Ohio Is Now Fully Trumpified

In another lifetime, Representative Anthony Gonzalez was the Ohio Republican Party’s dream candidate. Many of his future suburban-Cleveland constituents cheered for him at Byers Field when he was a high-school-football standout at St. Ignatius, and later again at the Shoe in Columbus during his star turn as an Ohio State University wide receiver. The son of a Cuban immigrant, he was a first-round NFL draft pick and went on to graduate from Stanford’s business school. Gonzalez ran for Congress in 2018 at age 33, drawing the support of insiders such as the former TimkenSteel CEO Tim Timken, whose wife, Jane, was then the state’s GOP chair.

But last January, the golden-boy shine was abruptly stripped off. Gonzalez voted to impeach former President Donald Trump, and two weeks later, Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2022. The race to replace Portman started soon after, and attacking Gonzalez became a way for candidates to prove their Trump loyalty. One Senate candidate, former State Treasurer Josh Mandel, called him a “traitor” who should be “eradicated from the Republican Party.” Jane Timken, Gonzalez was “an effective legislator” and “a very good person” kind of primary voter that all that had thrilled them to Trump—his exuberant contrarianism, his chest-thumping invective—would live on in Senate candidates.