COLUMBUS, Ohio—In a blow to House Speaker Larry Householder, the Ohio Republican Party’s state central committee on Friday declined to endorse some of his favored Ohio House primary candidates. And in one high-profile race, it instead backed a rival to ex-U.S. Rep. Jean Schmidt, one of the speaker’s long-term allies.
Notably, the state GOP also did not endorse Christina Hagan, the former state lawmaker looking to unseat Democratic U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan in Ohio’s 13th Congressional District.
State GOP endorsements can give a big boost to a primary candidate’s campaign. Not only can favored candidates tout their endorsement to Republican voters, but only endorsed candidates can get access to the state GOP’s voter data, as well as get discounted rates on advertising mailers by using the party’s non-profit postal account.
Most of the state GOP’s endorsements were non-controversial, including backing President Donald Trump and other Republican incumbents for another term in office.
But there was some controversy with legislative endorsements.
For those races, the Ohio House and Senate Republican caucuses each sent the state party a list of candidates recommended for endorsement. The list submitted by the Ohio House GOP, which is controlled by Householder, included seven candidates running in contested primaries for open seats. But three of those candidates – Schmidt in House District 65, Allen Freeman in House District 66, and Brian Lampton in House District 73 – were taken off the final endorsement list by state party leaders.
In the case of Schmidt, who’s running for public office for the first time since leaving Congress in 2013, central committee members added insult to injury by endorsing one of her rivals -- Joe Dills, a U.S. Air Force veteran and small-business owner from Clermont County.
In the cases of Freeman and Lampton, central committee members declined to endorse any primary candidate.
The state party also endorsed one Ohio House candidate who wasn’t on the House GOP’s recommendation list: pastor Gary Click in House District 88.
The central committee’s changes came at least in part because of concerns that local Republican parties in those districts weren’t being listened to. The Clermont County GOP previously endorsed Dills and one of Freeman’s primary opponents, Adam Bird, in HD-65 and HD-66, respectively. In the case of HD-73, the Greene County GOP is meeting next week to decide whether to endorse Lampton or John Broughton.
On the Ohio Senate side, state GOP leaders endorsed state Rep. George Lang over state Rep. Candice Keller in the race for Senate District 4 in Butler County.
Party leaders also endorsed state Rep. Bill Reineke for Senate District 26 over Melissa Ackison, who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. Senate in 2018.
Central committee members also endorsed GOP candidates in 13 of Ohio’s 16 congressional races. The candidates the committee endorsed weren’t controversial -- 12 of them are Republican incumbents -- but, curiously, there was no mention of Hagan, who is expected to give Tim Ryan his most competitive general-election race to date.
In a statement, Hagan said she could have secured an endorsement from the state party but chose not to seek it.
“Our campaign’s focus is and will remain on winning the endorsement of the voters,” Hagan stated. “I appreciate the role that the state party plays, but my emphasis has and will always be focused on conveying our message to the community and winning the support of the people I will directly represent if sent to serve them in Washington.”
Keller and Hagan have each been criticized in the past by Ohio Republican Party Chair Jane Timken for statements they made on social media.
Timken called on Keller to resign last year after she wrote a Facebook post blaming mass shootings in Dayton and elsewhere on everything from gay marriage and transgender people to open borders and legalized marijuana. In February 2018, Timken urged Hagan to delete a tweet that the party chair said made “veiled references” to her congressional opponent at the time, now-U.S. Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, “being mixed up with illegal immigration and crime.”
On Thursday, Timken herself came under fire from a group of Republican women who, in a letter, accused her and the state party of working against female conservative candidates, despite Timken’s statements in the press stating she wants to encourage women in politics.
The group of women, which include Warren County GOP Central Committee Chair Lori Viars, anti-abortion activist Janet Porter, and Beth Lear of the Delaware County Republican Central Committee, also said Timken went back on a promise she made when elected state party chair to not let the party endorse in competitive primaries.
Timken told reporters on Friday that the central committee, not her, decided to endorse in primaries.
As for the criticism about women candidates, Timken said, “I can’t magically create a slate of female candidates.”
Timken continued: “My job is to encourage more women to run. We need to give them that opportunity. But at the same time, just because someone is a woman doesn’t make them the most qualified, best candidate.”