Does he have a chance? How red is Ohio? I guess he’s not gonna be running DOGE alongside The Musk.
Ohio is solidly red now. Our current governor is not MAGA and is wrong within normal parameters, even chalking up some bipartisan cred at times (e.g., his covid response). But even if he could run again, there’s a good chance he’d get primaried out. I’m almost certain our next governor will be MAGA.
Will it be Vivek? I don’t think so. There are whiter MAGA candidates with name recognition. Possibly why he’s putting out feelers now.
Eta: Frank LaRose and Dave Yost, our current secretary of state and attorney general, respectively, would have the best chances, IMO.
I agree. Trump has won the state every time he’s appeared on the ballot here, God help us, and with Sen. Sherrod Brown’s very undeserved defeat Ohio Democrats currently have only a single statewide officeholder, Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Brunner. In the last three election cycles, every single statewide executive-branch Dem candidate has lost, alas, including some very good people.
I suspect VR won’t get past the GOP primary, but it’s certainly possible. FWIW we’ve elected candidates of color statewide, both Democratic and Republican, in the past.
What does Vivek Ramaswamy even bring to the MAGAts of Ohio? This is a man with zero political experience and seems like a grifter rather than a legitimate business…oh, I get it now.
Exactly.
What happened to make Ohio so red? Ohio used to be a bellwether state that kind of went with the national mood. What occurred to make them change so hard against the Democrats?
In a nutshell, its economy has deteriorated in the past 30 years, its population is aging and legislative district lines for both Congress and the General Assembly are incredibly gerrymandered.
Expanding on Elendil_s_Heir’s answer, there are roughly 3 Ohios (broad generalizations and stereotypes incoming, be warned). We’ll set aside the urban/rural divide, as all Ohio city centers are blue, plus a bit more in Columbus, which doesn’t have a dominant industry.
Southeast Ohio, the least populous and therefore least consequential division, is Appalachia. Think West Virginia, Eastern Kentucky, Southwestern PA. This area went red the same time WV did, for the same reasons. With no more coal/steel industry propping up this part of the country, there’s really nothing left in these areas but drugs, poverty, and grievance politics. Obama nailed this one in terms of clinging to guns and religion. This is the area I see the most confederate flags in.
Central and Southwestern Ohio is more like our Midwest neighbors. Think Indiana, Illinois, Iowa. Big agribusiness. This area has always been red in my lifetime. I grew up in the Cincinnati area, and aside from areas that remained after white flight, nothing ever felt liberal there.
The big shift in my lifetime was in the 3rd area, stretching from Youngstown, through Akron/Canton (rubber capital of the world), the greater Cleveland area, Sandusky, and Toledo. Heavy manufacturing area feeding the auto industry with parts. When the big 3 automakers floundered in the late 90s, they did a superb job blaming the unions. As such, union politics were slowly but steadily replaced with right-wing identity politics. This pro-union, pro-worker, reliably blue swath of Ohio, Sherrod Brown’s bread and butter, always served as a counterpoint to the pro-business agricultural part and is what made Ohio a purple swing state. It has now gone red is it not coming back any time soon.
Brown only lost by 4% while Kamala Harris was losing by 11%, but I take your point.
One other factor: Ohio Big Business gives big money to the state GOP and its candidates, and dark money has also flooded a number of recent statewide elections, much of it from out of state. Statewide Dems are invariably outspent.