CLEVELAND — Matt Dolan, who lost a raucous Republican Senate primary in Ohio last year, will run again in 2024, this time seeking to unseat Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown.
Dolan will announce his candidacy this week, he told an Ohio Republican official in a voicemail Sunday that the official shared with NBC News on condition of anonymity.
A representative for Dolan declined to comment Monday.
brown has saying he intends to seek a fourth term next year. Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Rangers, is likely to be the first candidate from the Republican side to make an official statement. Other Republicans closely watching the race include Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Bernie Moreno, a businessman who ran for the Senate briefly in 2022.
Dolan has also been the most aggressive in preparing for 2024.
As a vocal critic of former President Donald Trump during last year’s race, he struggled to connect with the right-wing base. But with a heavily self-funded war chest, he finished a competitive third in the primary, behind eventual winner JD Vance and former state treasurer Josh Mandel, after rising in the polls in recent days. And after Trump was blamed for the GOP’s disappointing results outside of Ohio in the November midterms, Dolan quickly established himself as a post-Trump nominee to take on Brown next year.
“What we are witnessing at the national level should convince us that the country is ready for substantive candidates, not personalities and election deniers,” Dolan wrote to Republican county chairs in Ohio less than a week after the election, in an email. email indicating that he was considering another candidacy.
In his voicemail on Sunday, Dolan acknowledged that others are likely to run in 2024 and expressed interest in winning the official’s support in what could be another crowded primary. Dolan told the official that the race should be about beating Brown and that he felt he was the best positioned candidate to do so.
Brown’s seat, along with those held by Democrats Jon Tester of Montana and Joe Manchin of West Virginia and an open seat in Michigan, where Democrat Debbie Stabenow is retiring, will be among the GOP’s top picks next year. . Republican leaders in Ohio are bracing for another brutal primary like the one that elevated Vance, a political fledgling best known for his best-selling memoir «Hillbilly Elegy.» Vance defeated Democrat Tim Ryan by a comfortable margin with the help of national republican groups who spent tens of millions of dollars on television ads.
Other Republicans being mentioned as possible candidates include Rep. Warren Davidson and Mark Kvamme, a venture capitalist with close ties to former Gov. John Kasich.