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Tag: Ohio
JD Vance’s VP prospects could rise after he helped deliver Trump a big Ohio win
Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, showed up at former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in December armed with polling data and a risky proposition.
The largely unknown Bernie Moreno was rising in the Republican primary for Ohio’s other Senate seat, and Vance believed that Trump — whose endorsement elevated him in a crowded field two years earlier — could again be the kingmaker.
Trump was convinced and called Moreno on the spot to offer his backing, three sources familiar with the meeting said. Months later, when polls showed Moreno struggling to put the race away, Trump, again with Vance’s urging, flew in for a last-minute rally.
The gamble paid off for Trump last week, as Moreno won in a landslide that reinforced Trump’s influence in GOP primaries. And it could soon pay off for Vance, 39, who is among those mentioned as a potential running mate for Trump.
“JD has got an incredible future,” said Alex Bruesewitz, a Trump-aligned consultant. “What does that look like? I’m not quite sure at this moment. But when you look at conservatives who are younger and have their finger on the pulse of the MAGA movement, there aren’t many, and JD is certainly one of them.”
Nearly all of the dozen Republicans close to the Trump and Vance political orbits who spoke to NBC News were reluctant to speculate about his chances of being tapped for the vice presidential spot, noting the unpredictability of the process. But most acknowledged that his political stock has risen and described Vance as someone who brings to the table two qualities that Trump prizes: unshakable loyalty and a winning reputation. Moreno’s primary victory cemented Vance’s status as a trusted adviser.
“Trump likes to think of people as the contact person in certain states,” said Ric Grenell, a Moreno campaign co-chair and former Trump administration official who remains close with Trump. “Kari Lake is the person in Arizona, and JD is the contact for him in Ohio. He’s the first person he calls to get advice on Ohio.”
Trump has been effusive in his praise for Vance, calling him “a friend of mine,” “an absolute star,” “a great senator” and “a real fighter” at the rally for Moreno on March 16.
A Trump adviser said in response to a request to comment for this article, “Sen. Vance is a strong defender of the America First movement, and he continues to show how to effectively beat back Democrats and the media from perpetuating lies and falsehoods about conservatives.”
Superlatives aside, Trump allies and other Republicans in the final days of the primary were nervous that Moreno was in danger of losing to state Sen. Matt Dolan, a candidate who was supported by the Ohio GOP’s Trump-skeptical old guard.
“If Moreno loses,” an unidentified Trump adviser told Politico in a quote that became bulletin board fodder for the Moreno and Vance teams, “this will sour [Trump] on JD.”
But Moreno won easily, surpassing 50% of the vote and carrying each of Ohio’s 88 counties. He will face Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown in November.
The chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, Sen. Steve Daines of Montana, characterized the result as a triumph for Vance.
“JD is a rising star in the Republican Party,” Daines said. “He demonstrated political acumen and strength in his state by helping his preferred candidate win a difficult primary in dominant fashion.”
Vance ceded credit to Trump.
“President Trump has the most powerful endorsement in political history,” Vance said in a statement that did not address the vice presidential speculation. “He was the driving force behind Bernie’s victory and conservatives across Ohio are grateful to him for ensuring we nominated someone who actually backs the America First agenda.”
“Not only will I continue doing everything I can to help elect President Trump,” Vance added, “but I will do what I can to help ensure he has more allies in the House and Senate.”
Moreno’s path as a Senate candidate in several ways mirrors Vance’s two years ago. Both were political newcomers who were on record bashing Trump in 2016 and who needed to prove a certain level of viability before they earned his endorsement.
Vance became known as a prominent Trump critic while he was promoting his bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” — an examination of working-class poverty and his family’s socioeconomic struggles in Ohio and Kentucky. But over the years he evolved in how he talked about Trump, praising him for his trade policies and embracing the culture wars that have energized the modern GOP. He also cultivated a friendship with Donald Trump Jr., who was helpful in pitching Vance to his father as he began showing signs of strength.
Moreno briefly ran in the 2022 Senate primary but dropped out after he met with Trump and agreed that his presence in the crowded race would make it easier for Dolan, who also ran that year, to win. Moreno followed Trump’s lead in endorsing Vance, became a key campaign adviser and played Vance’s Democratic opponent, then-Rep. Tim Ryan, in debate prep. (Moreno also has personal ties to Trump world, through his daughter Emily and her husband, Rep. Max Miller, R-Ohio, both of whom are former Trump aides.)
