[music]

Melissa Harris-Perry: Welcome to The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

JD Vance: They wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump's America first agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, it ain't the death of the America first agenda.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Republican voters in Ohio wrote their own Hillbilly Elegy on Tuesday, choosing author and social media agitator, JD Vance, as the Buckeye State Republican candidate for the US Senate. His win came after former president, Donald Trump, endorsed Vance over the other six candidates in the race. In November, Ohioans will choose between Vance and Democratic candidate, Tim Ryan.

Tim Ryan: We're trying to build a future for our kids and it doesn't come from us hating each other. It doesn't come from us looking at each other and seeing a Democrat or seeing a Republican. It comes by us looking at each other and seeing Americans.

Melissa Harris-Perry: For decades, Ohio has been a bellwether of presidential elections, but the winner of the state also winning the general election, but that streak ended in 2020 when Trump turned Ohio red but lost the White House to Joe Biden. Despite his defeat, Republican candidates like Vance remain eager for the former president's endorsement. They're counting on a nod from 45 being enough to tip the scales during the primaries and in the November midterms.

For a look at how all this could play out, who else could we turn to? Hey, our old pal, former Takeaway host, Amy Walter. Amy is, of course, the editor-in-chief of The Cook Political Report. Amy, welcome back to your old chair to The Takeaway. How are you?

Amy Walter: It's so great to be back here.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Really my first question is just one word, Ohio?

Amy Walter: Ohio, the place that used to be considered the bellwether. We'd look to Ohio to give us a sense for how the country was feeling, sort of the median voter or the tipping point state, now it's a state that is pretty red, and I don't think either side would say that how Ohio goes so goes the nation, how Ohio goes so the Republican candidates, not so much how do they feel about both parties. It's a pretty red state.

I think there are some really interesting dynamics at play in the state. Now, the one that gets talked about the most, of course, is Trump's endorsement in the Senate primary, but he made endorsements up and down the ballot, including the secretary of state, congressional candidate, all of those candidates succeeded. Now, the secretary of state was the incumbent. This isn't like Georgia, where he's trying to oust an incumbent. In this case, Trump's seal of approval, so to speak, proved to be really critical, or at least certainly in the Senate race, I would argue, it's what put Vance over the top.

Melissa Harris-Perry: It can be that this was already an overdetermined race in some ways. That Vance himself is just such a personality that the strength of that personality comes through, especially in a primary for midterm, so a low information, low turnout election that when you have somebody like Vance, who is just making noise and his voice is there, that that kind of overdetermines it, it could be that what happens with Trump is comes resources.

When you're endorsed by the former president, there are just certain dollars and cents and folks who come along with you, or it could be that it is Trump's voters showing up for Vance and for everyone else on the ticket who won because it keeps the enthusiasm about former president Trump on the ballot. I guess I'm wondering, is it all of those, is it one more than the other?

Amy Walter: Melissa, I think the most important thing to appreciate about this primary is that every candidate in that Senate primary, with the exception of one, ran to be the Trump candidate. Basically, every candidate, if you watch their ads and I've watched most of them, their scripts went something like this. It was like a noun, a verb, Donald Trump, all of them were emulating Donald Trump.

Whoever won that primary was going to be in the Donald Trump mold, some more extreme than others. The fact that Vance won, certainly, it gives Trump an ability to say, "Okay, look, I'm still the kingmaker. This guy was lagging in the polls. He gets my endorsement, boom, shoots up over the top, wins the race."

I think it was also worthy to note that the sitting Senator, Rob Portman, who falls into the category of your traditional conservative, establishment conservative. He served in the two Bush administrations. He was one of the Republicans who worked with President Biden on the bipartisan infrastructure bill. He made an endorsement in that Senate race too. His candidate came in fifth, very, very far behind.

Think about this in 2016, Donald Trump lost the Ohio primary to John Kasich, by a pretty healthy margin, by twenty-something points. In 2016 in the fall campaign, Rob Portman outpolled Donald Trump by seven points. Today, John Kasich, Rob Portman, they couldn't win a primary, it's Donald Trump's party and in Ohio, it came through loud and clear.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Is the John Kasich version of Ohio republicanism just gone?

Amy Walter: Yes. There's just no other way to say it. I know there is a faction of that sort of Kasich-like candidate that's still around. You see them in people like Larry Hogan, Chris Christie's kind of trying to remake himself in that mold, Charlie Baker, the governor of Massachusetts. All those people I just mentioned are from blue states. If you are from a red state and you're a Republican running as an anti-Trump candidate, just isn't going to get you anywhere.

