After chaotic 2022 race, some Ohio Republicans wait to challenge Sen. Sherrod Brown

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Candidates flooded last year’s Ohio Republican U.S. Senate primary election after Rob Portman, the longtime senator, announced he wouldn’t run for re-election.

But for the chance in 2024 to face Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown? So far, no rush.

With the 2024 Republican primary less than a year away, just two GOP candidates, both from the Cleveland area, have announced: state Sen. Matt Dolan and businessman Bernie Moreno. Both also ran in 2022, although Moreno dropped out before that primary election in May.

Two more major potential candidates – Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Rep. Warren Davidson, a Dayton-area congressman – have yet to decide. Both are seriously considering running, and while opinions vary, Republican sources increasingly think both will take the plunge.

In contrast, by this stage of the race in 2022, four candidates had gotten in the race, while a fifth, eventual winner J.D. Vance, was strongly telegraphing a run. All five candidates, plus Dolan, a late entrant in the race, each ended up spending millions of dollars in what was a memorably nasty and historically expensive race.

Political observers attribute this year’s relative caution from Republicans to the different prospective electoral climate. Last year, Republicans were running for an open Senate seat with what they expected would be a boost from President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings. And they were expecting to face Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who had never run statewide. Portman’s announcement surprised his colleagues and prompted numerous top Ohio Republicans to quickly look at the race, with a couple, then-Ohio Republican Party chairman Jane Timken and former state treasurer Josh Mandel, immediately taking the plunge.

This year, candidates like LaRose and Davidson are taking their time before deciding whether to challenge Brown, a longtime officeholder and top defense priority for national Democrats to hold their narrow Senate majority. While Ohio has become a reliably Republican state, a presidential election should foster a more neutral political environment than last year’s election. The nonpartisan Cook Political report rates the race a toss-up.

“It’s not like it was an open race with a somewhat unknown Tim Ryan,” said Republican political strategist Terry Casey, “[Brown] is a known quantity, and is a guy who can raise tens of millions and who will work and campaign hard and say anything to get elected.”

Democrats are comfortable sitting back and letting the Republican primary race heat up.

“The politicians in the Ohio Senate primary aren’t even waiting to get in the race before attacking one another,” said Reeves Oyster, a spokesperson for the Ohio Democratic Party. “Their mudslinging is previewing the bruising, expensive fight ahead which will expose whoever emerges as out-of-touch with Ohioans.”

In 2021, after Portman announced his retirement, Timken quickly got in the race, showing signs of locking up an early endorsement from ex-President Donald Trump. If she had done so, it likely would have largely cleared the field.

But allies of former state Treasurer Josh Mandel, Moreno, Vance and other candidates managed to talk Trump into waiting to issue an endorsement. That created the conditions for a protracted, unsettled race with six candidates each spending millions of dollars on ads. Meanwhile, they waged a parallel, unsubtle campaign to court the former president. Trump eventually endorsed Vance a few weeks before the primary election, effectively deciding the race. Vance went on to beat Ryan in November, although the race was more competitive than expected.

This year, Dolan announced his candidacy in January, and Moreno announced in April. But beyond that, the candidate field has yet to fully take shape.

LaRose said in an interview he’s looking to make a decision “by the middle part of summer.”

“Sen. Brown’s beatable, but it’s not going to be easy,” LaRose said. “It’s going to take the right candidate to do that, and that’s why I’m taking such a thoughtful and deliberate approach to exploring this.”

Many state Republicans and LaRose himself have identified fundraising as an issue for LaRose, given that Dolan and Moreno are independently wealthy, and a viable Senate campaign as a rule of thumb costs at least $10 million. But a top Ohio Republican downplayed fundraising concerns, saying family considerations also are a factor. LaRose, 44, has three young daughters.

In the meantime, LaRose is acting like a candidate. He’s making the rounds alongside Dolan and Moreno at GOP events around the state. He’s also taken some concrete steps that point toward a run, like bringing in a new political team. He’s tapped Majority Strategies, a prominent Ohio GOP political firm, to help guide his campaign, and hiring a new campaign fundraiser, Andrea Martin, replacing another aide who’s been with him for years.

LaRose also is raising money into a newly formed political entity called the Leadership for Ohio Fund. The organization is what’s called a 527 group, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, including from corporations. A fundraising pitch Martin sent in late April, obtained by cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, solicits money for the group. It describes its mission as “keeping Ohio at the forefront of election security efforts as we’ve seen under Frank LaRose.”

