CLEVELAND — Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose launched a long-anticipated Senate bid Monday, becoming the third prominent Republican to run in an already fractious primary clash that will determine who takes on Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in 2024.
“Like a lot of Ohioans, I’m concerned about the direction of our country,” Larose said in a statement declaring his candidacy. “As the father of three young girls, I’m not willing to sit quietly while the woke left tries to cancel the American Dream. We have a duty to defend the values that made America the hope of the world.”
Ohio’s Senate race figures to be one of the most competitive in the country next year. Brown’s seat, in a state former President Donald Trump twice won by comfortable margins, is among the GOP’s prized pickup opportunities, alongside contests in Arizona, Montana and West Virginia.
In his accompanying launch video, LaRose emphasizes his Army service, saying, “I’m a Green Beret, a conservative, a man of faith — and I’m not afraid of a fight.”
LaRose had most recently teased the announcement in a July 4 tweet that pictured unsigned candidacy paperwork intended for the Federal Election Commission. His formal announcement comes during a summer in which he has championed a ballot initiative that would require a 60% vote — as opposed to a simple majority — to amend the Ohio Constitution. If that measure passes at an August special election, the higher threshold would be in place for an amendment to protect abortion rights that’s expected to be on the November ballot.
LaRose, 44, will aim to straddle two distinct lanes in the GOP field. Bernie Moreno — a businessman running with Trump’s encouragement, but for now without an official endorsement from him — is running as a loyalist of the former president. State Sen. Matt Dolan — a more policy-oriented conservative whose family owns Cleveland’s Major League Baseball franchise, the Guardians — is running as an antidote to Trump’s inflammatory politics.
“The Republican ‘slugfest’ for Ohio’s Senate seat is shaping up to be another long, contentious battle that will leave whoever emerges damaged in the eyes of Ohio voters,” Ohio Democratic Party spokesperson Reeves Oyster said in response to LaRose’s campaign launch. “In the days ahead, the people of Ohio should ask themselves: what is Frank LaRose really doing for us?”
LaRose enters the primary as the Republican most familiar to voters. He has won two statewide races, including re-election last year as secretary of state. A recent poll by East Carolina University showed him essentially tied in the teens with Dolan, who finished third in Ohio’s 2022 Senate primary, with 58% of GOP voters undecided at this early stage. Moreno, a well-known former car dealer in the Cleveland area who dropped out of the 2022 contest months before the primary, was chosen by 7% of the poll’s Republican respondents.
But LaRose also enters the 2024 race as the most meagerly funded of the three. Unlike Moreno and Dolan, he lacks vast personal wealth to draw from and has spent recent months urging donors to support a nonprofit group that his political allies started to keep him on competitive footing. Dolan, by contrast, has already begun airing TV ads. And Moreno is off to a strong fund-raising start.
“This is something that I’ve been carefully looking at and studying and even starting to take steps towards seeing if it’s possible,” LaRose told NBC News in a May interview. “Because if you’re going to endeavor on something — a big task like this — then you need to make sure that you’ve got your ducks in a row and you’re ready to execute a good effort.”
At the time of that interview, LaRose had been telling donors that he planned to enter the race “soon.” GOP operatives closely watching the race had regularly monitored LaRose’s moves — chicken dinner speeches in Ohio, fundraisers in Washington — for clues on when that might be.
One appearance that drew particular scrutiny was a spring gathering with Ohio Republicans where LaRose downplayed Trump’s influence in GOP primaries. The event was private, but audio of the remarks was leaked to Politico and NBC News, and rang disingenuous to many in the party who recalled how Trump endorsed LaRose in his 2022 re-election bid.
LaRose, unlike other Republican candidates for secretary of state last year, has said he does not believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. But LaRose also has made overtures to GOP activists who made false or exaggerated claims about voter fraud. His office launched a public integrity unit last year, and he appeared on a panel with election deniers during this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference outside Washington, D.C.
More recently, LaRose put distance between himself and Trump after the former president was indicted over his alleged handling of classified documents. A spokesperson, Rob Nichols, offered a statement that gently rebuked Trump — though not by name — and included criticism of how the Department of Justice is handling the case.
Moreno, on the other hand, attended Trump’s defiant speech at his New Jersey golf club the evening after his arraignment.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
