Infamous Donald Trump-endorsed candidate J.D. Vance is being projected the winner the U.S. Senate race in Ohio against Rep. Tim Ryan, reported NBC News.
The race was ignored by Democrats until it became possible that Vance wasn't as liked as some believed him to be. Even then, Rep. Ryan told the national party to stay out of it because he was doing just fine on his own.
Retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) stepped out of the seat after winning with 58 percent of the vote in his previous election.
Vance began opening up a lead toward the end of the race and Ryan bashed the Democratic party for a failed national messaging strategy. Emerson College had Ryan at 43 percent to Vance's 51 percent a week before the election with likely voters.
Ryan proved to be one of the highest-fundraising Senate candidates in the country, reported USAToday. Still, he was no match for the buckets of cash that came in from the Republican Party desperately trying to keep the Ohio seet red.
The Republican Party assumed that 2022 would be a "red wave" but it's clear that when it comes to the U.S. Senate, they've been forced to fork over considerable amounts of cash to hold the line.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) very early on began making excuses for why they might lose seats in November, saying that the candidates weren't that great. He didn't cite who, but the expectation was that Herschel Walker and Mehmet Oz weren't turning out to be the candidates he had hoped.
In Vance, it became clear that he didn't want to run a race. In September, reports began surfacing that Vance had disappeared with many Republican officials trying to get him to speak in their areas.
Columbus public station WOSU reported at the time that J.D. Vance "has basically disappeared from public view since his May primary win. There have been no big campaign events, no TV commercials and hardly a media appearance."
Toward the end, Ryan ultimately "emasculated" Vance by talking about how he went from standing up to Donald Trump to being a suck-up. Ryan would frequently quote Trump's rally for Vance in which Trump mocked the candidate as kissing "my ass."
