A Republican Party chair in a county Donald Trump won comfortably in 2024 began doubting his own talking points out loud the day after Democrats swept Ohio’s top races last week.
Tom McCabe, who leads the Mahoning County GOP, told The Washington Sun his county was still “Trump country” and that the president would carry it again if he were on the 2028 ballot. Then McCabe, a whiskey and Coke in hand at the party’s Boardman headquarters, grimaced and paused.
“I’m thinking if that’s really true or not,” he said.
He has reason to wonder. Trump won Mahoning by 9 points in 2024. Last week, Democrat Amy Acton carried the county by nearly 12 points on her way to defeating Republican Vivek Ramaswamy, Trump’s endorsed pick for governor, 52.3% to 44.4% statewide. She became the first Democrat to win Ohio’s governorship since 2006.
McCabe conceded Republicans got overwhelmed and that the results dented Trump’s sway.
The damage reached well beyond Mahoning. Trumbull, Portage and Lake counties, which had backed Barack Obama in two elections and Trump in the three that followed, all flipped to Democrats, the Sun noted. Even deep red Columbiana and Ashtabula moved at least 20 points toward Democrats, though Republicans held both.
The fallout could complicate things for Vice President JD Vance, an Ohio native seen as a potential 2028 contender, as conservatives debate what the party looks like after Trump. Before the election, nearly all of the Ohio Republicans the Sun interviewed said they would back Vance as the nominee, but fewer than half were sure they’d support him in a primary.
“Is JD Vance going to be tainted with Trump?” asked Mark A. Hanni, a Republican judge on Ohio’s Seventh District Court of Appeals whose late father chaired the Mahoning County Democratic Party for 16 years.
Vance, who campaigned alongside Sen. Jon Husted this fall, headlined a Toledo rally the day before the election, where volunteers wore “Vance 2028” hats. Husted lost his seat to Sherrod Brown.
After more than an hour, McCabe settled on the view that Mahoning remains Trump country. Whether the former Democrats who once backed Trump will return to the GOP in 2028, with Trump off the ballot, he admitted, is a question he can’t yet answer.
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