COLUMBUS, Ohio – Sen. JD Vance’s name has floated around publicly for months as a potential 2024 Republican vice-presidential candidate. But that speculation has intensified in recent weeks, and Ohio Republicans increasingly are taking seriously that he may end up as ex-President Donald Trump’s running mate this year.
Readers may be wondering then - what would happen to Vance’s seat if he ends up in the White House?
The bottom line is that Gov. Mike DeWine, who has a cool relationship with the former president, would get to pick someone to fill Vance’s seat who then would have to run for election in 2026 if they want to keep it. That possibility would throw a wrench into the other state offices that will be up for grabs that year, including DeWine’s who is term-limited.
As first reported by NBC News, Vance, whom voters elected to the Senate in November 2022 in his first run for office, is said to be among four finalists that Trump is said to be considering seriously enough to begin vetting them, or formally researching their backgrounds for potential political liabilities. Vance initially was noncommittal about the possibility when his name was first floated six months ago. But he’s embraced the attention more recently, conspicuously visiting Trump during his New York criminal trial last month and appearing alongside the former president at multiple high-dollar political fundraisers, including one in Cleveland on Thursday.
“If he asked me, certainly I would be interested,” Vance told the New York Times recently, delivering what he described as his “stock answer,” “but I’m trying not to think too much about it until he actually asks.”
Trump is notoriously unpredictable. But bearing that in mind, several knowledgeable Ohio Republicans told cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer last week they believe Vance is legitimately in the running, and perhaps a leading candidate. Trump said last week he plans to announce his pick sometime during the Republican National Convention, scheduled to be held in Milwaukee a month from now.
Stories by Andrew Tobias
A Vance political spokesperson declined to comment. But there are arguments for or against each potential candidate, from Trump’s perspective, although the case for Vance includes his strength as a public communicator, his friendship with Donald Trump Jr., and his loyalty to the former president since his highly public conversion from an anti-Trump commentator to staunch Trump ally.
At a closed-door fundraiser on Thursday at a private hangar at the Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport, Trump referenced the speculation, asking attendees if they thought he should pick Vance, according to people who attended. The crowd, which included high-dollar donors and other Republican insiders, applauded.
“The room was very warm to JD Vance, and everyone there seemed in favor of him being the vice-president,” said the Rev. Darrell Scott, a local pastor who’s been a political ally to Trump for years.
Bernie Moreno, this year’s Republican U.S. Senate candidate, didn’t attend the fundraiser in Cleveland. But he said following a campaign appearance in Central Ohio on Friday that he hopes Trump picks Vance, calling Vance the “obvious nominee” for president in 2028 if that happens.
“There’s an entire industry that’s built around figuring out what what [Trump] thinks,” Moreno said. “And it has a failure rate of 99.9%. So I have no idea. But we’ll find out soon.”
Regardless of what ends up happening this summer or this November, here’s how it would work if Ohio ends up with a vacant U.S. Senate seat next year.
Ohio’s process for filling U.S. Senate vacancies
Under state law, the sitting governor has authority to fill vacant U.S. Senate seats. So if Vance were to end up leaving office next year, that means DeWine would pick someone to fill the seat temporarily. Then, a special election would be scheduled for November 2026 to complete Vance’s term, which runs through 2028. The interim term would expire on Dec. 15 following the election, although the person DeWine appoints also could and presumably would try to get elected to the job.
If DeWine has given any thought to the hypothetical appointment, a spokesperson wouldn’t say so.
“We do not have a vacancy,” said Dan Tierney, a spokesperson for the governor’s office. “Out of respect to both U.S. senators, we are not contemplating what would happen if either were not able to finish the term to which they are elected.”
Ohio last held an election to fill a vacant U.S. Senate seat in 1974, after Republican Sen. William Saxbe resigned to become then-President Richard Nixon’s attorney general. Gov. John Gilligan, a Democrat, then appointed Howard Metzenbaum as Saxbe’s replacement. Metzenbaum lost the Democratic primary to John Glenn, who took office after winning the November election, although Metzenbaum ended up getting elected to the Senate in 1976.