Vance returned the favor this year, headlining meet-and-greets for Moreno, fighting battles for him on social media and courting high-level donors. He helped corral nearly $1 million in contributions to the pro-Moreno Buckeye Values PAC, an adviser to the group said. The efforts, which also helped pay for Trump’s rally for Moreno, were first reported by Axios.
“I don’t want to talk about the VP race, because I have no idea what’s going to happen,” Grenell said. “But the reality is that what people love about non-politicians is they don’t calculate risk and make it a top criteria for their decision. They’re not risk-averse.”
Moreno recounted this week how Vance once scored them a meeting with “a very well-known Republican donor,” only to run into a child care issue at the last minute. So Vance brought one of his young children along for the pitch.
“It was just JD, [his kid] and a bag of Cheerios in a billionaire’s home,” Moreno said.
“He was invaluable,” Moreno added. “He never turned down a request that we made of him — and I thought we made, honestly, more requests than we would have made to any other person.”
Asked whether Vance would make a good vice president, Moreno did not hesitate.
“He’d be a great vice president,” he said.
Moreno and others also emphasized that Vance seems to enjoy the role he has carved out in the Senate. There, he has tempered his reputation as a culture warrior by developing bipartisan relationships to produce a series of populist proposals.
Vance has worked with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on legislation that would claw back pay from executives at failed banks. He has joined with Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., on a bill to ensure that more products invented with the help of federal funds are made in the U.S. And last week, he and Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., introduced a bill to close tax loopholes for large corporate deals.
He is also known for his visibility and responsiveness during local disasters, from the toxic train derailment in East Palestine one month into his term to the recent tornadoes in western Ohio. In Ottawa last week, after Vance arrived late for a Moreno event because he had been surveying storm damage nearby, Putnam County GOP Chairman Tony Schroeder jokingly alluded to the vice presidential chatter.
“The good news is he’s doing a phenomenal job for us in the United States Senate,” Schroeder told the crowd. “The bad news is he’s on President Trump’s shortlist to be vice president. So let’s hope that doesn’t work out.”
Schroeder, in a subsequent interview, said the reception Vance received at that event was a testament to how quickly he has grown as a politician in a short amount of time.
“Everybody wanted to come over and say hello, touch him, see him, get photos — the whole nine yards,” Schroeder said.
“I don’t think it’s escaped the notice of President Trump or of other people who are affiliated with him that he would be a very dynamic choice for vice president,” Schroeder added. “I might take credit for being the first person to say we should be thinking about him as a president of the United States a few years down the line.”
Republican voters express support for Trump despite legal cases
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An Ohio group has brought Jesus to more than 300 public schools — during class time
WHITEHALL, Ohio — After a morning lesson on multiplying fractions, about half of the students in a fifth-grade class at Etna Road Elementary School packed up their work and headed to the campus library.
The other half, all wearing matching red T-shirts, put on their coats, lined up single-file and boarded a red bus with the words “LifeWise Academy” painted on the side.
While their classmates back at school browsed shelves of books, the children on the bus sang praise to Jesus.
“For there is no other name … by which we must be saved.”
The students soon arrived at a church a half-mile away where, for the next 30 minutes, they would pray, read the Bible and sing worship songs — activities that have become a routine part of their week thanks to an Ohio-based nonprofit on a mission to put God back in the public school day.
LifeWise Academy is permitted under a pair of little-known, decades-old U.S. Supreme Court rulings that allow for off-campus religious instruction during school hours.
When LifeWise launched in 2018, the initial goal was to serve 25 schools by 2025, but it surpassed that long ago. By the start of this year, LifeWise had set up chapters in more than 300 schools in a dozen states, teaching 35,000 public school students weekly Bible lessons that are usually scheduled to coincide with lunch or noncore courses such as library, art or gym class.
LifeWise has won support from conservatives on the front lines of the new culture wars over LGBTQ inclusion, sexually explicit library books and the role of racism in American history. But it also has a growing foothold in some progressive suburbs and cities, including deep-blue Columbus, Ohio.