Maybe there's 25% for you. I thought it was also interesting that-- and we're going to be tracking this at the Cook Political Report, but the kinds of candidates who are winning these primaries, especially down the ballot in house races, many of those folks, these primaries are akin to a general. The districts are so red that they're not going to have a significant general election, but what kinds of candidates come out of these primaries? Are they going to be in not just the Trump mold, but in the freedom caucus mold, the Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan type, or are they going to be the, yes, we support Trump, but we don't want to come there to just blow everything up?

It is clear now-- I talked to someone the other day who had been working with what we knew at the time to be moderate Republicans who said to me, there's no such thing as a moderate Republican anymore. You have Republicans who may not be as enamored with Donald Trump or who may be not as vocal in support for him, but there's no longer the kind of Northeastern Republicans or the suburban Republicans, the Rob Portman Republicans, the John Kasich Republicans. They've all been either purged, they've retired, or they simply see no place for themselves in the party.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Do you expect us to see patterns similar to what we saw in Ohio for Pennsylvania and Georgia's primaries?

Amy Walter: Yes. Now, George is a little bit different because it really is the governor's race where the Trump-endorsed versus the other candidate is playing out. I think where Trump is going to be most successful or his endorsed candidates will be most successful are in these open Senate primaries, which both Pennsylvania and Ohio fit those categories. Again, in Pennsylvania, Pat Toomey who's retiring, the Republican senator there. He hasn't endorsed in that race, and quite frankly, I don't know that any Republican would want his endorsement.

He was one of the Republicans who voted to impeach the president. Again, you would not put him in the category of moderate. He came to Washington in the Tea Party era as a Tea Party candidate, basically very, very conservative, but he also worked on bipartisan bills on things like gun control legislation. Pennsylvania is the state that you had moderate Republicans for a long time, Arlen Specter, the most recent, of course, he switched parties, but before he switched parties, he was considered a moderate Republican.

All of the Republicans in that race, doesn't matter that Trump has endorsed only one of them, all of them are running under the Trump banner, but in the governor's races where you have incumbent governors that Trump has gone up against, or his candidate, endorsed candidates are going up against. Those are not likely to be as successful. Governors are much better. Known, they have a track record, voters feel an affinity with them, so knocking off a governor, that's where Trump is going to fall short. In these open primaries for the House and the Senate, yes, he's probably likely to be more successful than not. We still have a ways to go but Ohio was certainly a good night for him.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's pop over to the Democratic side. What did we learn in Ohio from what happened there?

Amy Walter: Well, what I thought was the most interesting is to look at just the total turnout, who showed up and voted in the Democratic primary, who showed up and voted in the Republican primary. Right now, it's roughly a two-to-one advantage for Republicans. Little over a million votes cast on the Republican side, about 500,000 on the Democratic side.

Now, you can argue, "Well, it was much more competitive on the Republican side, there wasn't a significant primary on the Democratic side for Senate, the gubernatorial Democratic primary was kind of quiet, they didn't spend as much money as we saw on the Republican side." Now let's go back to 2018 when it was Trump in the White House and Democrats trying to get control of Congress.

In that year, they turned out about 100,000 more voters than Republicans did in those primaries. For Democrats who have been ringing the bell for some time now about a lack of enthusiasm among their voters, this is just the latest sign. The other thing that is getting some attention is a rematch primary between, we can call it, the Biden wing, and the Bernie wing.

We saw Nina Turner, who of course, was a national spokesperson, strategist for Bernie Sanders, she ran in a Cleveland-based district back in a special election, lost that race, came back for a rematch, lost by even bigger margin. If you're looking for what is the influence right now in terms of the Biden versus the more progressive wing, the Biden wing won that matchup on Tuesday.

Melissa Harris-Perry: In the same ways that you give us a sense of like clear, almost calcification on the Republican side, are progressives going to have to take a story from Ohio that in this primary season, they're actually unlikely to be able to make moves, at least in terms of empowering the party, empowering themselves within the party?

Amy Walter: Well, the one I'm paying the closest attention to, which will be fascinating, is down in South Texas where the Democratic incumbent, Henry Cuellar, who is a more conservative Democrat, is facing a challenge from a progressive, Jessica Cisneros, who came close to beating him in the last election. Interestingly enough, the leaked memo about the Roe v. Wade decision actually may come to help her in this district. Why? Because Henry Cuellar's the only Democrat who are not pro-choice in Congress. That's certainly one place to look for for that.

