Old Guard Republicans Should Have Had an Easy Win Tonight. That's Not Guaranteed.

DUBLIN, Ohio — The clash for the Senate GOP nomination in Ohio represents the best, and perhaps last, opening for the Republican old guard to sneak one of their own through customs in a contested primary, secure a reliable vote for Ukraine and hand former President Donald Trump an embarrassing defeat.

That it still may not happen is the best testament in any down-ballot race this year to Trump’s vise-lock grip on GOP voters.

It's hard to conjure a better set of circumstances for Matt Dolan, the state senator, brother of the Cleveland Guardians owner and would-be last gasp of the pre-Trump party establishment.

Dolan has lingering statewide name identification from his failed 2022 Senate bid and has been up on Ohio television since last fall, using his fortune to outspend his two Republican rivals. He doesn’t have to beat the Trump-backed candidate, Cleveland-area car dealer Bernie Moreno, head to head because there’s a third, fading candidate in the race siphoning votes, Secretary of State Frank LaRose. And with Trump having made quick work of his third consecutive GOP nomination, his working-class devotees don’t have the same urgency to rally to the MAGA flag when polls open here Tuesday.

Oh, and the Associated Press dropped a bombshell story last week reporting that somebody with access to Moreno’s email account in 2008 signed up on Adult Friend Finder in search of “young guys to have fun with while traveling.” Moreno vehemently denied he created the account. An apparently overzealous intern for, and current donor to, Moreno claimed responsibility, describing it as an “aborted prank.”

Senate Democrats, desperate to protect Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and retain their one-seat majority in the face of a daunting map this year, have responded to the opening for Dolan in the fashion they’ve done with increasing frequency in recent years: by trying to hammer it shut by barreling into the final days of the GOP race with over $2 million dollars of advertising portraying Moreno as an unapologetic conservative, wink wink.

Barring the ghost of Woody Hayes descending onto the Horseshoe with a scarlet and gray “Dolan for Senate” sign, what more could the diamond heir need to convince Ohio Republicans he’s the best candidate to defeat the wily and enduring Brown, who was first on the ballot when Hayes was coaching the Archie Griffin-led Buckeyes?

And yet.

“It may not happen, I don’t know — I don’t know who’s going to win,” Gov. Mike DeWine told me over pesto chicken sandwiches at the governor’s residence, where stacks of the latest edition of his wife Fran’s iconic cookbook greet guests.

DeWine’s late intervention in the race — he unexpectedly endorsed Dolan last week — is what intrigued me about the primary and suggested it may be competitive after all.

First elected to office himself in 1976, two years after Brown’s first race, DeWine held the seat in question until 2006, when the backlash to George W. Bush and the Iraq war handed the Senate to Democrats and lifted Brown from the House to the upper chamber.

DeWine climbed his way back in state politics, was elected governor in 2018 and has tread carefully through the Trump era. Now, at 77, he’s a relatively liberated lame duck. And seeing his chance to temper his party’s drift toward Trumpism he lunged. Well, lunged after he heard from his pollster that Dolan had a path to prevail and was convinced that his own endorsement would do more to help than harm.

Beyond the cold mathematical assessment, DeWine said he believes Dolan “has the much better chance to beat Brown this fall.” Further, the governor acknowledged, this was a way to try to reorient the GOP, at least in Ohio where the party has a storied history.

“Yeah, I mean I’m concerned,” said DeWine. “The biggest thing is the person who gets elected to the United States Senate is probably going to be there for three or four terms. I’m very concerned that we would have a senator that does not see the threat from Putin, does not see the threat from Russia.”

To which I pointed out there already was one in that mold: Senator J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), the man who beat Dolan and others to claim the nomination in 2022.

“Yes, I get that,” DeWine said with a laugh.

Because of how long the next senator here may serve, this primary is not merely a proxy war between Trump and the GOP old guard. The Republican nomination could also determine whether Ohio will return to its isolationist roots and send two senators to Washington who are uneasy about projecting American force abroad.

With its large population of people with central and eastern European roots, Ohio has for decades mostly elected GOP internationalists like DeWine and former Senators Rob Portman and George Voinovich. Vance, though, represents a return to an earlier Ohio tradition, when Republican senators like John Bricker and Robert A. Taft battled Dwight Eisenhower for control of the party.

Portman, who Vance succeeded, is just as alarmed and has been aggressively making the case for Dolan, both in Ohio and Washington.