Its explosive growth has been celebrated by Christian groups and parents who’ve long decried the removal of religion from America’s classrooms — and denounced by those who believe there should be a hard line between religion and public education.
Supporters say LifeWise, which teaches children character development through Bible lessons, complies with the separation of church and state. Public schools are not allowed to directly promote or fund the program, which is offered free to students whose parents sign permission slips.
“A lot of parents want to be able to say to their child, ‘Yeah, you’re going to get science class, you’re going to get math class, you’re going to get English class — and you’re going to have Bible class, too, because this is important to us as a family,’” said LifeWise founder and former Ohio State Buckeyes defensive lineman Joel Penton.
But parents and activists who’ve mobilized against LifeWise say that busing students to nearby churches, where they sometimes collect prizes and eat candy, has made some non-Christian children feel left out or pressured to attend.
“Whether it’s happening on campus or not, this program is bringing religion into the school,” said Demrie Alonzo, an English tutor who works at several schools with LifeWise programs in central Ohio. “It’s not fair to the kids of different religions.”
At a time when conservatives nationally are fighting what they portray as liberal indoctrination in schools, some parents and critics see the opposite playing out, accusing LifeWise of using schools to draw children into an evangelical faith tradition whose members overwhelmingly vote Republican.
Opponents have also documented several instances of teachers and administrators promoting LifeWise to students, either by allowing LifeWise volunteers to visit classrooms, hosting schoolwide assemblies or advertising the program in paperwork sent home to parents — actions that, according to some legal experts, could violate the First Amendment.
Penton said LifeWise follows all laws and local policies and avoids hot-button partisan topics in its curriculum, which is designed to guide students through the entire Bible in five years. He said LifeWise receives “very broad support” from groups with a range of political views.
Last summer, LifeWise’s national teacher summit was sponsored by Patriot Mobile, a far-right Christian cellphone company that has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting school board candidates promising to fight LGBTQ acceptance in schools.
And in December, Penton appeared on the Truth and Liberty Live Call-in Show hosted by a group whose mission is to reshape American society by advancing conservative Christian values in seven key “mountains” of public life — including media, government and education.
On the show, Penton lamented the referendum last year enshrining abortion rights in Ohio’s constitution, saying it made him “incredibly sad.” It also made him realize, he said, that LifeWise’s mission “is all the more important.”
“What other hope do we have,” Penton said, “but to inject the word of God into the hearts of the next generation?”
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Ohio voters reject Issue 1 in major victory for abortion rights backers
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Ohio votes against Issue 1 in special election. Here’s what that could mean for abortion rights.
Washington — Ohio voters on Tuesday definitively rejected a closely watched proposal known as Issue 1 that would’ve made it more difficult to amend the state constitution, delivering a crucial victory to pro-abortion rights supporters ahead of a November vote on enshrining reproductive rights in the Ohio Constitution.
The Associated Press projects the proposed constitutional amendment failed to garner the majority support it needed to pass. With a little under half of precincts reporting, the measure was failing by a margin of 57% to 42% two after polls had closed.
Issue 1 would have raised the threshold for approving future changes to the state constitution through the ballot box from a simple majority — 50%, plus one vote — to 60%.
“By rejecting Issue 1, Ohioans rejected special interests and demanded that democracy remain where it belongs — in the hands of voters, not the rich and powerful,” Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio posted on social media.
The outcome of Tuesday’s special election maintains the lower bar that has been in place since 1912 and could pave the way for approval of the proposed constitutional amendment on the ballot in November that seeks to protect abortion rights. A July poll from the USA Today Network and Suffolk University found 58% of Ohio voters support the effort to enshrine abortion access in the state’s founding document.
Issue 1 was the only matter on the ballot in Tuesday’s special election.
While the amendment would have affected all future efforts to change the Ohio Constitution, the impact on the abortion rights ballot measure in particular sparked a flood of interest.
Nearly 700,000 Ohioans voted early, either in-person or by mail, surpassing the amount of early votes cast in the May 2022 primary election.
