Former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel on Wednesday became the first candidate to jump into the contest to succeed Sen. Rob Portman, setting up a race in which two or more pro-Trump candidates will compete for his base and possible endorsement in a Republican primary.
Mr. Mandel enters the race just days after former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Jane Timken stepped down from her role with the party to explore a possible run for the U.S. Senate seat that Mr. Portman, a Republican, is vacating in 2022.
The primary, which is still more than a year away, may come down to several pro-Trump Republicans competing for oxygen and a slice of the base in a state the former president won easily in November.
“Regardless of how big the primary field gets, there’s not really going to be a lane for a ‘moderate’ to win,” said Nick Everhart, a Columbus-based Republican advertising strategist. “You still have to be a Trump MAGA populist conservative to have a chance to win a primary in Ohio in 2022. That’s just where and who the electorate is right now. It’s imperative to be viewed as sufficiently Trump to the GOP primary base right now.”
Republican candidates could also be eyeing Mr. Trump’s endorsement as a way to break away from the rest of the field, even though the former president hasn’t indicated the degree to which he will weigh in on statewide and congressional races now that he’s out of office.
“Just saying you’re for Trump and a Trump Republican isn’t going to be enough when somebody else has a much stronger connection,” Mr. Everhart said, referring to the likelihood that Ms. Timken gets a Trump nod. “Whether Trump endorses in the race or not, there’s got to be something else there. I think that’s going to be Josh Mandel’s problem — I don’t think he’s got any tangible, viable way to articulate and make the argument. There’s nothing Trump about him.”
Mr. Mandel, who ran against Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2012, has been publicly silent about Mr. Trump and in general since dropping out of the 2018 U.S. Senate race and attributing the sudden move to his wife’s undisclosed illness. He and his wife, Ilana Shafran Mandel, divorced last year.
He said that behind he scenes, however, he worked on fund-raising for the former president.
“I’ve been full-throated in my support for President Trump and I’m the number one Trump ally in Ohio,” he told The Blade.
The ex-state treasurer tied his entrance into the race Wednesday to the former president’s second impeachment trial, arguing it’s a “sham” proceeding that “has made my blood boil and motivated me to run for the U.S. Senate,” he said in a statement, even though he was one of the first Republicans to signal his interest in running on Jan. 25, the day Mr. Portman announced his upcoming retirement.
“It’s sickening to see radical liberals and fake Republicans in Washington engage in this second assault on President Donald Trump and the millions of us who supported him,” Mr. Mandel said on Wednesday.
“We need a fighter in the Senate who will fight to build the wall, combat China’s economic cheating and advance conservative policies that gave us the greatest economy in American history. We need to keep our foot on the gas and build off the momentum of the Trump presidency.”
Justin Barasky, the Democratic operative who ran Mr. Brown’s 2018 campaign, described Mr. Mandel as a cutthroat Republican in the mold of Mr. Trump.
“Josh had Trump’s relationship with the truth before Trump did,” he said. “He has ambition unchecked by anyone I’ve ever seen in politics, and will do absolutely anything to get ahead.”
While Ms. Timken hasn’t formally entered the fray, Republicans are expecting her announcement before the end of the month.
As a local GOP official in Stark County with a record of strong fund-raising for Mr. Trump, Ms. Timken was his handpicked choice to lead Ohio Republicans after the 2016 election pitted Mr. Trump and former Gov. John Kasich against one another in the GOP primary.
She has used similar language as Mr. Mandel in tweets this week to describe Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial, calling it an “unjust sham,” and also touted her Trump bona fides in a Cincinnati Enquirer op-ed.
“I knew that if we were going to secure our state’s future and continue to build on the overwhelming success of the Trump agenda, we need to clean house. With the support of President Trump, I stepped up to get rid of the Kasich regime and completely transformed the party into a well-oiled, unified, pro-Trump machine that won conservative victories and advanced an America First agenda at every level,” she wrote.
Republican Rep. Bill Johnson, a conservative House member from southeast Ohio, is also seriously weighing a bid, and using anti-Kasich sentiment as a springboard. CNBC reported last month that Mr. Kasich was one of the state power brokers reaching out to business leaders about running.
“He’s chatting up Wall Street elite, like the tycoons who think they decide who can invest in the stock market. And Kasich is talking to big tech elites, like the ones shutting down your social media if they disagree with you,” Mr. Johnson says in a radio ad. “The last time I heard from John Kasich he was speaking to another group of elitists, the Democratic National Convention.”
Also possibly in the GOP mix: Rep. Steve Stivers, a moderate from Columbus who previously chaired the National Republican Congressional Committee; Matt Dolan, a state senator from Cleveland whose family owns the Cleveland Indians, and Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland investment banker who ran in the GOP Senate primary in 2018.
Former Ohio Health Director Amy Acton and Rep. Tim Ryan of the Youngstown area are expected to enter the race on the Democratic side. Ohio House Minority Leader Emilia Sykes of Akron and Rep. Joyce Beatty of Columbus are also considering bids.
The Ohio Democratic Party wasted no time fund-raising off Mr. Mandel’s news.
“After running a gutter-style campaign against Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2012 and then flirting with and eventually abandoning a rematch in 2018, Josh Mandel is trying once more to win a U.S. Senate seat — and he already has $4 million in the bank, giving him an enormous head start,” the party wrote in an email plea for contributions that noted his sizable federal campaign war chest.
Asked about his former rival on Wednesday, Mr. Brown, who has been talking to Democrats hoping to enter the race, told reporters: “My focus is not on any Republican candidate, any one of the number of people that want to run for the Senate. I don’t really have any interest in who is lining up to do the bidding of Donald Trump every minute, every hour of the day.”
First Published February 11, 2021, 12:33 a.m.
