with his endorsements has been fairly random in recent months, the Vance endorsement is different because of the composition of the primary. “This is the first time Trump’s political might has been tested on a level playing field among broadly acceptable candidates,” Mr. Donovan said.In both Ohio and North Carolina, Mr. Donovan said, “the Trump nod may lift his picks from the middle of the pack to victory over established favorites with lengthy statewide resumes. That would be an objectively impressive display of power.”Mr. Trump’s backing has elevated Mr. Vance’s standing in the primary, according to a Fox News survey released on Tuesday evening. Mr. Vance received 23 percent of the primary vote, an increase of 12 percentage points from the last survey, overtaking Mr. Mandel, who received 18 percent. Some 25 percent of voters remain undecided, the poll found.Mr. Trump had been advised that he could have the most effect by giving his endorsement in mid-April, as early voting was set to begin in the state.There is always the chance that the Club for Growth emerges successful in the fight in Ohio. Mr. McIntosh said he believed that Mr. Mandel was the most conservative, pro-Trump candidate in the field.Still, Republican strategists said a late surge by Mr. Vance, even if he does not win, would give Mr. Trump renewed bragging rights.David Kochel, a Republican strategist who has advised past presidential nominees, said that Mr. Trump appears “to have breathed life into a campaign most people assumed was dead,” adding, “even if Vance loses, Trump will be able to argue that he turned his campaign around.” More

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      Trump Endorses J.D. Vance in Republican Primary for Senate in Ohio

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      The move amounts to a major bet on Mr. Vance’s ability to prevail over a crowded field, and on the former president’s power to alter the course of key congressional races.Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday endorsed the author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance in the Republican primary election for Senate in Ohio, aiming to give the candidate a needed boost in a crowded race that will test Mr. Trump’s potency as a kingmaker in key congressional contests.Calling Mr. Vance “our best chance for victory in what could be a very tough race,” Mr. Trump said in a statement that the candidate was “strong on the Border, tough on Crime, understands how to use Taxes and Tariffs to hold China accountable, will fight to break up Big Tech, and has been a warrior on the Rigged and Stolen Presidential Election.”The move amounted to a major bet on Mr. Vance and on Mr. Trump’s influence over Republican primary voters in conservative-leaning Ohio, where several high-profile candidates are facing off in a contentious and at times nasty campaign to replace Senator Rob Portman, a Republican who is retiring.With the May 3 primary less than three weeks away, limited polling has shown Mr. Vance struggling to break through against rivals including Josh Mandel, a former Ohio state treasurer; Jane Timken, a former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party; and Mike Gibbons, a financier. No one has emerged as a clear front-runner.The highly coveted endorsement came after weeks in which the race’s top candidates veered increasingly to the right in pursuit of Mr. Trump’s support, with tension and anticipation rising ahead of a planned visit to the state by the former president on April 23. In recent days, as news reports trickled out that Mr. Vance was likely to win Mr. Trump’s backing, supporters of other candidates engaged in last-ditch efforts to prevent the endorsement.More than three dozen Republican county and state committee leaders urged the former president in a letter not to endorse Mr. Vance, questioning his Republican credentials and noting that he had repeatedly denounced Mr. Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.Mr. Trump’s move carries significant risks, with candidates he has backed in other key races around the country sometimes struggling to emerge as favorites for the Republican nomination.Veasey Conway for The New York TimesBut Mr. Trump had all but decided days earlier to support Mr. Vance, according to four Republicans familiar with his thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.Mr. Trump called Mr. Vance to alert him to the endorsement before it became public. In his statement on Friday, Mr. Trump said, “J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.”According to one of the Republicans familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking, he was swayed by several factors, including video clips of a Republican primary debate in which two of the candidates, Mr. Mandel and Mr. Gibbons, nearly came to blows. The incident ended any chance that Mr. Trump, who credits the 2016 presidential debates for his victory that year, might have endorsed either of them, the Republican said. Mr. Trump was also impressed by Mr. Vance’s performance in the last debate.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Trump has also told allies that he believes the leading Democratic candidate, Representative Tim Ryan, will be a difficult opponent in the general election and that he thinks Mr. Vance can beat him. Mr. Trump has been increasingly looking toward a prospective 2024 presidential campaign of his own, and he is said to see Mr. Vance as a reliable ally in the Senate on issues he cares about, like trade and immigration.And a last-minute effort to stop Mr. Trump’s endorsement that included releasing an internal Mandel campaign poll appears to have backfired. The survey suggested that Mr. Trump’s endorsement would give Mr. Vance only a five-percentage-point bump in support, which Mr. Trump took as an affront, the Republican familiar with the former president’s thinking said.Mr. Trump was lobbied heavily by supporters of Mr. Vance, including the billionaire Peter Thiel, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and his own son, Donald Trump Jr.Still, the move carries significant risks for Mr. Trump, whose endorsements in other marquee races across the country have not yet proven decisive. In Georgia, his attempt to fuel David Perdue’s Republican primary challenge to Gov. Brian Kemp has largely been seen as underwhelming.In one of his biggest gambles, Mr. Trump recently gave his backing in the Republican Senate primary in Pennsylvania to the celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, despite a concerted effort by supporters of the other leading candidate, David McCormick, to persuade Mr. Trump to stay neutral. Mr. McCormick and Mr. Mandel use the same consulting firm, run by the strategist Jeff Roe.Few races across the country have captured Mr. Trump’s effect in Republican primaries in the way that Ohio’s Republican Senate campaign has, with candidates seeking to model themselves after the former president. Most of the contenders have railed against undocumented immigrants, and only one has recognized President Biden as the nation’s legitimate leader.Ahead of the endorsement, many Republican county party leaders expressed frustration that Mr. Trump might select Mr. Vance, the author of the best-selling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.” They noted that he had spent much of his life in San Francisco and had been critical of Mr. Trump even as they worked to elect him.“He is the guy who worked against Trump and spoke against Trump and told everybody he didn’t vote for Trump,” said David Johnson, the chairman of the Columbiana County Republican Party, who has endorsed Ms. Timken. Mr. Johnson helped circulate the letter from Republican leaders in Ohio, which stated that Mr. Vance was not a registered Republican and provided Mr. Trump with a list of negative comments that Mr. Vance had made against him, including calling him “another opioid” in 2016.“While we were working hard in Ohio to support you and Make America Great Again, J.D. Vance was actively working against your candidacy,” the letter says. “He referred to your supporters as ‘racists.’”Asked for comment, including about the accusation that Mr. Vance is not a registered Republican, Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for the Vance campaign, said: “When he has voted in primaries, J.D. has always voted in Republican ones. He has a long public history of supporting Republican candidates, including Donald Trump in 2020.”The campaign also pointed to polling that showed Mr. Vance in second place behind Mr. Mandel, as well as a tweet from one Republican Party county chairman denying that he had signed the letter, and another tweet from the anti-abortion group Ohio Right to Life PAC that expressed support for a Trump endorsement of Mr. Vance.In the tweet, the group’s chairman, Marshal Pitchford, said that the former president would be making “a fantastic choice” in backing Mr. Vance, adding that he was 100 percent “pro-life without exceptions” and would continue Mr. Trump’s “pro-life victories” in the Senate.In stump speeches, Mr. Vance has been quick to address the criticism that he has not always been a Trump loyalist, often saying that the best policy is honesty.“I didn’t like Trump six years ago,” he told supporters this week at a brewery in Hilliard. “I did not think he was going to be a good president. I was very happy to be proven wrong.”He added, “I was very proud to support the president over the past several years.” More

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      The Republican judge blocking her party from rigging electoral districts

