By the time Donald Trump is sworn in as president on January 20, Ohio will have two freshmen US Senators on Capitol Hill. Gov. Mike DeWine will appoint a successor to Vice President-elect JD Vance when he resigns from the Senate, and that person will join Sen.-elect Bernie Moreno, who defeated three-term Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown in November.
DeWine is a former US Senator himself, so he said he thinks he knows what it takes to be in that office – someone with a focus on national issues but also on Ohio.
“It also has to be someone who would win a primary. It has to be someone who can win a general election. And then two years later, we'll do all that again,” DeWine said shortly after the November election. “So this is not for the faint hearted. This is not for someone who just wants to get a seat. This has to be someone who really wants to do the job and do the work and who we think has the ability to do it.”
The appointee would serve till a special election in 2026, and then would have to run again in 2028, when the six-year term on Vance’s seat runs out.
One candidate appears to be in the lead: Lt. Gov. Jon Husted. Spokespeople for DeWine and Husted confirm that they traveled to Mar-a-Lago in Florida to visit former President Trump in recent weeks, but would not comment on the reason for the trip.
Husted is the most experienced politician in the potential pool. He’s been in elective office since winning a seat in the Ohio House in 2000, and was speaker and secretary of state. He ran for governor briefly in 2017 before joining forces with DeWine. That ticket won in 2018 and 2022. Husted has raised over $5 million for a run for governor in 2026, and DeWine has said he thinks Husted would be excellent in that role. On election night, Husted didn’t want to talk about who might take Vance’s seat.
“Goodness. We're just going to celebrate tonight. Enjoy tonight. And those things will take care of themselves over time,” Husted said.
Jane Timken is also mentioned as a possible appointee. She was voted in as chairman of the Ohio Republican Party in 2017 after members ousted Matt Borges, who had supported former Gov. John Kasich over Trump. She resigned that position to join the six others who ran against Vance for the GOP nomination in 2022.
“There are a lot of show horses in this race, but I’m the workhorse who will lead with grit and grace. President Trump asked me to take over the Republican Party and I delivered Ohio for President Trump,” Timken said during the seven-way debate presented by the Ohio Debate Commission in March 2022.
Republicans have only a five-seat advantage in the US House, the slimmest margin in a century. DeWine has admitted that is a factor in his decision, which suggests he may not choose from one of Ohio’s 10 Republican congressmen, though U.S. Rep. Mike Carey (R-OH 15) has said he’d like to move to the Senate.
Two choices seen as long shots have run for the Senate before: Secretary of State Frank LaRose and now-former Sen. Matt Dolan (R-Chagrin Falls). They lost the Republican primary to Trump-endorsed Moreno last March, though Dolan was endorsed by DeWine. Dolan also lost the 2022 GOP primary to Vance.
Treasurer Robert Sprague has also expressed interest in the job. He's a former state lawmaker. He, like LaRose and the other three statewide executive officeholders, is term limited and can't run for re-election in 2026.
Not every Republican wants the Senate seat
Two people who have said they don’t want the job. Ohio-based tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who’ll be leading the Department of Government Efficiency with Elon Musk, posted on X in November that he was withdrawing from consideration for the appointment. And Attorney General Dave Yost has also said he's not interested.
“I’m an executive,” Yost said on election night. “I’ve never been a legislator, and I'm not ready to end my public service, but I can’t imagine going to Washington, D.C. I would not accept that appointment.”
Yost shared a video on X on Nov. 19 showing him walking up to the doors of the governor’s Statehouse office with the words “stepping up for Ohio, coming Q1 2025”. It could be a big year for Yost, with the criminal case against former FirstEnergy executives Chuck Jones and Michael Dowling looming, though no trial date has been set yet. While neither Husted nor DeWine have been charged and both have denied any knowledge of the corruption scheme to pass the House Bill 6 nuclear power plant bailout for FirstEnergy, there are text messages between them and the former executives, and FirstEnergy’s donation to a dark money group that backed Husted’s run for governor in 2017. Yost was criticized last year for striking a settlement with FirstEnergy for $20 million, which many viewed as far too low.
Whoever is chosen could end up facing the man who got to the Senate by defeating DeWine in 2006 – Sherrod Brown. Brown has not ruled out running for Vance’s seat in 2026.
“This is my last speech on the Senate floor, but it’s not, I promise you, the last time you’ll hear from me,” Brown said in an emotional address to his colleagues on Dec. 19.
Vance is still in office so won’t be sworn in again with Moreno and all members of the Senate and Congress who ran last year and won, and DeWine has said he’ll wait on the announcement till Vance resigns, sometime before he’s inaugurated vice president on Jan. 20.
