“I think yes and no,” said Cedarville University political science professor Mark C. Smith. “Endorsements can matter, and they can also not matter. Much depends on the context and the relationship between the party and the base. We live in an anti-establishment era, but the power of the establishment varies.”
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Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine bested Ohio Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor with most endorsement votes by the Butler County Central Committee after two rounds of voting last Tuesday. DeWine received 83 out of 151 votes cast in the first round, and then 88 out of 152 votes cast in the second round. Taylor received 63 and then 62 votes, respectively.
Both candidates are looking at the no endorsement as a glass half-filled.
“We’ll take a majority of the committee and nearly every elected official in Butler County,” DeWine told the Journal-News.
Taylor’s campaign spokesman, Michael Duschene, said the no endorsement was “another loss for Mike DeWine.”
“The take away from (Tuesday) night is that the conservative movement has remembered why they preferred to stay home rather than to vote for him in 2006,” he said about his failed U.S. Senate re-election bid, losing to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Cleveland.
DeWine leads the county party endorsement tally 12-1, with most of the county endorsements coming on the eastern side of the state, including two of the state’s four largest counties. Taylor’s lone endorsement came on Jan. 17 from Clermont County, the 14th largest county in Ohio.
Republicans in Hamilton County, Ohio’s third largest county, have yet to schedule an endorsement meeting, and Republicans in Cuyahoga County, Ohio’s largest county, has scheduled their endorsement meeting on Feb. 18.
Though DeWine got the support of most of the Butler County GOP, it means both candidates, and their running mates, will frequently be campaigning in the region between now and the May 8 primary, both campaigns confirmed.
The party also failed to endorse a candidate for U.S. Senate, whose race features Cleveland businessman Mike Gibbons, who has Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones’ endorsement, and Congressman Jim Renacci, R-Wadsworth.
Smith said that while an endorsement can be meaningful, they “are most meaningful” when they come with an expectation of “significant campaign resources.”
“If voters and activists take their cues from the party at the county level, and then work to get behind, campaign for, or donate to the party’s preferred candidate, this can mean the difference between winning and losing,” Smith said.
These non-endorsements come a week after the party endorsed the opponent of incumbent state Rep. Wes Retherford, of Hamilton.
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Butler County political strategist Joe Statzer said endorsements, while valuable, “cut both ways.”
“Endorsed candidates get the use of the party brand — which has admittedly declined somewhat in recent years for both major parties — and support mechanisms,” he said. “But endorsed candidates also often get painted by their opponents as ‘political insiders.’”
That’s how Retherford summed up the GOP’s endorsements. He did not ask for the endorsement at the Jan. 23 local candidate endorsement meeting but rather apologized for his March 2017 OVI arrest.
“I said when you make a mistake you take full responsibility for your actions … and you learn from them,” said Retherford, who believes the “deck was stacked” against him not only this year but 2016 when former state lawmaker Courtney Combs earned the party’s endorsement.
Retherford, citing President Donald Trump’s 2016 election as an example, said voters “are not buying the insider politics.”
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It took two rounds of voting for the Central Committee members in the 51st House District to endorse his opponent, Hamilton native and philanthropist Sara Carruthers.
Carruthers said she believes she “can do even more for our people. I have been a conservative Republican all my life. I will be a strong, fresh voice for conservative principles and common sense values in the Ohio General Assembly.”
Retherford’s victory in 2016 was one of three significant wins in the primary that year by unendorsed candidates, which included Candice Keller and Ann Becker, who won the 53rd Ohio House District seat and a State Republican Central Committee seat, respectively.
Butler County GOP Executive Chairman Todd Hall said those loses were because of the candidates’ campaigns and not the endorsement, which “are nothing like the back room deals that some suggest.”
“Endorsements are a valuable piece of the political system,” he said. “In Butler County, the endorsements are voted on by members of the Central Committee. That is grassroots to the core.”
They also send a message “to the busy electorate as to who truly embodies our conservative values.” Endorsed candidates that lost primary challenges in previous years “often due to their own misguided campaigns,” he said. “An endorsed candidate must understand that the campaign has only begun on endorsement night.”
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This year, the Butler County Democratic Party will not do endorsements before the primaries.
“We believe that our voters will make the best decision by learning about each candidate on their own rather than having a small group decide for them,” said Democratic Party Central Committee Chair Suzi Rubin. “Our Democratic candidates will be chosen by the Democrats who show up at the polls in May.”
The Ohio Democratic Party endorsed former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland over Cincinnati Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld for the U.S. Senate race in 2016. Butler County Democrats did not endorse in that race, though party chairwoman Jocelyn Bucaro did endorse Strickland.
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