The group eventually will have to disclose its financial activity, but it hasn’t yet.

In addition, LaRose has brought staff into official office who could slide over to a campaign role, including Jay Bergles, who’s a public-affairs director for the Secretary of State’s Office and Tyler Pokela, who’s a data analyst. Both worked for the Republican National Committee’s Ohio operation in 2022.

Davidson, a Republican congressman from Southwest Ohio who replaced former House Speaker John Boehner in 2016, has not been quite as visible as LaRose in laying the groundwork for a race.

But in recent days, Ohio Republicans have become increasingly convinced that Davidson will run, with some making plans to run for his congressional seat. If he does get in the race, the Club for Growth, an anti-tax advocacy organization in Washington, D.C., has signaled it will back him. The group and its affiliates spent more than $11 million boosting Mandel in the 2022 race. While it hasn’t set a budget for Ohio, the group has pledged to spend $10 million in each the West Virginia governor’s and U.S. Senate races this year. Davidson also is close with U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan, who has a wide following among Ohio Republican voters.

A Davidson aide didn’t respond to a message, although he told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer in December he was “honored” that people were considering him as a potential candidate in the race. If he does run for Senate, Davidson would be forgoing a safe re-election bid, a dynamic that led several Republican Ohio congressman opt not to run for Senate last year after publicly flirting with the idea. Davidson himself decided not to run for statewide office in 2022, passing on the chance to challenge Gov. Mike DeWine after a meeting with Trump.

“It’s safe to say I’m actually very actively looking at the race every day,” Davidson told Politico last month. “I would clearly be the conservative.”

Ohio Republicans don’t expect additional major candidates to come out of the woodwork.

Cleveland businessman Mike Gibbons, who spent $18.1 million of his own money on his campaign last year only to come in fourth place, has been dabbling in Statehouse politics, but isn’t expected to run. Timken, who ended up finishing in fifth place, told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer this week she isn’t running. Mandel also isn’t running this year, according to a spokesman.

“The good news is it will be a more narrow, focused field,” said Casey, the Republican strategist from Columbus.

Another different dynamic in this year’s race: the role of Trump’s endorsement. Republicans say that Trump is more focused on his own political career – he’s running for the Republican nomination in 2024 – and while he’s notoriously difficult to predict, they expect him to be less engaged with playing kingmaker for others.

And so, the conditions seem less ripe for an “audience of one” style race like what we saw in 2022.

Moreno, who is father-in-law to U.S. Rep. Max Miller, a former Trump White House aide with a warm relationship with the former president, is believed to have the inside track to eventually get the endorsement. Trump gave Moreno a semi-endorsement on his social media platform in April, calling Moreno “highly respected” while name-dropping Miller.

Dolan, meanwhile, isn’t seeking Trump’s endorsement, and instead is urging voters to move on from the former president and look for different leaders. Davidson’s connection to the Club for Growth could close the door on a Trump endorsement. The group sparred with Trump over endorsements in the 2022 elections, and since then has distanced itself from Trump, courting his potential primary opponents, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

And LaRose plans to angle for a Trump endorsement, but also is making calculations on how he could run without it, according to comments he made privately while attending a meeting last month of the Cuyahoga Valley Republicans, a grassroots conservative group in Brecksville.

In a recorded conversation, which was obtained and published by Politico, LaRose said he’d love to have Trump’s endorsement, but that he won’t “beg” for it.

He also said Trump’s endorsement “matters,” but not as much as it has in the past. He also said that 20% of the Republican electorate will vote for whoever Trump endorses, while up to 60% of the electorate “doesn’t care.”

In an interview with cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer, LaRose called it “unfortunate” that someone recorded his unguarded comments. He said he plans to compete for Trump’s endorsement – which he got in his re-election campaign last year – if he eventually gets in the Senate race.

“I think that a lot of Republicans want to know what he thinks, but I don’t think a single endorsement makes or breaks a candidacy,” he said.

Alex Triantafilou, the Ohio Republican Party chairman, said he thinks Republicans can beat Brown in 2024. Leading up to that, he said he hopes the GOP primary will be relatively tame.

“As a party leader, I would prefer that we stay focused on Sherrod Brown’s record of siding with Joe Biden all the time, and not attack each other,” Triantafilou said. “But I’m not naïve to how these things get. From my perspective, I will urge these candidates as I’ve built relationships with them to stay focused on the goal and that is to defeat Senator Brown.”

Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer.