The Memo: Ohio primary puts Trump’s power to the test

President Trump faces his first major test of the 2022 election cycle on Tuesday.

Voters in the Republican Senate primary will decide whether to make the Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance their nominee — or to hand Vance and the former president a defeat.

For all the heft Trump would claim to provide in a state that he carried by 8 points in both his presidential campaigns, a Vance victory is far from assured. 

The “Hillbilly Elegy” author is, at best, a narrow favorite. 

Two polls in the final stretch of the race have given him the lead, but by just 4 points and 2 points respectively. That’s nowhere close to a comfortable advantage, especially in a primary where polls are notoriously volatile.

There’s no doubt that Trump’s endorsement, delivered in mid-April, was a jolt of rocket fuel for Vance, lifting him from third place to first. But the fact it has not propelled him fully clear from the pack leaves questions about how much Trump’s backing matters.

Trump has endorsed an enormous number of candidates across the country, but a handful of high-profile contests will serve as the litmus tests of his power. 

Those include the Pennsylvania Senate primary, where he has endorsed television personality Mehmet Oz, and the gubernatorial race in Georgia, where Trump has eagerly sought a defeat for incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp at the hands of former Sen. David Perdue.

“I think any of these high-profile statewide races are tests of [Trump] in a way,” said GOP strategist Dan Judy. “No single race is going to determine the potency of his endorsements but the confluence of all these primaries will provide that test.”

Meanwhile, major figures in the party — most notably Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — have expressed concern about the GOP putting forth nominees who might lose seats in a general election that are otherwise winnable. 

Though McConnell did not name Trump, his arguments seemed squarely aimed at questionable picks from the former president, such as Oz and former football star Herschel Walker, who is running for the Senate in Georgia.

Republican candidates from far and wide have beaten a path to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate to try to win his backing — testament to the perception of him as a kingmaker. But cold-eyed analysis doesn’t always tell the same story.

GOP pollster Patrick Ruffini tweeted on Monday that, in general, “We’re basically seeing a 5-10 point bump in primary polls from the Trump endorsement, which ain’t nothing, but is far off his marks from 2018.”

The most recent major poll out of Ohio, from the Trafalgar Group, had Vance on 26 percent, state senator Matt Dolan on 22 percent, former state treasurer Josh Mandel on 21 percent and businessman Mike Gibbons on 13 percent.

Another survey, from Emerson, also had Vance on 26 percent, with Mandel second (24 percent), Dolan third (21 percent) and Gibbons again fourth (17 percent).

Some unaligned Republicans in the state contend that Trump waited too long to deliver his endorsement, especially given that early voting had already begun at that point.

“There was a strategic mistake in waiting as late as he did,” said Ohio GOP strategist Matt Dole. In addition to early votes having been cast, “he is fighting against made-up minds,” Dole argued. “People had picked who they were going to support, and it is difficult to move them out of those decisions.”

Still, whether a defeat for Vance would really be a repudiation of Trump depends largely on who might beat him.

Mandel has aped Trump’s hyper-combative rhetoric. He eagerly sought the former president’s endorsement. Mandel supporters have gleefully amplified past comments from Vance that were harshly critical of Trump and his base.

Gibbons, too, is a fervent Trump fan. Among the leading candidates, only Dolan has kept Trump at arm’s length — and even he is far from a “Never Trump” figure. He is viewed as a Trump skeptic mainly because he never expected the former president’s endorsement and doesn’t advocate relitigating the 2020 election.

Dolan’s late polling rise has been the subject of much interest inside and outside the state, but most Ohio experts doubt he can pull off a victory.

When it comes to the other leading figures, “these candidates have really had one message from the first moment and that is, ‘I am Trumpier than thou,’” said David Niven, a professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati. 

For Niven, Trump’s importance within the modern-day GOP isn’t measured in the success or failure of endorsees like Vance but in the sheer number of Republican candidates running in the former president’s image.

“Whether his candidate wins or loses, his mindset is going to win” in Ohio, Niven said. “Trump-the-concept is going to win whether or not Trump’s candidate wins.”

True to form, Trump remains the central focus of the Ohio race as primary day approaches. 

At a rally in Nebraska Sunday, Trump mangled the name of his endorsee.

“We’ve endorsed J.P., right? J.D. Mandel, and he’s doing great. They’re all doing good,” Trump said.

Vance professed himself unbothered by the flub on Monday.

“Sometimes he’s going to misspeak. Everybody’s going to do that,” the candidate told CBS News. “I’m not worried about it at all.”

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.