When then-President Donald Trump endorsed then-Rep. Ron DeSantis for governor of Florida in 2018 over a team of Republican rivals, it proved to be one of the most consequential endorsements of his political career.
After winning a razor-thin election that year, DeSantis went on to win reelection in a landslide four years later. At the same time, the Republican Party in the state was fundamentally transformed. Trump carried the state by a healthy 3-point margin in 2020, and after 2022, the Democratic Party was shut out of state government, relegated to a meager number of state representatives and senators amid a GOP supermajority.
But in Florida, the headline was not just that the Republicans had turned a swing state ruby red, it was the kind of Republican that now populated the halls of state government. The party politicians who advocated the traditional corporate-friendly style of governance while largely avoiding culture war issues before DeSantis were effectively banished from the party, replaced by dyed-in-the-wool culture warriors, eager to take on everyone from the teachers unions to Disney.
In many ways, DeSantis's triumph in 2018 and the subsequent remaking of the Florida GOP are a microcosm of the fight between the Republican establishment and the more Trumpian or populist strain of conservatism that has revisited the party’s old positions on trade, commerce, and foreign policy.
While the national party has been effectively remade in Trump’s populist image, the state parties have largely lagged behind. Trump-endorsed candidates in Arizona, once a GOP bastion, have struggled to win statewide, while in Georgia, Trump's feud with Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA) has limited his success in primary races.
But in Ohio, both sides of the GOP divide can claim victories at the state level during the Trump years. And with a Senate race on the ballot this November, a possible Senate vacancy on the horizon, and an open gubernatorial race in 2026, the Ohio GOP may look like a very different party two years from now.
Few states in the nation have undergone a political realignment over the past eight years to the degree that Ohio has. Once a preeminent swing state that reliably backed the winner of the Electoral College in presidential election after presidential election, the state has since swung hard toward the Republican Party. In 2016, Trump won the state rather easily. In 2018, despite a very Democratic national environment, Mike DeWine won the governor’s mansion by a closer but comfortable margin. In 2020, Trump again won the state easily, followed by a DeWine landslide reelection in 2022 that came alongside a comfortable victory for J.D. Vance in the Senate race that was seen as one of the best pickup opportunities for the Democratic Party.
But 2024 provided the first definitive pitched battle between the state’s Republican establishment wing and the emerging populist wing that is largely aligned with Trump. In the Republican primary for the right to take on Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the last remaining Democrat elected to statewide office, the state establishment, led by DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman, lined up to support state Sen. Matt Dolan, who had run unsuccessfully against Vance two years prior. Meanwhile, Trump and Vance endorsed and campaigned for Bernie Moreno, a businessman who owned a number of car dealerships in the state.
DeWine’s endorsement of Dolan was timed to give the state senator the maximum possible boost headed into the primary. But when the votes were counted, the race was not even close. Moreno won every single county in the Buckeye State on his way to a landslide victory, beating Dolan by 18 points.
One political activist in Ohio I spoke to said the outcome of the Senate race was tantamount to a “political earthquake” within the establishment, raising serious questions about the ability of more traditionally minded Republican candidates to win a statewide primary when facing off against a MAGA-supported populist.
Four months later, Trump selected Vance as his running mate, raising the possibility that DeWine would have to appoint a replacement senator if the presidential ticket is victorious. In an interview with Neil Cavuto on Fox News after Vance was announced, DeWine noted that whomever he picks for the seat will have to be able to win two primaries and two general elections in the span of two years: a special election in 2026 and a full-term election in 2028.
Mike Hartley, a longtime Republican operative in the state, told me that despite the bloodbath in the recent primary, he still thinks either a populist Republican or a more traditional conservative Republican can still win in the state, and ultimately candidate quality matters.
“I think if you look at the election results of 2016, 2018, 2020, and 2022, it clearly lays out that they both can win right now in Ohio,” he said.
But the primary election is where the party's policy agenda is largely forged, and similar to what happened in Florida in 2018, whoever wins the governorship in two years has the potential to shift the state party’s policy goals. Still, there could be pitfalls in selecting a candidate who does not have broad appeal.
In Arizona, the Republican Party is about as MAGA as they come, but since the more establishment-minded Gov. Doug Ducey won in 2018, the party has struggled to win statewide. While the GOP still controls the state legislature, Democrats hold all of the state’s major statewide offices, defeating MAGA- or populist-supported candidates each time. It was a shift that turned Arizona from a GOP stronghold to a major swing state.
So far, in Ohio, the anti-establishment candidates have managed to keep up the Republican Party’s win streak, finding appeal in the working-class communities such as Youngstown and Toledo that used to be Democratic strongholds. And, unlike Arizona, the state that was once considered the most important to winning the Electoral College is now reliably Republican, no matter which race is at the top of the ticket.
In recent days and weeks, former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has dropped not-so-subtle hints that he is interested in the Senate seat that Vance currently occupies, should the Trump ticket win the presidency, but he has also indicated that he is considering running to be the next governor of Ohio in 2026.
Given Ramaswamy’s rapport with Vance and Trump, he is likely to secure the endorsement of both, which would put him in the driver's seat for the nomination. And that doesn’t even factor in his independent wealth, which allows him the ability to spend a significant amount of his own resources on the race without relying on outside donors, effectively neutralizing the $5 million that Lt. Gov. Jon Husted has already squirreled away for his own anticipated run.
A governor is often considered the de facto leader of his party in his state and has a lot of power to influence political operations. Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) remade the previously destitute Virginia GOP into a formidable electoral engine after his surprise victory in 2021. He was effective in doing so in large part because he was able to bridge the civil war between the populist and establishment wings of the party in a state that Republicans have struggled to win in recent years.
In Florida, DeSantis remade the state party by turning it decisively against the establishment. In a few short years, the GOP was passing any and every piece of legislation that it could dream of. Quick to follow suit, Govs. Kim Reynolds (R-IA) and Greg Abbott (R-TX) used the power of the bully pulpit to oust incumbents in their own state legislature who blocked conservative legislation.
A Ramaswamy victory in the Ohio gubernatorial election could have a similar effect on state politics. There are, without a doubt, significant policy differences among Ramaswamy, Husted, and Attorney General David Yost, who is also reportedly considering a run. If the son of Indian immigrants with obvious national ambitions were to run, it would likely represent a significant break in policymaking on economic and administrative issues from the Chamber of Commerce-friendly DeWine administration.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
DeWine, for his part, could potentially head all of that off by appointing Ramaswamy to the Senate if Vance becomes vice president. But that would still leave a MAGA-sized hole in the Republican primary that could easily be filled by another candidate.
The battle for ideas within the Republican Party may still be ongoing in states all over the country, but in Ohio, the establishment is on a losing streak, and 2026 may be its last gasp.
Most Popular
Comments / 0