Trump-less morning after

Ohio’s nearly Trump-less morning after

By Kyle Cheney

Donald Trump claimed the GOP presidential nomination on Tuesday, and his chance to become president may hinge on capturing Ohio — a quintessential swing state whose coal-country voters turned out in droves for the mogul in March, though Ohio Gov. John Kasich carried the state easily.

But at the Ohio delegation’s breakfast Wednesday morning, you’d barely know Trump was the Republican Party’s standard bearer. In speech after speech — from House Speaker Paul Ryan to Sen. Rob Portman to Rep. Pat Tiberi to state party Chairman Matt Borges and a string of business leaders — Trump was either an afterthought or went entirely unmentioned.

The breakfast came after a tense Day One, when Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort blasted Kasich for "embarrassing" his state by refusing to endorse the nominee, while Kasich's allies fought back with equal venom.

On Wednesday, those tensions lingered in the air as Ryan delivered a long reiteration of his policy agenda that featured lengthy praise of Ohio’s congressional delegation. He acknowledged a national “fight for coal country,” but didn’t note that Republicans in that area of southeastern Ohio voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Ryan even name-checked his former running mate Mitt Romney — a vocal Trump detractor — early in his remarks, noting that the two of them failed to crystallize a choice for voters in 2012.

As for unifying the party now, Ryan turned to metaphor.

“We all ran different offenses in the primary,” he said, but added, “When one of us goes on to the Rose Bowl, we all root for each other.”

After about 15 minutes of remarks, Ryan closed with his first Trump mention: "Voting for anybody but Donald Trump means you're voting for Hillary Clinton."

Jo Ann Davidson, Ohio's veteran Republican National Committeewoman, said Ryan's limited mention of Trump was more about a decision to talk up Ohio's congressional delegation. But she stopped short of supporting Trump herself.

"I've been staying out of this," she said when asked if she's now backing the GOP nominee. "I'm going to stay out of it."

Portman, locked in a tough battle for reelection with Democrat Ted Strickland, also called for unity but notably made no mention of Trump in his brief remarks. A longtime advocate for multinational trade deals, Portman has struggled to align his message with Trump’s calls for sharp slowdowns in foreign trade and renegotiations of existing deals.

Kasich, clearly in friendly territory here, received cheers when Borges noted that Wednesday will be the one-year anniversary of his decision to jump into the race. Kasich was supposed to attend Pennsylvania’s delegation breakfast Tuesday morning but canceled due to what aides described as a “scheduling” conflict.