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      The Republican judge blocking her party from rigging electoral districts Some Republicans are calling for Ohio supreme court chief justice Maureen O’Connor’s impeachment because she is refusing to let them distort electoral districts to their advantageIn one of the final acts in a 24-year political career, the Republican chief justice of the Ohio supreme court is defying her party and refusing to let them distort electoral districts to their advantage, a move that has some fellow Republicans calling for her impeachment.Get the latest updates on voting rights in the Guardian’s Fight to vote newsletterSince January, Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor has served as the decisive vote on three separate occasions blocking Ohio Republicans from enacting proposed state legislative maps. She also sided with Democrats to block an initial GOP proposal for congressional districts before going into effect in January. Those decisions have prompted chatter among Republicans about impeaching O’Connor, 70, who will leave the court after nearly two decades at the end of this year because she has reached the mandatory retirement age for judges in Ohio.O’Connor has a long independent streak. A decade ago, she joined a dissent when the supreme court upheld the state legislative districts drawn by Republicans. “I broke away from the mould in some people’s minds,” she would later say of that decision. “Party affiliation should not – and people have to understand it should not – have anything to do with how a judge does their job.”In 2018, she joined with the lone Democrat on the court to dissent from a ruling upholding the forced closure of the last abortion clinic in Toledo. She has backed criminal justice and bail reform, as other Ohio Republicans are pushing to make it harder for someone to be released on bond. She has called for less partisan influence in the way judges are elected in the state. In 2020, just before the presidential election, she blasted the state Republican party for accusing a local judge of colluding with Democrats, saying the attack was “disgraceful and deceitful”.“She’s no shrinking violet. She’s got sharp elbows,” said Paul Pfeifer, a Republican who served on the supreme court with O’Connor from when she joined in 2003 until he retired in 2017. “​​No amount of public criticism is going to change her mind if she feels that she’s right in the position she’s taking.”William O’Neill, a Democrat who served with O’Connor on the court from 2013 to 2019, said she was the justice he wound up voting with the most. They were the only two members of the court who dissented in 2018 in the Toledo abortion clinic case.“She can be swayed to reasonable arguments,” he said. “Her legacy is already carved in stone. The stand she is taking is consistent with her entire career.”She’s also one of the most successful politicians in the history of Ohio, said David Pepper, a former chair of the Ohio Democratic party. She’s been elected five times statewide, none of which have been close. The then Ohio governor, Robert Taft, picked the former prosecutor to be his running mate in 1998 to add law enforcement experience to the ticket. Once she was elected lieutenant governor, she oversaw the state’s department of public safety, taking on a leading role after the 9/11 attacks. She would travel overseas with troops being deployed from Ohio, even though that doesn’t typically fall within the responsibilities of her role.“She took the initiative to do that and I would say it was above and beyond what she would have to do in her role,” Taft said in an interview. “She was part of our team but she was also her own person. She was an independent thinker.”She was elected to the court in 2002, and became chief justice in 2010.Now, O’Connor and the court are not backing down in their refusal to let Republicans in the state get away with one of the most brazen efforts to gerrymander electoral districts to their benefit.A new provision in the Ohio constitution requires partisan makeup of the state’s 132 legislative districts roughly reflect the partisan breakdown of statewide elections over the last decade, which is 54% Republican and 46% Democrat. The three plans Republicans have passed so far, and a fourth one currently pending before the court, however, would enable Republicans to win a veto-proof majority in the legislature in a favorable year for the party.“The constitutional violations of the maps that the Ohio redistricting commission continues to pass are obvious,” said Jen Miller, the executive director of the Ohio chapter of the League of Women Voters, which is involved in suits challenging the plans.Republicans have forged a sneaky attempt to enact their maps. The initial plan the court struck down in January would have given them control of 64.4% of districts. They then submitted a new plan to the court that nominally had the required 54-46 split, but several of the districts were barely majority Democratic – essentially toss-ups – meaning Republicans could still win them in a favorable election. After the court rejected that plan, Republicans came back with a third plan that slightly increased the Democratic majority in those districts, which was again rejected by the court. Last month, Republicans submitted a fourth plan that took the same approach.“It’s a pure power play,” said Paul Beck, a retired political science professor at the Ohio State University. “It’s almost like they’re saying we have the power to do this and so we’re gonna do it.”O’Connor has bluntly called out the way Ohio Republicans are abusing the redistricting process. The first time the court struck down the legislative maps, back in January, she went out of her way to write a concurring opinion urging Ohio voters to strip lawmakers of their redistricting power entirely.