Campaign Quick Hits

Ohio Rumbles: Rumors swirled late last week that Donald Trump would endorse J.D. Vance despite the millions in ads run by outside groups like Club for Growth highlighting Vance’s past statements about the former president. Perhaps it was a trial balloon floated by the Trump team to see how Republicans in the state would react? If so, 42 local GOP leaders signed a letter urging Trump not to endorse Vance, hoping that would kill it. Or, more likely, it was a last ditch effort by Josh Mandel’s team to kill the endorsement of his main rival? Nobody was quite sure how serious the rumors were as we sat down to our Passover dinners on Friday night. Lucky for us, Harvest was reporting from Ohio last week and has some important details: 

On Friday, Trump’s team issued a statement sealing the deal: “In the Great State of Ohio, the candidate most qualified and ready to win in November is J.D. Vance. We cannot play games. It is all about winning!”

He added that it had been a tough choice: “This is not an easy endorsement for me to make because I like and respect some of the other candidates in the race—they’ve said great things about ‘Trump’ and, like me, they love Ohio and love our country.” “Like some others,” Trump said in his endorsement, “J.D. Vance may have said some not so great things about me in the past, but he gets it now, and I have seen that in spades.” 

The question is whether Trump’s endorsement will move numbers.