Two days after a weekend event in Pennsylvania to stump for Senate candidate Mehmet Oz and GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano, former President Donald Trump will host a rally for Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance and a field of other Republicans on Election Day Eve.
Trump and Vance will be among the speakers who will take the stage at the Wright Bros. Aero hangar at Dayton International Airport in southwest Ohio.
A venture capitalist and author of The New York Times best-seller “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance is opposed by Democrat U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan and vying to replace retiring Republican Sen. Rob Portman.
For several months, the race was tightly contested, but Vance gained momentum after the two October debates with Ryan.
As of Nov. 5, the Real Clear Politics average of polls shows Vance with a 7.5-point lead.
The most recent poll, conducted by The Trafalgar Group and released on Nov. 5, indicated that Vance has coasted to a 10-point advantage over Ryan, who is in his 10th term as a congressman in the Youngstown, Ohio area.
Catapulted by a mid-April endorsement from Trump, Vance prevailed in a contentious Republican primary in early May that featured seven candidates.
Ryan decisively won the Democrat primary and immediately peppered the airwaves with ads that portrayed him as a moderate who appeals to Republicans, Democrats, and Independents.
Congressional voting records tell a different story as Ryan has voted with President Joe Biden and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi 100 percent of the time.
Still, some Ohio-based and national Republican organizations expressed concern about the race over the summer when Ryan was highly visible with his advertising and public appearances while Vance took a more measured approach.
Ad spending from GOP-aligned groups, and Vance’s performances in the two debates, gradually shifted the race’s outlook.
Ryan last held a lead in a poll on Sept. 22 when Spectrum News/Siena College had the former Democrat presidential candidate with a 3-point edge.
Consistently criticized by his opponents for comments he made about Donald Trump in 2016, Vance on April 15 received the stamp of approval they all sought—an endorsement from the former president for the Ohio GOP U.S. Senate primary.
“I’ve studied this race closely and I think J.D. is the most likely to take out the weak, but dangerous, Democrat opponent—dangerous because they will have so much money to spend. However, J.D. will destroy him in the debates and will fight for the MAGA Movement in the Senate,” Trump wrote in a statement.
Vance and Trump are scheduled to be joined by Ohio U.S. House members Jim Jordan, Mike Turner, Warren Davidson, and Mike Carey.
Trump-endorsed House candidates J.R. Majewski, who is running against longtime Democrat Rep. Marcy Kaptur in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District; and Max Miller, who served in the Trump administration and is the Republican nominee in Ohio’s 7th Congressional District candidate, are also slated to speak.
Trump won Ohio by eight points in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections.
There is widespread speculation that Trump will announce his candidacy to run for president in 2024 this month.
“No one in the world gets Ohioans fired up for Election Day like President Trump,” Vance said in a statement. “It will be great to host him in Ohio again.”
Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who is endorsed by Trump, plans to attend the Trump rally after holding an event in Yellow Springs, Ohio, according to his campaign communications director Tricia McLaughlin.
DeWine has avoided previous Trump visits to Ohio and was loudly booed by audience members in late October 2020 when the president mentioned his name.
Ryan is making a last-second push to reach moderates and Independents.
“While Tim spends the final days of this election barnstorming Ohio and talking to voters in every corner of the state, J.D. Vance is ending his campaign the same way he began it—leaning entirely on out-of-state allies to come in and prop him up because Ohioans know he’s an out-of-state fraud who has only ever been out for himself,” Izzi Levy, communications director for Ryan’s campaign, said in a statement.
“That’s why next week Ohioans are going to send Tim to the Senate and J.D. back to Silicon Valley where he belongs.”
