LORAIN, Ohio — JD Vance’s convincing victory in Tuesday’s Republican Senate primary in this red-hued state may have given an exclamation mark to the power of former President Donald J. Trump’s imprimatur among conservative activist voters.
But Mr. Vance, the shape-shifting author and venture capitalist — once a Never-Trump antagonist, then a former president acolyte — has one possible battleground left for the general election: the suburbs.
That’s where Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat seeking to appeal to incumbent Republicans and working-class voters, will need to ramp up the vote to overcome conservative shifts in more rural parts of the state. The suburbs are also the places here and across the country where demographics are the most racially and ethnically diverse — and where Republicans are a little more divided, centrists often feel they don’t have a party, and many voters are just now waking up to the midterm cycle of 2022.
In Lorain, a working-class industrial town west of Cleveland, some of that burgeoning interest was sparked by Mr Trump’s rule in this week’s primaries, and by news of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would rule out a woman’s right to would negate abortion. At her desk at Dye’s Appliances, Tara Ortiz, 43, a co-owner and manager, shuddered at the thought that her daughters were about to lose control of their bodies, which she had long taken for granted.
The abortion news made November’s election even more intriguing, said Ms Ortiz, who added that she planned to vote when the time came but hadn’t chosen a Senate candidate yet. Her husband is a big Trump supporter, she added, but she leans toward Democrat.
“I’m for anything that can make a better life for my children and for my Tom,” she said, referring to her husband.
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A 20-minute drive east toward Cleveland, where wood-paneled homes give way to mansions along Lake Erie, is Bay Village, one of the suburban and historically Republican communities in all of Ohio that has seen something of a liberal shift. Heading to a pharmacy with his 9-year-old son, Michael Edelman, 43, Mr. Vance’s tidal wave of support across the state said “a little bit terrifying.” But he said he believed Mr. Ryan could still have his way to victory if enough people showed up to polls in Ohio’s eight major metropolitan centers.
“When rural counties carry the state, it doesn’t stand a chance,” said Mr. Edelman, director of education at Ideastream Public Media, which operates several local public television and radio stations.
Sure, mr. Vance enters general election season, heavily favored against Mr. Ryan. Trump twice transported Ohio in much less favorable political climates, and with inflation soaring and gas prices over $4 a gallon, the Buckeye state is not sheltered from the political winds.
On the old battlefields of Ohio, where unionized families voted Democrat for generations, and Appalachian voters tended to shift their allegiances and parties, the Trump era seems to have blocked Republican support. Worker counties that border the Pennsylvania border to the east and Appalachian regions along the state lines of West Virginia and Kentucky — which starred in Mr. Vance’s best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” — were walls of support for him.
“Trump has changed the game here,” said Tom McCabe, chairman of the Republican Party in Mahoning County, where Republicans were scarce a decade ago and now dominate.
Four years ago, Mr. Vance, a venture capitalist, was all smiles as he hitched a ride on a three-day bus trip, exploring investment opportunities in Youngstown and Akron, Ohio; Detroit and Flint, Michigan; and South Bend, Ind. – a tour organized by none other than Mr. Ryan. At the time, Mr. Ryan was the popular Congressman from the counties of Mahoning and Trumbull, eager to show off advances such as the electric vehicle batteries being built in what he called Voltage Valley.
That same year, 2018, Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat running for reelection, defeated his Republican challenger, Jim Renacci, by 21 percentage points in Mahoning County.
But in a very short span of time, the roles have been reversed. As president, Mr. Trump basically stole what set Ohio Democrats like Mr. Ryan apart from their national party — protectionism and heated anti-Chinese rhetoric — while winning over social conservatives, especially conservative Catholics, with his opposition to abortion rights. and attacks on immigrants and transgender people.
Mr Trump slipped Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Mahoning County passed 50 to 48 percent by 2020, and Mr. Vance slipped into Mr. Trump’s wake with blazing attacks on both sides’ free trade policies and with anti-Chinese rhetoric as heated as Mr. Ryan’s. The biography of Mr. Vance—the son of a drug-addicted mother, raised by his grandmother in Ohio hardscrabble, enlisted in the military, attended college and Yale Law School—is every bit as compelling as Mr. Ryan’s stories. about high school football stardom and a union mom who raised him alone.
“JD Vance is the worst possible candidate for Democrats to run against,” said Paul Sracic, a political scientist at Youngstown State University who specializes in the voting patterns of Ohio workers. “Democrats love Ryan because they think he can talk to these working class voters and get them back. They’re not coming back.”
Not everyone likes Mr. Vance in the Mahoning Valley.
“He says everything he has to say to get what he wants to do,” said Hank Zimmerman, 73, a retired union carpenter working at 90-year-old Golden Dawn’s bar on the weathered suburbs of Youngstown. “That’s JD Vance.”
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Tex Fischer, the youth communications director for the Mahoning County GOP, who said he voted for Josh Mandel on Tuesday, openly admitted he strongly dislikes Mr. Vance. “Personally, I hated his guts,” he said. “I didn’t see him as authentic.”
But Mr. Fischer said he was totally into Mr. Vance now.
If Mr. Ryan’s own backyard is lost, Democrats will continue to fight for Ohio’s burgeoning suburbs, especially around Cincinnati and Columbus, said Justin Barasky, a Cleveland Democratic adviser. The hope for Democrats is that Mr. Vance’s hard-core pivot in the primaries, his embrace of Mr. Trump and his Trump-esque use of vulgarisms such as “scumbag” will destroy the suburban voters who were once the main supporters of lower-ranking key conservatives, such as Governor Mike DeWine and Senator Rob Portman, who is retiring from the seat Mr. Vance and Mr. Ryan both want.
In Lorain County, which wore Mr. Brown for Democrats in 2018 but voted for Mr. Trump in 2020, Jeffrey Yates, 44, a janitor at a Ford factory and a former Republican who said he twice voted for Barack Obama. had voted. had become skeptical of a newer wave of Democrats who, he argued, seemed determined to take people’s guns and put those who offended them to shame. He said those Democrats didn’t seem to think about the costs of sweeping progressive policies for people in lower income levels like him.
Still, Mr Yates said Mr Trump’s rise to power had halted his decline into the Republican Party. Republicans seem “almost like fundamentalists, almost cultists” about the former president, he said. That scared him, he said, and he considered whether to vote for Mr. Ryan or not at all.
But Republicans, even those who remain suspicious of Trump’s influence, say the state has simply become more conservative. Even Mr. DeWine has been pushed to the right, he has signed legislation allowing people to carry concealed weapons without licenses, and has asked two members of the Ohio State Board of Education to resign after refusing to vote against an anti-racism resolution passed by conservatives. was criticized.
There is also a question of eligibility.
Chris Gagin, the former GOP chairman of Belmont County, along the West Virginia border, said he wasn’t personally fond of Mr. Vance, but admired his political prowess.
“He’s already let Ryan down with Trump’s workers’ base,” said Mr. gagin. “But in the suburbs, he’ll be the Yale-trained lawyer, author and venture capitalist. He can finish it.”
Indeed, Kristi Woolard, 56, took her copy of “Hillbilly Elegy” to a recent meet-and-greet for Mr. Vance in suburban Columbus — the kind of affluent area believed to be pulling away from Republicans.
“I loved this book,” she said. “He had so many things against him, and he pulled it off. He gives people confidence to know that if you persevere, if you just keep going, life can be good.”