“Having now seen first-hand that the current Ohio Redistricting Commission– comprised of statewide elected officials and partisan legislators – is seemingly unwilling to put aside partisan concerns as directed by the people’s vote, Ohioans may opt to pursue further constitutional amendment to replace the current commission with a truly independent, nonpartisan commission that more effectively distances the redistricting process from partisan politics,” she wrote.The standoff has left Ohio at a chaotic impasse. Unlike supreme courts in other states, like Virginia that have stepped in to draw maps, the Ohio supreme court is prohibited from making its own plan. Early voting began on 5 April without state legislative districts on the ballot. Last month, a coalition of civic action groups challenged the maps to request that the redistricting commission be held in contempt for failing to comply with the court’s orders.The hard line from O’Connor and three other Democrats on the supreme court, where Republicans have a 4-3 majority, is extremely consequential. This is the first redistricting cycle the partisan fairness requirements are in effect (voters approved them overwhelmingly through a ballot measure in 2015). By refusing to accept the Republican maps, O’Connor and the court are setting a precedent that signals how aggressively the justices are going to police partisan gerrymandering.“The consequence of caving would be a disaster. This has gone from a battle over democracy in Ohio to a battle over democracy and the rule of law in Ohio,” said Pepper, the former Democratic party chair. “No other citizens who violate the law four times get rewarded for it.”After the court blocked Republican maps for the third time, Republicans in the statehouse began openly weighing her impeachment, according to the Columbus Dispatch. “It’s time to impeach Maureen O’Connor now,” Scott Wiggam, a GOP state Representative, tweeted. “I don’t understand what the woman wants,” state representative Sara Carruthers told the Dispatch. Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose, a Republican who sits on the panel that draws districts, said recently he would not stand in the way of an impeachment effort, saying “she has not upheld her oath of office”.Ohio’s governor, Mike DeWine, a Republican who also sits on the redistricting panel, has been more outspoken against impeachment. “I don’t think we want to go down that pathway because we disagree with a decision by a court, because we disagree with a decision by an individual judge or justice,” he said in March.Though it’s unclear if the impeachment effort will move forward, many doubted it would succeed.Both O’Neill and Pfeifer, the former justices who served with O’Connor said they were confident the impeachment efforts would not affect her work. “What in the world is she supposed to have done that violated her oath of office?,” O’Neill said.“It will have the opposite effect of what they’re seeking.”TopicsOhioFight to voteUS politicsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Bob Gibbs, House Republican Facing Primary Challenge in Ohio, Will Retire

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      The state’s redistricting process had drawn Mr. Gibbs into a primary fight against Max Miller, who served in the Trump White House and was endorsed by the former president.Representative Bob Gibbs of Ohio announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election, just as early voting got underway in the state. Ohio’s redistricting process had forced Mr. Gibbs, who has served in Congress since 2011, into a Republican primary against a Trump-backed challenger, Max Miller, among others.Mr. Gibbs said in a statement that the tumultuous effort to redraw the state’s congressional map had become a “circus,” and he criticized the last-minute changes to his rural district south of Cleveland.“It is irresponsible to effectively confirm the congressional map for this election cycle seven days before voting begins, especially in the Seventh Congressional District where almost 90 percent of the electorate is new,” he said.Mr. Gibbs’s name will still appear on the ballot in the district but signs will be posted at voting locations stating that votes for him will not be counted, said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State, in a brief interview.Mr. Gibbs was facing a serious primary challenge from Mr. Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Miller last year when the Ohio candidate was aiming to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez, who had voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But Mr. Gonzalez said in September that he would not run for re-election.Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Gonzalez were later drawn into the new Seventh District. Mr. Gibbs voted against impeaching Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot and voted to overturn the results of the presidential election, positions that the former president has treated as litmus tests for which Republicans he will support in 2022.Mr. Miller on Wednesday praised Mr. Gibbs’s tenure.Ohio is losing one of its 16 congressional seats as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process after the latest census. The state’s efforts to redraw its district lines have been mired in legal challenges.In January, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a congressional map drawn by the state’s Republican-dominated Redistricting Commission, calling it too partisan for a state where the G.O.P. has lately won about 55 percent of the statewide popular vote.Max Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump, had originally aimed to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe court is planning to hold a hearing on the new congressional map sometime after the May 3 primary, and is hearing challenges to a fourth set of state legislative maps. Frank LaRose, Ohio’s Secretary of State, removed the state legislative races from the May 3 ballot and a new date for those elections has not been set.Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, echoed Mr. Gibbs’s frustration with redistricting. “Ohio is swingable but it doesn’t seem that way because we have this history of extreme gerrymandering,” she said.Redistricting is a potentially decisive factor in determining which party will control Congress. Both parties have sought to give themselves advantages in states across the country — giving rise to legal wrangling in several states, including New York, Maryland, Alabama and North Carolina.Michael Wines More

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      Republican congressman Bob Gibbs retires, blaming redistricting ‘circus’

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      Republican congressman Bob Gibbs retires, blaming redistricting ‘circus’Six-term lawmaker from Ohio’s Amish country exits primary race that would have put him up against Trump-backed Max Miller Republican congressman Bob Gibbs announced his sudden retirement on Wednesday, declaring himself a casualty of “the circus” over Ohio’s still-unresolved congressional map.The six-term congressman from Amish country exits a primary race in north-eastern Ohio that, under new temporary maps, would have put him up against the Trump-backed Republican Max Miller.Early voting is already under way.US rightwing figures in step with Kremlin over Ukraine disinformation, experts sayRead moreMiller was initially recruited to defeat Anthony Gonzalez, who joined a handful of fellow Republicans who voted in favor of the former Republican president’s impeachment. Gonzalez has since retired.In a statement, Gibbs said “almost 90% of the electorate” in the new seventh congressional district where he would be required to run is new, with nearly two-thirds drawn in from another district “foreign to any expectations or connection” to the district he now serves.Trump weighed in to congratulate Gibbs on “a wonderful and accomplished career”. He called Gibbs a strong ally of his America first” agenda and the fight against “the Radical Left”.“Thank you for your service, Bob – a job well done!” Trump said in a statement.Calling the decision to retire difficult, Gibbs called it irresponsible “to effectively confirm the congressional map for this election cycle seven days before voting begins”.He appeared to be referencing a 30 March procedural ruling by the Ohio supreme court, which extended the briefing schedule for the legal challenge to Ohio’s congressional map well past this year’s primary.However, congressional districts for 2022 elections had actually been set since 2 March. That was when the Republican secretary of state, Frank LaRose, the state’s elections chief, ordered county boards of elections to reflect the Ohio Redistricting Commission’s second congressional map on ballots.Gibbs said he believed Ohio’s prospects were bright “despite the circus redistricting has become”.“These long, drawn-out processes, in which the Ohio supreme court can take weeks and months to deliberate while demanding responses and filings from litigants within days, is detrimental to the state and does not serve the people of Ohio,” he said.The high court’s bipartisan majority, comprising the Republican chief justice, Maureen O’Connor, and three Democrats, has been engaged in a protracted back-and-forth with the Republican-controlled redistricting commission for months.In response to lawsuits brought by voting rights and Democratic groups, justices have tossed four plans and counting for legislative and congressional lines, declaring each an unconstitutional gerrymander that unduly favors Republicans.Their face-off continues to escalate.As justices consider a request to hold mapmakers in contempt for their repeated failure to craft lines that meet constitutional muster, Republicans who control the state legislature are thinking hard about bringing impeachment proceedings against O’Connor.Gibbs is the 17th House Republican to say he won’t seek re-election, compared with 30 Democrats. His term runs through January 2023.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsOhionewsReuse this content More