BOARDMAN, Ohio — Tom McCabe, the Republican Party chair in Mahoning County, Ohio, spent last Wednesday recalibrating his view of President Donald Trump’s changing role in the GOP. Less than 24 hours after his state’s dramatic swing back toward Democrats, McCabe confidently delivered Republican Party talking points — and then reevaluated them in real time.
“We are Trump country,” he declared at one point, sipping Coke and Canadian whiskey from a red solo cup at his party’s HQ. If Trump “was on the ballot in 2028, we’d win again,” he said. As the words left his mouth, McCabe began to contort his face into a variety of uncomfortable expressions. After a pause, he admitted: “I’m thinking if that’s really true or not.”
Trump won Mahoning by 9 percentage points in 2024. Last week, voters here turned out in historic numbers to reject him: Amy Acton, the Democratic nominee for governor, won by nearly 12.
“We just got overwhelmed,” McCabe said.
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Mahoning was not the only key county in Ohio to flip blue on Tuesday night. Comparing the results of this year’s gubernatorial race to Trump’s performance in 2024, fellow bellwether counties Wood and Delaware registered 20- and 15-point swings toward Democrats, respectively. Nearby pivot counties Trumbull, Portage and Lake — each of which voted twice for former President Barack Obama, then three times for Trump — went blue Tuesday night. Trump’s power even faded dramatically in solidly red Columbiana and Ashtabula counties: Both shifted 20 points or more to the left, though Republicans ultimately won in both counties.
“I think it does put a dent into Donald Trump’s influence and sway,” McCabe said the day after the election. “It’s a little less today than it was on yesterday morning.”
And that dent could mean everything for one of Ohio’s favorite sons.
Vice President JD Vance’s ascendancy in his home state was not assured even before last week’s throttling. Despite pride in the “local Ohio boy” who became vice president, many Ohio Republicans who talked to The Washington Sun in the days leading up to the 2026 election said they were not convinced that Vance was the right candidate to lead the GOP to victory in 2028. Nearly all said they would vote for him if he was the GOP nominee — but fewer than half were sure they would vote for him in the primary.
Then Tuesday’s results threw the 2028 campaign wide open. With the likelihood of a crowded field and Trump’s power as a kingmaker severely damaged, Vance’s path to the presidential nomination is less clear. So is the level of support he can hope to receive in his home state.
“J.D. Vance is very articulate … he’s very popular in the state of Ohio,” said Ohio Seventh District Court of Appeals Judge Mark A. Hanni, a Republican whose father chaired the Mahoning County Democratic Party for 16 years. Hanni likes both Vance and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for 2028. But after Tuesday, he asks, “Is JD Vance going to be tainted with Trump?”
At the core of Vance’s flaws are his short political career — he served as a U.S. senator from 2022 to 2024 — and lack of a personal political brand that doesn’t involve Trump. Like Vivek Ramaswamy, who resoundingly lost the race for Ohio governor on Tuesday, Vance left Ohio for college, entered the tech industry and received the nomination for his statewide Ohio race because of Trump’s endorsement in the Republican primary.
Vance is liked; he speaks well, and is described by some Ohio Republicans as “the smartest guy in the room.” At a Toledo rally that he headlined the day before the election, volunteers sported “Vance 2028” hats and supporters hung on his every line. “We’re going to see the future president of the United States,” one middle-aged woman said to another as they waited in line outside the airfield where the rally was held.
Inside, Vance’s speech was the best of the night.
“I remember driving around my hometown, wondering why it was the politicians in Washington didn’t look after people like my family and didn’t seem to care about places like Toledo, Ohio,” Vance said to cheers and hollers from the crowd.
Unlike Ramaswamy, who was criticized for flying between campaign stops in his private jet, Vance has retained more of his working-class roots, local Republicans say. He leaned into those roots in Toledo.
“I want your kids to know that if they work hard and they get a little bit lucky, there is no dream too big,” Vance told the crowd. “I want them to know that the son of a union steelworker can still grow up to be the vice president of the United States of America.”
But Ohio Republican officials and voters said that behind the veneer, they aren’t quite sure who Vance is or what he stands for.
“He said some ugly things,” said Kimberly Burress, 54, about the vice president’s former opposition to Trump. After casting her vote in Vance’s hometown of Middletown, Burress said Vance has done a good job as vice president and called her skepticism a “gut feeling.” She prefers Marco Rubio.
“You can remake yourself maybe once or twice in politics, but not as many times as JD Vance has,” said a former Republican state official granted anonymity to candidly describe the way Vance is viewed among many in the Ohio GOP. “JD Vance does not have a political base of his own. It’s Trump’s. … How does he move away from it?”
Vance went from New York Times bestselling author of “Hillbilly Elegy” to vice president in 10 years. At the time he published his book about his upbringing, Vance publicly said he was a “never-Trumper.” But in 2021, he launched his Ohio Senate run in full support of the president, saying he was “wrong about the guy.” Trump eventually endorsed him, propelling him through the primary.
Trump picked Vance as his running mate in 2024. While the president embraced Vance despite his past opposition, many other Republicans did not.
“Trumpworld hasn’t fully taken to JD people,” said one national Republican strategist involved in battleground state campaign funding decisions, granted anonymity to candidly discuss how Trump allies feel about Vance and his team. “They fundamentally do not trust him and think he’s a weasel and a snake.”
When Vance tweeted Wednesday about the path forward for Republicans, many in Ohio saw it as the vice president’s first attempt to contort himself away from Trump just enough to mount a successful run for president.
“It kind of almost felt like he was distancing himself from Trump, but not really,” said Republican Ohio state Rep. Gary Click. Click believes Vance “carried his weight” during the 2024 campaign, but he disagrees with him on Israel. Even so, he thinks Vance will win the GOP primary in Ohio if he runs for president.
“I think he can safely navigate away from those things that might be deemed unpopular,” Click said.
That confidence isn’t universally shared. New White House chief of staff Stephen Miller will never let Vance contort himself away from the president to save his own political career, the national party strategist said. “Loyalty above all,” the strategist texted after Miller was appointed Friday. “He will dress the vice president up as an ICE agent and put him in charge of a raid squad before he allows the VP to get away with that.”
Tuesday’s dramatic crashout of Ramaswamy demonstrated the limits of Trump’s kingmaking power in Ohio — a power that would have been significantly helpful for Vance.
Ramaswamy markedly underperformed Sen. Jon Husted and the rest of the Republican ticket despite Trump’s endorsement. Husted lost to former Sen. Sherrod Brown by about 5 points, but Ramaswamy lost to Acton — who was generally considered a weaker candidate than Brown — by 8 points. Many Republicans in the state criticized Trump for handpicking Ramaswamy in this election — and Vance four years ago.
Trump’s “arrogance definitely hurts us,” Click said. “There’s no doubt about that.”
Now, where Vance was once viewed as heir apparent, far more potential presidential names are floating about in Ohio political circles. DeSantis, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp all surfaced in conversations with Ohio officials and voters this week. But the spectre of Rubio looms largest over Vance, by far.
“They’re voting for the guy that’s a smooth talker,” Ohio voter George, who didn’t want to share his last name, said about Vance supporters two nights before the election. George attended a Ramaswamy event in Canfield and said he did not believe Vance was the best candidate Republicans could put forward. “If you listen to the policy, that Rubio is something else.”
Ramaswamy’s performance is a cautionary tale for Ohio Republicans. His failings with rural voters should not have mattered if Ohio remained solidly red. But when the Trump backlash shifted the state far toward blue, Ramaswamy had no personal political experience or reputation to fall back on.
Only one Republican won statewide office in Ohio last week: Frank LaRose, the state’s new auditor-elect. LaRose is Ohio’s secretary of state and served two terms in the state Senate. Beyond that, his family is well-known in northeast Ohio, where they own a local company. Enough Ohioans knew and trusted LaRose that he made it through the election, even with voters frustrated with Republicans as a whole.
Vance lands somewhere in between: Yes, he has won statewide in Ohio before, and his book gives him more credibility with the working-class base, but he also has spent much of his professional life outside the state and owes his political career to an unpopular president.
Ohio Republicans are bullish that Democrats will make enough political blunders over the next two years that the state will shift back to them in 2028. But some worry Ohio could remain blue if congressional Democrats address affordability and Republicans pick the wrong presidential candidate in 2028.
“I think that’s definitely up for grabs,” said Hanni, the appellate court judge. “That’s what this election says.”
It took him more than an hour and multiple cigarettes, but McCabe — seated on a leather couch at Mahoning County GOP headquarters — decided his county is still Trump country. How the thousands of former Mahoning Democrats who backed Trump will vote when he is not on the ballot in 2028 remains his most pressing mystery.
“Will they come back to us,” asked McCabe, after they returned “home” to Democrats this year? He paused for a moment.
“What is home for them?” he asked. “I’m not sure if we have an answer.”