In some other places, in some dark blue districts in Texas, a more progressive candidate has won in a primary. Those are folks that will come to Congress, but if you're looking to, okay, is the Democratic caucus in Washington more in the Biden mold or more in the Bernie mold? Who controls the Senate right now? I don't think it's-- The progressives have been making some progress but it's not going to be as significant as what we're seeing for what Trump has been able to do.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Okay, Amy. I want to talk about redistricting a little bit, because, on the one hand, there is voting for the candidates of your choice within whatever framework you're given, but let's talk about that framework a little. Let's start in Kansas, where the state court ruled that there was gerrymandering in the redistricting of the Kansas congressional map. I'm wondering what those criteria were and what do you expect next in Kansas?

Amy Walter: I think what we're expecting is to see a map that probably looks a little bit better for the one Democrat in that state who's in that Kansas City District we're talking about. Overall, the courts have been very interesting to watch. We've seen courts in some places like New York or Maryland really go after democratic gerrymanders and say, "Look, these are unacceptable," and required maps to be redrawn.

In some of the redder states like Ohio or Utah, the courts have basically allowed for the gerrymandering that took place there. I think that Democrats were hoping that because a state like New York, for example, has a court system dominated by Democratic-appointed justices, that they would maybe let a gerrymander slide, that's not the case. In Ohio, that absolutely was the case, that a Republican gerrymander was able to go without being overturned in time for this election.

The next place that's going to be fascinating to watch is Florida, where, again, they have a conservative Supreme Court, will they look at the law and say, "The ballot initiative that was passed by voters that said, 'Can't gerrymander,' essentially, will they look at that and say this map is not valid or will they allow that map to pass?"

Melissa Harris-Perry: Of course, in Florida, the governor ends up in on all of this. We had DeSantis actually vetoing one map, approving the next and it's fairly unusual. Typically, governors aren't given a veto power over the maps like that?

Amy Walter: Actually, most are, but except for North Carolina.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Maybe that's what happened. I got a little- with my own town specific.

Amy Walter: Here's what's-- your right. See, you know your hometown. Here's what is unique is, very rarely do you see a governor veto a map from his own party. We've seen that if you are a governor of a state where it's the other party that's in charge of redistricting, sure, you're going to veto their map. He vetoed it because he wanted to see basically even more gerrymandering done.

Now, many in the legislature were worried about this because they've been around for the last round of redistricting. When their gerrymandering got overturned and they had to redraw the lines, that helped Democrats.

There's the short-term and the long-term look, do we want to get a short-term win knowing this could be overturned at some point? We have to redraw the lines at some point and lose ground. Essentially, do we draw a 10-year map, or do we draw a 2-year map? If you're somebody like Governor DeSantis who's not been very shy about what he would like to do in two years, 2-year map sounds pretty good right in the middle of a presidential campaign.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Let's talk about Wisconsin. The US Supreme Court overturned Wisconsin State Court which had recognized a new majority Black district. We do have justices Sotomayor and Kagan dissenting, but I'm wondering what this current Wisconsin map is going to potentially mean going forward.

Amy Walter: No matter how you draw it, even if Democrats were given all of the power, because of how concentrated the Democratic vote is in basically Milwaukee, and Madison, it's hard for them to draw more districts that benefit Democrats. Your broader point about districts that have majority Black representation, voting rights districts, is one that will continue to be played out, I think, post this redistricting.

We saw in a state like Alabama, where Democrats argued that concentrating all or most of the state's Black population in one district isn't fair. That those voters should be able to be split into two districts which would give, obviously, Democrats an opportunity to pick up another street seat but would also give Black voters more influence over another congressional district, not just in one district. The Supreme Court didn't weigh in on that either. They've been taking pretty much a hands-off approach on all of this. It will be, I think, something that is not been completely resolved at this time, and will be interesting to see where it goes in the future.

Melissa Harris-Perry: Amy Walter, editor-in-chief of The Cook Political Report, thank you so much for joining us.

Amy Walter: Yes, it was really fun. Thanks, Melissa.

[music]

Copyright © 2022 New York Public Radio. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use at www.wnyc.org for further information.

New York Public Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline, often by contractors. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of New York Public Radio’s programming is the audio record.