Matt Dolan is running for the Republican nomination to challenge incumbent U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D) in the state of Ohio.
Jacob Espinosa/The Lima News
LIMA — Candidate for U.S. Senate Matt Dolan stopped by the Lima News offices Friday afternoon as part of a tour of Ohio ahead of the primary election.
The Ohio senator, Dolan (R-Chagrin Falls) discussed his background and the issues as they pertain to the race for incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D) seat.
“I’m running for United States Senate because I want to continue to do what I’ve done in the private and public sector and I want to work hard every day to make Ohioans’ lives better,” he said.
Dolan categorized himself as a conservative who supported Trump’s policies and the only candidate in the race, against Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and businessman Bernie Moreno, who has held consistent views, although Moreno is the one who picked up Trump’s endorsement.
“I’m the only one with the experience,” he said. “And I have a conservative agenda of results that have helped Ohio. Neither of my opponents can point toward my results.”
LaRose has similarly contended that he is the only one in the race to maintain consistency and in fact, all three candidates have hit each other for appealing to liberal issues at times.
Dolan, however, cited a record that includes investing in the police, school choice and mental health, as well as standing against trans students playing girl’s sports and critical race theory.
“My work at the statehouse has been called the most conservative balanced budgets in the history of the state,” he said. “So these are things that I have done that are helpful for Ohio while Sherrod Brown makes your life harder. And that’s who I want to go beat.”
Among the issues at the forefront of Dolan’s agenda is securing the border — he is calling for a complete shutdown temporarily — and energy independence.
“We need to get our security in line with more Border Patrol and law enforcement authority, more wall and more technology,” he said. “We need to get the ‘remain in Mexico’ plan in place, go to Mexico City and tell the Mexican Government to join us in defeating the cartels and we need to declare fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. Because when we do that, we can stop China from shipping it into Mexico and poisoning us in Ohio.”
Dolan also said he is the only candidate with a good plan to beat Brown, who he said betrays Ohioans by supporting liberal policies in Washington that don’t help voters.
“All three of us say we can beat him, but I can demonstrate it,” he said. “Brown only wins 16 counties and he needs to run up the score in those counties. He needs to win big in Cuyahoga County, for example, and in that county, I outperform President Trump by 11 points so there is no chance he gets the 72% he needs there against me.”
A native of the county, Dolan said that his background growing up and working there — the son of Cleveland Guardians owner Larry Dolan and himself a former employee of the team — has not led him to the Lima region, but that working as a prosecutor in Geauga County and as a state senator lends credibility to his campaign.
“I wasn’t as well known on this side of the state, but we spent a lot of time here and I think the message is this guy gets things done and has achieved conservative results,” he said. “I’ve been fortunate enough to be picked by conservative speakers and senate presidents including Matt Huffman, to lead the finance committee and that’s where we put our priorities in the state of Ohio. In my time, I have cut billions of dollars of income and business taxes and reduced regulations.”
The spring primary election will be March 19.
Voters can visit their local board of elections for polling information.
Reach Jacob Espinosa at 567-242-0399.
