(PatrioticPost.com)- Former President Donald Trump is apparently intervening directly in the campaign for an open Ohio seat in the U.S. Senate. The seat is setting up to be one of the most contentious in next year’s midterm elections.
Last month, Trump reached out to David McIntosh, the president of Club for Growth, and expressed his displeasure over a TV ad campaign that the organization, which is conservative, was running. Trump asked McIntosh to stop running the ads, which are attacking J.D. Vance, another candidate for the seat.
The ads used footage of Vance from back in 2016, which shows him describing himself as a “Never Trump guy.” He also called the former president “noxious,” “offensive” and an “idiot.”
The point of the ads was to show that Vance isn’t dedicated to Trump’s ideology, which has been a big issue in the Ohio races already. Vance has tried to position himself as a staunch ally of Trump, but the ads are meant to show otherwise.
The problem for Trump, according to some people who have been briefed on that call, is he believes the ads could eventually result in him being less popular in Ohio. It’s a state that, during the 2020 presidential election, he won by 8 points.
McIntosh serves as an informal adviser to Trump, and the two apparently talk frequently about various political campaigns that are going on in the U.S. He allegedly responded to Trump’s inquiry by saying he’d look into it.
The actions of the Club for Growth, though, seemed to do just the opposite. Not only did they not stop running the TV ad buy, which totaled $1 million, they added another $500,000 to it.
Trump has been involving himself in the early parts of the 2022 midterm elections, endorsing candidates around the country who he believes are aligned with his thinking and could be considered major allies of his.
Now, he’s getting involved directly, it seems, on how the campaigns are being run. All the while, he’s also concerned about how this all could look on him, especially as he is weighing a run for president again in 2024.
Members of Trump’s camp wouldn’t comment directly on the conversation he had with McIntosh. Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for the president, would only tell Politico:
“President Trump loves Ohio, and you don’t have to look any further than his historic 8-point victory in 2020 to know Ohio loves President Trump. No wonder that every candidate in Ohio has become a champion for America First. The strongest ‘Trump’ candidate will surely win.”
While a spokesperson for the Club for Growth wouldn’t comment on the situation, the group did send a memo to the political team Trump has assembled to show them that the ad run hasn’t had any bearing on the former president’s standing in Ohio.
The memo cited surveys conducted across Ohio that compared the feelings about Trump before and after the ads. They all showed no significant change to the popularity Trump has in Ohio.
