While Jim Renacci received the coveted endorsement of then-President Donald Trump in his House reelection campaign in 2018, it is not lost on the now-U.S. Senate gubernatorial primary candidate in Ohio that Trump has yet to make an endorsement in the race against incumbent Gov. Mike DeWine.
"At this stage, I didn't expect the president to endorse in the Senate race, so who knows what's going to happen," Renacci told Newsmax's Rob Schmitt at an exclusive town hall at Ohio Wesleyan University's Chappelear Drama Center in Delaware, Ohio.
"He's coming on Saturday," Renacci added of Trump's Ohio rally that will be aired live on Newsmax on Saturday night.
"I do believe he realizes that I have his back when it comes to his policies."
Renacci is widely known as the first elected U.S. official to endorse then-candidate Trump in 2016.
"Whenever everyone else was standing behind Gov. [John] Kasich, I stepped out in March 2016 and I endorsed candidate Donald Trump," Renacci told Schmitt.
"I still remember the day I did that. He said, 'you're going to be in big trouble when it comes to Gov. Kasich,' and I said, 'you know what? The difference is I want change.
"I want somebody different. I want somebody who's going to go in and be a disrupter, and that's why I'm supporting him."
Trump might have withheld his endorsement thus far, but DeWine did not show up at a Trump campaign rally in Ohio during the 2020 presidential campaign, Renacci noted.
"If he runs in 2024, he's going to want a Gov. Renacci in that seat, not a Gov. DeWine, who won't even show up," Renacci said. "I do think he's going to want someone that's going to help him win.
"So, if he's listening or watching, I hope he realizes that this is the opportunity to have somebody who will stand with him in Ohio — not somebody who will stand away from him."
Renacci added a rebuke of DeWine that, along with "running Ohio like a Democrat," he is closer to President Joe Biden than Trump.
"I will add this about Gov. DeWine: He has more pictures with President [Joe] Biden than he has with President [Donald] Trump," Renacci told Schmitt.
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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