The Republican Party is singing a victorious and united tune. President-elect Donald Trump will return to the White House next month, as will Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress.
But Trump’s victory on Nov. 6 was as much a triumph over the GOP establishment as it was the Democratic Party and Vice President Kamala Harris. He has now remade the party in his image and put his Republican opponents on their heels.
But even as the old guard grapples with how to engage with a second Trump presidency, a new intraparty battle is emerging in Ohio, a state once known for its swingy politics but which has become reliably Republican since Trump emerged as the GOP’s leader.
On Jan. 20, barely two years after he took office, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) will resign his position as a senator and take the oath of office to be vice president of the United States.
This has started a storm of speculation about who could replace him as senator. The chatter began as soon as Trump first announced that Vance would join him on the Republican presidential ticket.
When Vance vacates his Senate seat, the decision about refilling it will fall to Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH), who will appoint a seat-warmer replacement until a special election is held in November 2026 to fill the remaining two years of the term. The seat will again be up for reelection in 2028 for a full six-year term.
For DeWine, choosing Vance’s successor will be a legacy-defining moment. With Sen.-elect Bernie Moreno’s (R-OH) successful bid to unseat longtime incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Republicans have secured every statewide office. The party holds both Senate seats, the governorship, and supermajorities in the state House of Representatives and the state Senate. Whoever DeWine taps to fill the seat left vacant by Vance could hold it for decades, a development that would have seemed far-fetched if suggested barely a decade ago.
A populist red state
The Republicans’ dominance in Ohio arguably began when Trump carried the state by 8 percentage points in 2016, a performance he duplicated in 2020. This ended Ohio’s status as a bellwether and signaled the emergence of long-term Republican control. In 2024, Democrats did not even contest the state, and Trump carried it by double digits.
In the intervening years, Trump put his finger on the scale in several primaries, notably in 2022 when he endorsed Vance, a political newcomer and conservative populist, over a field full of longtime Republican politicians. Two years later, Trump endorsed the populist Moreno over Matt Dolan, the establishment’s preferred candidate, who had the endorsements of DeWine and former Sen. Rob Portman.
Trump and Vance’s influence on Ohio’s Republican voters has put DeWine in a bind and presages a pitched battle between the Republican establishment and populists.
DeWine’s choice
DeWine is a former senator who lost to Brown in 2006 before mounting a political comeback, first as the state’s attorney general and then as a two-term governor. After winning reelection in 2022, DeWine is term-limited and will leave office in January 2027. Possible successors are already making plans. His lieutenant governor, Jon Husted (R-OH), is widely seen as DeWine’s preferred successor and has raised millions of dollars to fund his bid to become the chief executive of the state. Attorney General David Yost (R-OH) is also hinting that he will get into the race. So has entrepreneur and Trump ally Vivek Ramaswamy.
With two statewide officials having thus taken themselves out of the running for the Senate seat, DeWine is looking elsewhere for an appointee he believes will be a serious legislator, who can avoid drawing the ire of Trump and Vance, and will be able to win two primaries and two general elections in just three years.
Sources in Ohio see Jane Timken, the former chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, as the favorite to be tapped for the role. She first ran for Senate in 2022 and was beaten by Vance, but she earned only a meager 4% of the vote, even with the endorsement of the retiring Portman.
Ohio’s Martha McSally?
Even if Timken ends up being DeWine’s choice, she will probably draw a more Trumpy primary challenger. That’s because while she is a longtime fixture in Ohio Republican politics, she has a lackluster record of securing votes. The support of Portman could also prove a liability in a state where populism is dominant.
A Timken appointment and candidacy could cost the Republican Party a Senate seat that should comfortably be in their camp. This would resemble in Arizona Senate seat held by Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), who defeated the appointed Sen. Martha McSally in a special election in 2020.
McSally was appointed in 2018 to take the vacant seat of the late John McCain. But she had already proven an underperformer electorally. That same year, she was the Republican nominee to replace the retiring Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), losing to Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ).
By the end of 2020, McSally had cost the Republican Party two Senate seats in a state that had not elected a Democrat in decades.
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With Timken or any other appointee who would draw a primary challenge, DeWine risks making another McSally blunder, especially as Brown, who overperformed the top of the Democratic ticket in his losing reelection bid by nearly 8 points, hints he may run again.
DeWine holds the cards in choosing Vance’s successor, but who he chooses could have a big impact on the party’s ability to keep the Senate in the 2026 election. If he ignores the political currents that turned Ohio from a swing state into a red state, his legacy could be a pointless and doomed battle against the populist tide that changed his party, his state, and the country.