Ohio Republican lawmakers began their push to raise the bar for approving proposed amendments this spring, after the pro-abortion rights position won in all six states where the issue was directly put to voters in the 2022 midterm cycle. As a joint resolution to set the Aug. 8 special election moved through the state legislature, eventually passing in May, reproductive rights advocates were collecting the signatures needed to land the abortion access measure on the fall general election ballot.
ADAM CAIRNS/USA TODAY NETWORK
GOP state lawmakers have touted the 60%-majority threshold as crucial for protecting the Ohio Constitution from well-funded, out-of-state interests that seek to “enshrine their social preferences and corporate motives” in the document.
But Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, an ardent supporter of Issue 1 who is running for the U.S. Senate, linked the amendment to the abortion rights ballot measure in May.
“This is 100% about keeping a radical, pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution. The left wants to jam it in there this coming November,” LaRose, a Republican, said during a Lincoln Day event in Seneca County.
Abortion rights in Ohio
In Ohio, a ban on abortions after embryonic cardiac activity is detected, typically around six weeks of pregnancy, went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. But a state court blocked the six-week law, and legal proceedings are continuing.
The proposed constitutional amendment, which has qualified for the November ballot, would protect the right of individuals to make their own reproductive decisions, including on contraception and abortion. It would forbid the state from prohibiting or interfering with the “voluntary exercise of this right.”
The amendment would allow the state to prohibit abortion after fetal viability, which it defines as “the point in a pregnancy when, in the professional judgment of the pregnant patient’s treating physician, the fetus has a significant likelihood of survival outside the uterus with reasonable measures.”
Ohio’s Issue 1 not only sought to raise the threshold for passing state constitutional amendments, but would have elevated the standard to place a citizen-initiated amendment on the ballot. The amendment required that any petition filed after Jan. 1 be signed by at least 5% of the electors of each of Ohio’s 88 counties, based on the total number of votes cast in the last governor’s race.
Ohio is the only state this year where voters weighed changes to the rules governing proposed constitutional amendments — and where the issue of abortion rights will directly appear on the ballot. But other states have mounted similar efforts, albeit unsuccessfully.
In Arkansas and South Dakota, legislative measures that would’ve imposed the supermajority threshold for the adoption of constitutional amendments both failed. Republicans in Missouri’s legislature attempted earlier this year to replace its simple majority bar with a 57% marker, but failed to send the issue to voters for the final word.
In a win for abortion-rights supporters, Ohio voters reject Issue 1
Groups opposing Issue 1 spent nearly $15.9 million on ads, almost all of it coming from a single group — One Person One Vote — according to the ad tracking firm AdImpact. Groups urging a “yes” vote spent a combined $10.7 million on ads.
The measure on the ballot Tuesday didn’t explicitly mention abortion, but reproductive rights groups maintained for months that it was designed to make it more difficult for voters to pass their own proposed amendment in November.
Those groups repeatedly accused Republicans in the state of hypocrisy over their decision to schedule the August election at all.
In January, Ohio Republicans enacted a law that effectively scrubbed August special elections from the state’s calendar, with several GOP legislators calling them expensive, low-turnout endeavors that weren’t worth the trouble.
But months later, as reproductive rights groups moved closer to placing their own proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot, state Republicans reversed themselves and scheduled the August election.
Then, in June, local news outlets published a video of Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose — a candidate for the Senate — acknowledging that the purpose of the summertime ballot measure was “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
Groups opposing the measure also frequently emphasized how passing it Tuesday would have marked a major change to the constitutional amendment process: State law has required only a simple majority to pass constitutional amendments since 1912. Several former Republican officeholders, including four GOP ex-governors, publicly opposed the measure.
The proposed 60% threshold would almost certainly have complicated the prospects to pass the proposed November amendment.
Public polling has found that about 59% of Ohio voters support including abortion rights in the state constitution — just shy of the newly proposed higher threshold.
Instead, Ohio becomes the latest red state — following ones like Kentucky and Kansas — where abortion-rights advocates have won a ballot measure battle in the year since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling.
Bridget Bowman contributed.
Historic turnout reported for Ohio special election, with abortion rights front of mind
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Ohio ballot election sets the stage for a major abortion fight in November
Ohioans head to the polls Tuesday to decide whether to make it more difficult to pass ballot measures in the state.
