Getting harder in the Trump era to tell the players even with a scorecard

CPT | County GOP votes on endorsements today 

Things are seldom what they seem;

Skim milk masquerades as cream.

— Gilbert & Sullivan​

Cuyahoga County Republican executive and central committee members will gather this afternoon to make their endorsements for the May primary.

The marquee endorsement will come in the governor’s slot, where Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is expected to handily defeat current Ohio Lt. Governor Mary Taylor.

Last week the Ohio GOP endorsed DeWine by a thumping 59-2 vote. Still, Taylor has refused to concede either quietly or graciously. What’s interesting about this contest is the subtext behind it.

While party insiders all seem to back DeWine, Taylor is working to court Trump voters, and could be in a position to upset DeWine if she succeeds in connecting with the Trump base. She has the nominal backing of term-limited Gov. John Kasich but has done her best to disavow it, because Kasich is anathema not only to that base, but also to many others throughout the party for a host of reasons: Kasich has been a Trump antagonist dating back to 2015, very publicly declining to appear at the 2016 Republican Convention held here in his home state where Trump officially received the GOP Presidential nomination. Kasich’s decision to support Medicaid expansion over the express opposition of many of his own state legislators further alienated him from parts of the GOP.

All of this was backdrop to the ouster of Kasich ally Matt Borges from the chair of the Ohio GOP by Jane Timken early last year, with the support of the President. Kasich forces, we hear, now think they have a chance to retake control of the state party, which could be significant if Kasich does indeed mount a 2020 primary challenge against Trump.

But any chance for Kasich people — dare we call them GOP moderates? — to regain state party control would go out the window if Taylor becomes the state standard bearer this year. So one might conclude that even though Kasich has endorsed Taylor almost against her will, he would prefer to see her defeated by DeWine.

The battle for the GOP nomination for the right to challenge US Senator Sherrod Brown this fall also has national implications for the GOP. Both Congressman Jim Renacci, R-16 of Wadsworth and Cleveland businessman Mike Gibbons are, like Taylor, touting their Trump bona fides. Renacci is claiming that the President encouraged him to switch from the governor’s race to the senate battle following the sudden and unexpected withdrawal of frontrunner and state treasurer Josh Mandel. But he may actually be US Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s preference instead of Trump’s because he is likely to be far less of a maverick than Gibbon.

The takeaway from all this may be that the Ohio GOP is much less united at the top than the state’s Democrats in this election cycle. But we are a long way from seeing how that might translate in November. 

Meanwhile, at least one Democratic gubernatorial candidate, former Cleveland mayor and Congressman Dennis Kucinich, believes he has a real shot to capture some 2016 Trump voters. He’s probably right, but in the today’s topsy-turvy political climate, the populist Kucinich was just endorsed this past week by the Cuyahoga County Progressive Caucus. That may have been largely a hometown boy vote, but it nonetheless points out the increasing inadequacy of labels as a guide to who stands where for whom and what.