‘Operation Grant’ seeks to turn Republicans toward Biden in election

By: Tyler Buchanan - September 1, 2020 2:24 pm

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris. Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty