How J.D. Vance won in Ohio

 Salena Zito:

...

Like former President Donald Trump in the 2016 Ohio primary, Vance won both in Mahoning County and throughout the Steel Valley counties of Trumbull, Stark, Ashtabula, Columbiana, and Portage. Most of these were solidly Democratic until recently. Some have since become Republican, and others will be competitive this fall.

Vance prevailed in the crowded six-way race that included the insurgent candidacy of anti-Trump state Sen. Matt Dolan. Dolan, who poured more than $10 million into his campaign, nearly beat Josh Mandel, the onetime front-runner and former state treasurer, for second place thanks to a last-minute burst of fresh support. Former state party Chairwoman Jane Timken finished fifth, with investment banker Mike Gibbons rounding out the field.

The seat became open when Republican Sen. Rob Portman declined to seek reelection this year.

Youngstown State University political science professor Paul Sracic said that, for a long time, this had been anybody’s race to win in Ohio. “You had five fairly evenly matched candidates, four of who differed very little on important Republican issues such as trade, abortion, and immigration,” he said. Most importantly, none of them were starved for funds, and they were all able to blanket the airwaves with ads.

A major reason for Vance's late surge was his endorsement by Trump. And Vance might have won that thanks to his superior debate performance. “Maybe this was why Trump endorsed him despite the negative things Vance had said about him back in 2016," Sracic said. "Trump likes winners and may have sensed that he found one in J.D. Vance.”

Ohio has shifted pretty hard to the right since it first gave Barack Obama won its electoral votes by 4 points in 2008. Trump handily won the state in both 2016 and 2020.

Vance will face Ryan of Niles, Ohio, who easily won his primary. The Trumbull County Democrat struggled in 2020 to hold on to voters in a district that he has easily won for nearly two decades. He lost his home county for the first time since entering Congress in 2003.

...

I suspect Vance will likely keep the seat for the GOP.  Ohio is looking pretty red at this point. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Should Republicans go ahead and add Supreme Court Justices to head off Democrats

Washington Post: Some Democrats eye adding more justices to the Supreme Court to change its ideological bent The once-remote idea has gained the attention of liberals angered by the GOP push to remake the federal courts. Probably the easy way to defeat this court-packing scheme is for Trump to propose doing the same thing now.  It would lead to Democrat denunciations and claims that it would be wrong, thereby blowing up any attempt by them in the unfortunate event of Democrats winning a presidential election.
Read more

29 % of companies say they are unlikely to keep insurance after Obamacare

Conn Carroll: A new survey of 368 midsize to large companies found that 29% of them are considering terminating their active employee health care plans when Obamacare is full implemented in 2014. Only 71% of employers surveyed said they did not expect to drop their health coverage, while 20% said they did not know and 9% said they were planning to exit. The latest survey, conducted by Towers Watson, echoes an ealier survey by McKinsey & Co. finding that 30% of private-sector employers were planning to drop their employee health insurance coverage by 2014. When the Congressional Budget Office crunched Obamacare's spending numbers, they estimated that only 7% of employees currently covered by employer-sponsored plans would lose their plans. ... This means the cost of the health care fiasco will be hundreds of billions more than estimated by the CBO and Congressional Democrat. It is also clear that Obama's pledge that you could keep your health care plan if you wanted t
Read more