Factors DeWine may consider
Politicians commonly look two steps ahead while charting their future career plans. But even so, it’s too early for anyone to be openly vying to replace Vance. Many top Ohio Republicans instead are laying the groundwork to run for state office in 2026, including Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, Attorney General Dave Yost and state Treasurer Robert Sprague, who all are eying running to replace DeWine, who is term limited and expected to retire from politics.
But people who know DeWine believe that he would want to appoint a Vance replacement who would be able to hold the seat, both in the primary election and in the general election. In the scenario where Vance ends up vice president, 2026 could be a favorable political climate for Democrats, thanks to the traditional backlash against the party that controls White House, so that would include picking someone who could appeal to independent voters.
Ryan Stubenrauch, a Republican operative who was a spokesperson for DeWine’s 2018 campaign for governor, said DeWine’s hypothetical thought process likely would involve finding a consensus candidate who could be popular among traditional Ohio Republicans but also palatable to Trump and his allies, in addition to having typical political traits like fundraising prowess and electability. Trump and DeWine have a cool relationship, although some Trump allies view the governor as pragmatic and fundamentally unthreatening.
“When you draw that Venn diagram, there’s probably not that many people in there,” Stubenrauch said.
Some also think DeWine would be interested in burnishing his historical legacy, which could point to him picking a woman, since none have ever represented Ohio in the U.S. Senate.
Another consideration could be whether DeWine might try solve a current or future political problem by sending someone to Washington, D.C., thus taking them out of Statehouse politics.
Who might be in the mix as a replacement?
One person who checks some of these boxes is Jane Timken, a former Ohio Republican Party chairman who recently won a party vote to serve as one of Ohio’s three representatives on the Republican National Committee. Timken is someone whom Trump has praised and publicly endorsed for her party leadership positions, but who also is a bridge to Ohio’s GOP traditional establishment wing, having been endorsed by former Sen. Rob Portman in her ill-fated run for Senate in 2022. Her 2022 race was ill-fated after all though, with Timken finishing in a distant fifth place in the GOP primary, so she would have much to prove as a candidate.
Other possible picks could include someone DeWine could take off the board in the 2026 governor’s race, helping clear a path for Husted. That could lead the governor to pick one of Husted’s potential opponents, like Yost or Sprague. It’s also arguable though that Husted may benefit politically from a more crowded Republican field, like DeWine did during his 2022 reelection bid, if that’s how the race ends up shaping up. The governor’s intervention meanwhile could lead any remaining opponents to argue to voters that the fix was in.
One Republican who may be interested in the appointment is Secretary of State Frank LaRose. It’s otherwise not clear what his next step will be after his current term expires in 2026. He’s term-limited, and placed a distant third place in this year’s Republican Senate race that grew unusually personally nasty against eventual winner, Bernie Moreno, at the end. He declined to comment for this story.
DeWine might like to appoint another losing candidate from that race – state Sen. Matt Dolan, who ran with DeWine’s endorsement, but ended up getting trounced by Moreno. But doing so likely would provoke a backlash from Trump and his allies, something DeWine may want to avoid.
Other candidates floated by Ohio Republicans include Columbus U.S. Rep. Mike Carey, who is close with Trump’s political team and politically more similar to DeWine; Senate President Matt Huffman, who put out feelers for a Senate bid in 2018 but failed to gain traction; and Judith French, a former Ohio Supreme Court justice whom DeWine hired in 2021 to run the state’s insurance department after considering her for a vacancy on the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio. A potential out-of-the-box name: Portman, who retired from the Senate in 2022, but who got involved in this year’s GOP Senate race, when he teamed up with DeWine to endorse Dolan in this year’s GOP Senate primary.
Andrew Tobias covers state politics and government for cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer