JD Vance, the author and venture capitalist, won the Republican race for the US Senate in Ohio in a victory that underscored the continued power of former President Donald Trump.
With 80 percent of the vote counted after polls closed on Tuesday, Vance was 10 points ahead of his closest rival, Josh Mandel, who offered his concession and vowed to support his opponent in the November election.
The extremely tense race was widely seen as a test of the strength of Trump’s support for the influence of Republican voters. The former president risks supporting Vance, given that he had previously lagged behind some of the other candidates and had no experience in politics.
The result is also the acquittal of Peter Thiel, a technology billionaire who is emerging as a Republican king and has invested millions of dollars in Vance’s campaign.
The Senate seat opened last year when Rob Portman, the incumbent Republican senator, announced he would not run for re-election. Vance will face Tim Ryan, a longtime member of the Ohio Democratic House, who won Tuesday’s primary by a margin.
Jessica Taylor, an analyst at Cook Political Report, said: “This is the first major race in which Trump’s approval is at stake. He made a risky choice with JD Vance and this is a test of whether only his approval can turn the race. “
Vance, who criticized Trump in 2016 as an “idiot” and compared him to Adolf Hitler in private, spent the last days of the election campaign emphasizing his powers as the election of the former president.
He appeared on the trail of the campaign along with two of Trump’s most prominent and controversial supporters in Congress: Marjorie Taylor Green, who previously promoted conspiracy theories, and Matt Goetz, who is under investigation for possible juvenile trafficking.
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However, support for Trump sometimes wavered during the campaign. Last weekend, the former president mistaken Vance’s name during a rally, telling his supporters: “We supported – JP, right? JD Mandel and he’s doing great. “
Mandel did his best to claim the mantle as Trump’s natural political successor, telling Fox News on Monday: “There is no one to lead America First’s policy in Ohio like me.”
Matt Dolan, who finished third, was the only Republican in the race to distance himself from the former president. Dolan, a U.S. senator, declined to support Trump’s claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged against him. Three weeks ago, Dolan was only 6 percent, but the late jump and strong performance in the suburbs of Ohio put him a little behind Mandel.
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