The former senator has been particularly focused on the late play by Democrats to thwart Dolan, recognizing how the advertising could shift the many undecided conservative voters in a fairly sleepy race.

“Ohio Republicans should see this for what it is — a cynical attempt by Chuck Schumer and Democratic power brokers to choose our nominee,” Portman told me.

Traditional right-of-center pillars like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are just as eager for Dolan to win, I’m told, but in today’s GOP their public involvement may only help Moreno.

When I asked DeWine if his old colleague, friend and neighbor below the Ohio River, McConnell, had nudged him to come off the sidelines the governor grinned, chuckled and said: “I wouldn't answer that question.”

It was about the same look he flashed when I asked if he had spoken with former Bush strategist Karl Rove about the contest.

If it all sounds like the old band trying to get together for one last show, well, DeWine didn’t exactly deny it. When I called him the Last of the Mohegans, he said he’d prefer a more Ohio appropriate moniker: “Last of the Shawnees.”

The presence on the ballot of LaRose, who vied with Moreno for Trump’s endorsement, means that Dolan doesn’t have to defeat a Trump-backed candidate straight up — he may only need a Nikki Haley-like, high-30s percent to prevail.

Trump and his allies, particularly Vance, have been as eager as Senate Democrats to block Dolan. The president’s eldest son and MAGA diehards like South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem have come to Ohio to stump for Moreno.

And after DeWine stepped into the race, Vance worked to convince Trump to return to Ohio before the Senate primary, even though the presidential primary is over. Trump consented and rallied Republicans at the Dayton airport on Saturday.

It was a risk of political capital by the former president — why raise questions about your control over the party immediately after claiming the nomination? — and irritated some in Trump’s orbit. “If Moreno loses, this will sour him on J.D.,” one Trump adviser told me.

Dolan is hardly running against Trump. Appearing Monday in the sort of suburban community where Brown will try to make inroads with what was the beating heart of the Bush-era GOP, the state senator barely made mention in his remarks of Trump at a small house party in Dublin, home to both Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus-designed golf communities.

Yet there’s no doubt how the well-tailored Dolan, who was sporting a double-vented sport coat, would run in the general. He emphasized his support for exceptions to abortion — warning that Brown would put his opponents’ hardline positions on “a loop for the next eight months” — and brought up his support for Ukraine when asked about differences with his GOP rivals.

When I asked him after his remarks which senator he’d emulate, well, he didn’t mention Vance. The three GOP lawmakers he cited — Senators Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana — are all national security hawks.

Asked if he’d toe the Trump line or be an independent-minded senator, Dolan sounded like a red state Democrat trying to survive with a GOP president.

“I’m going to the United States Senate to make America stronger so wherever and whoever I need to work with to make America stronger and represent Ohio’s interests I’ll work with them,” Dolan said.

He dodged entirely on whether Trump had been a positive or malign force for the party. “He's popular in Ohio because his policies worked,” Dolan told me.

As for the implications, Dolan’s hosts at the house party, who had pictures of George W. and Laura Bush as well as Portman but none evident of Trump, were more blunt than the candidate.

“This is a bellwether nationally,” said Jeff Baur, who along with his wife, Natalie, had coffee, bagels and fruit for Dolan. “If Matt wins against Trump, against J.D. Vance, against [Rep} Jim Jordan it’s like the state is telling us something.”

The question for Democrats, given Ohio’s shift from perennial battleground to reliable red state in presidential elections, is whether Brown can beat any Republican nominee with Trump on top of the ticket in a state he handily won twice.

Two years ago, as DeWine put it, Rep. Tim “Ryan, I thought, ran as good a campaign as could’ve been run, and it just didn’t matter.” Vance won by six points.

Dolan, though, argues he will starve Brown of the votes he needs in Ohio’s metropolitan “three Cs” — Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati.

“I would suppress his vote in those counties he has to run the score up,” he told me.

The Democrats, though, have effectively cast their vote — they prefer Moreno.

Now the only question is if the Ohio Republican Party, which elevated Ray Bliss to RNC chairman, Jo Ann Davidson to RNC co-chair and made Bob Bennett one of the most powerful state party chairs in the country, is merely “an adjunct of the Trumpworld,” which DeWine pointedly called it.

As Steve Stivers, the former congressman who now runs the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, put it to me with a gallows laugh: “If they can’t win under these circumstances, they have to acknowledge the party is completely gone to Trump.” 

Benjamin Johansen contributed to this report.