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REUTERS
WAHSINGTON
ROB PORTMAN is largely ignoring Donald Trump, which is hard to do in US politics today, but the strategy seems to be working for the Republican senator in his re-election bid in Ohio.
As congressional Republicans across the country grapple with the Trump effect on their home-state campaigns, the mild-mannered Portman, 60, may be pointing the way forward in his race, the nation's most expensive Senate contest so far this year.
Last week in Columbus, the state capital, Portman made no mention of Trump in a campaign appearance, though the New York businessman is the Republican presidential nominee and Portman has endorsed him.
On Portman's web site, Trump is absent. Portman has hit the campaign trail in Ohio with a Republican who had White House ambitions, but it's the state's Governor John Kasich, not Trump.
Kasich lost his bid for the party's nomination to Trump. Since then, Kasich pointedly has not endorsed Trump, a property developer and television personality who has never held elected office and whose smash-mouth politics worries many Republicans who fear he may lose them votes in Senate and House of Representatives races.
Those concerns have been compounded by Trump falling behind his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in opinion polls.
Portman campaign manager Corey Bliss said his boss has never wavered in his support of Trump and there has been no conscious effort to de-couple Portman from the presidential nominee.
But a story on the Cleveland.com web site last week reported that Portman, a veteran Washington insider, has yet to appear at a single Trump campaign event, or even in the same photo, with him.
