EAST PALESTINE, Ohio — It has been a lively time in the Buckeye State, beginning here in the Columbiana County village, where only three weeks ago, Vice President JD Vance revisited the site of the 2023 toxic Norfolk Southern derailment and subsequent controlled burn.

Within short order, Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) named former Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel, who most recently served as the president of Youngstown State University, to serve as his lieutenant governor.

Four days later, at a ceremony in the Rotunda of the Ohio Statehouse, DeWine’s son, Ohio Supreme Court Justice Patrick DeWine, swore in Tressel as Ohio’s 67th lieutenant governor.

Ten days later, Vivek Ramaswamy, who was born in suburban Cincinnati and lives in Columbus, announced he was entering the primary contest for the Republican nomination for governor of the state his family has called home since his parents immigrated here over 40 years ago.

Soon after, President Donald Trump endorsed Ramaswamy over sitting state Attorney General David Yost and a possible run by Tressel, eliminating any will-he-or-wont-he speculation about his involvement in this Republican primary.

Mike DeWine told the Washington Examiner it was a no-brainer to pick Tressel as his lieutenant governor given his successes at YSU. In particular, the governor was impressed by Tressel’s investment in guiding the one-time commuter college in a struggling Rust Belt city into one of the early innovators in 3-D printing at their Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering.

“He’s really a perfect fit for me because my administration is going to really continue to focus on education, making sure everybody lives up to their God-given potential,” said Mike DeWine.

“We’re doing this at a time when we’re doing more career tech, which he’s a big proponent of. Also, frankly, we’re seeing our colleges, because of the demographics, face a very different time, and the colleges have to adjust to that,” the governor explained, adding Tressel knows how the college of today has to function.

“All of these things go together and he is going to be a great, great lieutenant Governor and is going to do a great job.”

Ramaswamy isn’t the only declared Republican candidate running for governor in the state. Attorney General Dave Yost announced his candidacy for governor one week before Vance came here to East Palestine.

The popular AG who has won the seat twice, in 2018 and 2022, was also elected twice as the state auditor general and had previously served as a Delaware County prosecutor.

Just over fifteen years ago, Democrat Ted Strickland was the governor, and his counterpart in the U.S. Senate Sherrod Brown was well on his way to winning his second and third terms. Barack Obama had just won his first election for president and would repeat that in 2012, with the Steel Valley counties of Trumbull, Stark, and Mahoning helping him sweep into office.

Strickland would fall in 2010 and then again in 2016 when he lost the 2016 general election for the U.S. Senate by a large margin to Rob Portman. Obama’s vote share would decline from 2008 to 2012. Vance would defeat Tim Ryan in 2022 for the U.S. Senate. Brown fell last year to Republican Bernie Moreno.

Interestingly, it was the same Brown that defeated Mike DeWine in his reelection bid for the Senate in 2006; the Republican governor was undeterred and went back and ran for attorney general twice, then governor twice, winning all four times.

To date, the only Democrat to announce a run for the governor’s office has been the former director of the Ohio Department of Health, Dr. Amy Acton. Acton ran the state’s response at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and was met with criticism when her restrictions began to be seen as too broad.

Acton resigned within a few months and her policies were protested heavily toward the end.

Brown suggested he might consider a run for senate or governor when he left in December, but he’s said nothing since then.

Tressel has not said if he is or isn’t going to run for governor. Yost is not going anywhere, and Ramaswamy has the benefit of the Trump endorsement. But it is important to note that Yost is a workhorse and Tressel is a folk hero, particularly in Columbus and the Mahoning Valley.

“This election will once again teach us something new about Trump voters,” said Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University. “You could potentially see any of these guys pulling ahead, and it is really kind of fascinating to watch where this election is going to go,” he said.

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He added, “More importantly where do Trump voters go? You cannot discount the endorsement, but you also cannot discount the folk hero status of Tressel and the work ethic of Yost.”

As for the Democrats, Sracic said their problem is statewide appeal: “They really have no bench. Brown and Ryan are the only two who really have statewide recognition and both lost in the last two cycles.”