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In Licking County, Ohio, east of the capital city of Columbus, bumper stickers on pickup trucks make it clear it is Trump Country.

And at a recent meeting of the county's Republican women's group, 66-year-old retiree Geraldine Jacobs made it clear that she's a Trump supporter.

"It's a shame that we went from the best president to now really the worst president," she says.

Trump won 63% of the vote in Licking County in last year's presidential election, en route to easily carrying the state for the second time. The result seemed to prove that Ohio is not the perennial battleground state many had still thought it was.

Republican politics in Ohio has also changed in the era of Trump. And with the retirement of U.S. Sen. Rob Portman — a fixture of the GOP establishment — more change is coming. As the Republican field to replace him begins to take shape in these very early days, it's clear Trump retains an outsized influence in the state.

Trump lost. His influence among the GOP remains strong

Polls since Trump left office show an overwhelming number of Republicans still view him as the leader of the party. Those same polls show that a solid majority of Republicans also say — falsely — that Trump won in 2020. He did not.

But she then makes it clear that she's already looking to others as the future of the party: "I think that there are other Republicans that are coming out strong and standing for these conservative values that are going to step forward." Moore notes that she's been watching Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis closely and likes what she sees.

Still, it's hard to get past Trump's dominance, something he'll deploy to influence next year's midterms.

And that complicates things, according to Ohio Tea Party activist Tom Zawistowski. He says Trump's time as president is to be applauded, but he also says Trump could have won reelection if he'd been better organized, more disciplined and had surrounded himself with better people.

Now Zawistowski wonders about Trump's next phase. "What's Trump 2.0 really look like?" he asks. "How much did he learn from this experience?"

Zawistowski has a practical request of Trump. If he's going to get involved in GOP primaries in upcoming local and state elections, Trump should be sure he does his homework. Consult with activists on the ground about whom to endorse.

"The problem there is that Trump's like the big elephant in the room," Zawistowski says. "If he says, 'I'm endorsing this person,' well, I got news for you: That's probably who's going to win."

The Tea Party leader warns that picking the wrong person could leave some excellent hopefuls on the sidelines. He says he offers this unsolicited advice because he knows just how much clout Trump has with Republican voters in a state like Ohio.

For Democrats in Ohio it's a very different situation. They are pushing back against the storyline that it is now a solidly red state.

Rep. Monique Smith, a Democratic state House member who actually flipped her suburban Cleveland district from red to blue last year, says it's been tough seeing Trump carry her home state twice.

"It was heartbreaking because part of it is about identity," Smith says. "If you're an Ohioan, what do you think that means? I think that means that we're pretty moderate and pretty commonsense. So it remains shocking to me."

Meanwhile, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Elizabeth Walters seems to relish Trump's ongoing influence on the state GOP. And she predicts that in next year's U.S Senate race, Democrats will do well with voters who see how Biden has tackled the pandemic and the economy.

"There's no better argument than reality," she says. "I think it's meaningful that not a single Ohio Republican voted to support the American Recovery Plan." Walters describes it as "a clear and simple decision on who's on your side, who cares about you and your family, and who doesn't."

She says Democrats have a case to make in Ohio, and Trump's involvement in state races makes it easier to convince voters what the stakes are for anyone who doesn't hold Trump's worldview.

Still, long-term historic trends would also indicate that the first midterm after a presidential election is always tough for the party of a new president.
Bipartisan legislation to establish an independent commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol has failed in the Senate, as Republicans staged their first filibuster since President Biden took office to block the plan.

The final vote Friday was 54-35, but Republicans withheld the votes necessary to bring the bill up for debate. Just six GOP senators joined with the Democrats, leaving the measure short of the 60 votes needed to proceed.

The proposed commission was modeled on the one established to investigate the 9/11 terror attacks, with 10 commissioners — five Democrats and five Republicans — who would have subpoena powers. A Democratic chair and Republican vice chair would have had to approve all subpoenas with a final report due at the end of the year.

The House approved the measure 252-175 last week with 35 Republicans joining all Democrats in support of the plan.

But Senate Republicans, led by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, were deeply skeptical of the commission in the days leading up to the vote.

McConnell had dismissed the proposal as a "purely political exercise," given that two Senate committees are already looking into the events of Jan. 6. In remarks from the Senate floor Thursday, McConnell called into question how much more a commission would be able to unearth.