WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Ohio Governor Mike DeWine will appoint the state’s lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, to fill Vice President-elect JD Vance’s former seat in the U.S. Senate, Politico reported on Friday, citing two sources it did not identify.
DeWine’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Husted, 57, is a former speaker of the state House of Representatives, who had also been seen as a leading candidate to succeed the term-limited DeWine.
President-elect Donald Trump is returning to power in a Washington where his Republicans hold majorities in both chambers of Congress – 53-47 in the Senate and 219-215 in the House of Representatives.
Vance, who had served as U.S. senator for Ohio since January 2023, resigned last week ahead of the inauguration on Monday.
It is unclear when Husted will be sworn into the Senate.
Trump also picked Senator Marco Rubio of Florida to serve as secretary of state, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis picked state attorney general Ashley Moody to replace Rubio if he is confirmed by the Senate.
Trump’s moves to pull some lawmakers for roles in his administration will briefly complicate the House Republican majority. He has tapped Representative Elise Stefanik as ambassador to the United Nations and Representative Michael Waltz as national security adviser.
Should Stefanik and Waltz be confirmed to those roles and resign from the House, their seats would remain vacant until special elections could be held to fill them in the spring, temporarily reducing Republicans’ House margin.
DeWine’s pick will fill Vance’s seat until a November 2026 special election – overlapping with the midterm congressional elections – for the right to fill out the rest of the six-year term for a senator, which ends in January 2029.
Republicans could face a comeback attempt in 2026 from former Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown, who lost his reelection bid for Ohio’s other Senate seat Republican Senator Bernie Moreno in November but has not ruled out running again.
Vance was swept to victory in 2022, and Moreno in 2024, with endorsements from Trump.
(Reporting by David Morgan, Bo Erickson and Caitlin Webber; editing by Rami Ayyub, Scott Malone and Richard Chang)
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