JD Vance Wins Ohio GOP U.S. Senate Race With Trump’s Backing

(Bloomberg) -- Venture capitalist JD Vance won a crowded and acrimonious Republican primary for the U.S. Senate in Ohio, propelled by former President Donald Trump's endorsement in the final stretch of the campaign.

Vance, 37, who is making his first bid for public office, defeated former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel, state Senator Matt Dolan, investment banker Mike Gibbons, and three other candidates in the GOP race, according to the Associated Press.

Tuesday's primary elections in Ohio and Indiana took place a day after a leaked draft opinion indicated the Supreme Court was poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. Indiana is a Republican bastion and Trump twice won Ohio by 8 percentage points, but it was previously considered a swing state. Democrat U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown holds the other Ohio seat.

Vance will face Democrat Tim Ryan in the November general election to replace retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman in one of the key elections that will decide which party controls the upper chamber, currently deadlocked at 50-50. Ryan handily defeated former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lawyer Morgan Harper and information technology executive Traci Johnson in the Democratic primary.

The Republican primary race was defined by all of the leading candidates except Dolan vying to be seen as the most aligned with Trump and his “America First” agenda. Trump endorsed Vance, even though he made past comments criticizing him before he won the 2016 election.

In his victory speech at an event in Cincinnati after the race was called, Vance thanked “the 45th” President Trump for his endorsement and said the “fake news” wanted to declare the former president's movement over.

“They wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump's ‘America First' agenda,” Vance said. “Ladies and gentlemen, it ain't the death of the ‘America First' agenda.”

Analysts expect Vance's victory to bolster Trump's status as Republican kingmaker and party leader as he teases a potential 2024 White House bid. Trump boasted at a campaign rally in Nebraska on Sunday that his endorsement made Vance a contender -- despite initially misidentifying him as “JD Mandel.”

Earlier: Trump Backs ‘Hillbilly Elegy' Author Vance in Ohio Primary

Vance was running third behind Gibbons and Mandel in a Fox News poll in early March before Trump announced on April 15 that he was endorsing Vance, vaulting him into the lead in another Fox News poll conducted right before the primary that still had a quarter of voters undecided.

Trump's endorsement drew backlash from Ohio Republican county chairmen, state GOP committee members and 2016 Trump delegates who pointed to Vance's past comments about Trump with concerns that he would lose the general election -- risking a GOP majority in the Senate.

Club For Growth Action, which endorsed Mandel, also spent millions of dollars on ads showing Vance disparaging Trump and criticizing Trump's endorsement, calling Vance “a fraud.”

But Trump said at an April 23 rally in Ohio to support Vance and his other endorsed candidates in the state that “ultimately, I put that aside.” The former president said he liked other candidates in the race but believed Vance had the best chance to win in November.

Trump said at a “tele-town hall” call with supporters on Monday night to make a final pitch for Vance that he's “said some negative things about me, but he's made up for it in spades. I think I can say that he's a thousand percent with us.”

Vance, author of the memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” grew up in poverty but went on to Yale Law School and Silicon Valley. He said he would fight for causes such as breaking up big technology monopolies, securing the southern U.S. border, restoring U.S. manufacturing and working-class jobs and opposing “woke” initiatives such as critical race theory.

Battle for GOP's ‘Soul'

Speaking to reporters Monday, Vance portrayed the Ohio primary as a “battle for the soul” of the GOP between more establishment Republicans and Republicans like Trump and himself willing to fight for more populist and nationalist positions.

In his victory speech on Tuesday night, Vance said both establishment Republicans and establishment Democrats have failed Americans, and he wants to be a voice for them.

“The people who are caught between the corrupt political class of the left and the right, they need a voice, they need a representative,” Vance said, “And that's going to be me.”

A partner and co-founder of Narya Capital Management LLC, Vance was supported by billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel, who gave $13.5 million to a Super Political Action Committee backing Vance.