Issue 1 would raise the threshold of support required to pass state constitutional amendments to 60% instead of a simple majority. Tuesday’s ballot measure says nothing about abortion rights, but the issue is at the heart of a fight that has received outsize attention for an off-year ballot election.
If Issue 1 passes, it will make it harder for a ballot measure enshrining abortion rights in the state constitution to pass this fall.
Tuesday’s ballot measure would also toughen rules for groups trying to place future ballot measures before voters, as they would need to obtain signatures from voters in all of Ohio’s 88 counties, instead of the 44 now required. In addition, the measure would eliminate a 10-day “curing” period during which groups are currently allowed to gather additional signatures to replace any previous signatures that officials deem invalid.
Reproductive rights groups have long contended that Issue 1 is designed to make it harder for the abortion measure to pass, and several Republican lawmakers in the state have admitted so as well.
If voters pass the threshold measure Tuesday, then the proposed November ballot amendment to enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution would need the support of 60% of voters to pass. If it fails, the November measure would need only a simple majority.
In January, Ohio Republicans enacted a law that effectively scrubbed August special elections from the state’s calendar, with several GOP state lawmakers calling them expensive, low-turnout endeavors that weren’t worth the trouble.
But months later, as reproductive rights groups moved closer to placing their own proposed constitutional amendment on the November ballot, state Republicans reversed themselves and scheduled the August election.
In June, local news outlets published a video of Republican Secretary of State Frank LaRose — a candidate for U.S. Senate — acknowledging that the purpose of the summertime ballot measure was “100% about keeping a radical pro-abortion amendment out of our constitution.”
Groups on both sides of the issue have spent millions of dollars on ads to turn out their supporters.
Protect Women Ohio, a prominent anti-abortion rights group and the biggest spender among groups supporting Issue 1, committed $9 million to television, radio and digital ads to run in the state.
The group has also so far committed $25 million for ads opposing the November ballot initiative.
Their ads largely highlight attempts to tie the proposals in both races to parental rights restrictions. The strategy has also leaned heavily into attacks on groups like the American Civil Liberties Union of Ohio, which Protect Women Ohio says is advocating to restrict parental rights. Nonpartisan experts, however, have said the ads are inaccurate and misleading, and reproductive rights advocates argue that they are misdirected and designed to distract voters from protecting abortion rights, an issue on which the public does not side with the anti-abortion rights movement.
On the other side, the main group working to defeat the August ballot measure, called One Person One Vote, has allocated more than $1.1 million to ads over the past two months. And officials with the reproductive rights coalition supporting the November amendment have said they plan to spend at least $35 million through November.
The ads by One Person One Vote focus mainly on the alleged hypocrisy of Republicans and highlight LaRose’s comments admitting the August measure was designed to make it harder to enshrine abortion rights in the Ohio Constitution.
Recent polling has suggested that groups hoping to pass Tuesday’s measure face an uphill battle: A USA Today/Suffolk University poll released last month found that 57% of registered Ohio voters said they opposed Issue 1, with 26% saying they supported it. Another 17% said they were undecided.
Raising the threshold for passage of any future constitutional amendments would mark a major shift in Ohio, where only a simple majority has been required since 1912. Several former Republican officeholders, including four GOP ex-governors, have publicly opposed the measure.
But if the measure were to pass, it would complicate the prospects of passage for the proposed November amendment.
Public polling has shown that about 59% of Ohio voters support including abortion rights in the state Constitution — just shy of the newly proposed higher threshold.
The effort in Ohio to use the state Constitution to protect abortion rights closely mirrors others across the U.S. in the year since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
While abortion rights advocates enjoyed a clean sweep of victories last year in the six states — including in conservative states like Kentucky and Kansas — where abortion rights were on the ballot, voters in two states (progressive strongholds California and Vermont) passed pro-abortion rights measures with at least 60% of the vote. None of the anti-abortion rights measures were defeated with 60% or more of the vote.
The proposed November amendment in Ohio was designed to counteract Ohio’s “heartbeat bill,” which snapped into place immediately after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. That law effectively bans most abortions — with exceptions for the health of the pregnant woman and in cases of ectopic pregnancies — but remains temporarily blocked by a state judge.