Ohio Republican Senate showdown: Timken spotlights border trip and touts she's 'Trump tough' in new ad

FIRST ON FOX: Jane Timken is taking aim at President Biden over border security as part of her statewide ad blitz in her bid for the Republican Senate nomination in Ohio’s crowded and competitive GOP primary.

"Under Joe Biden, illegal immigrants and drug cartels are flooding Ohio with heroin and fentanyl. Now opioid deaths are surging again," the former Ohio GOP chair charges in the ad, which was shared first with Fox News on Tuesday. "I’m Jane Timken, and I know border security is national security."

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Border security is top of mind with Republican voters in Ohio and across the country, and Timken’s new spot, which was recorded as she stood at the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, is the latest in the primary showdown to spotlight the issue.

Timken’s team says the spot will run on broadcast and cable TV in the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Dayton and Youngstown markets as part of her campaign’s ongoing seven-figure ad buy.

Timken, whose husband is the former chairman, CEO and president of his family’s steel manufacturing corporation, is one of eight candidates in the GOP primary race to succeed retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman, who’s endorsed Timken.

The other major Republican candidates in the race are 2018 Ohio GOP Senate candidate Mike Gibbons, a Cleveland entrepreneur, real estate developer and investment banker; former Ohio treasurer and former two-time Senate candidate Josh Mandel; venture capitalist and best-selling author J.D. Vance; and state Sen. Matt Dolan, a former county and state prosecutor whose family owns Major League Baseball’s Cleveland Guardians.

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Other than Dolan, the other major contenders have been showcasing their support for former President Trump, who remains the most popular and influential politician in the GOP as he plays a kingmaker’s role in the party’s 2022 primaries and repeatedly teases another White House run in 2024.

Timken describes herself as "Trump tough" in the commercial and pledges "as the real Trump conservative, I will fight to finish this wall, secure this border, and crackdown on the drug cartels." 

The spot also includes a clip of the then president from the 2020 cycle saying at a rally that "Ohio GOP Chairman, Jane Timken. She’s unbelievable."

In a primary race where all nearly all the major contenders have plenty of personal wealth, or are backed by well financed outside groups, ad spending is soaring. According to figures from the national ad tracking firm AdImpact, $26 million had already been spent through early last week by the campaigns and super PACs to run ads in the Ohio Senate race, with nearly all the spending coming in the GOP primary.

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Timken’s new ad is hitting Ohio airwaves with seven weeks to go until the state’s scheduled Mary 3 primary. A Fox News poll conducted March 2-6 and released last Wednesday indicated Gibbons at 22% among like Republican primary voters, with Mandel at 20%, Vance at 11%, Timken at 9%, Dolan at 7%, and nearly a quarter of those surveyed undecided.

According to AdImpact, the Ohio Senate race to date is the second most expensive in the country this cycle, behind the showdown in the neighboring battleground state of Pennsylvania for another GOP-held open seat.

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The winner of the Republican primary may face off against longtime Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan of northeastern Ohio. Ryan is considered the favorite for the Democratic nomination in race that also includes progressive Morgan Harper, a former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau senior adviser and 2020 congressional candidate.

Fox News' Dana Blanton contributed to this report.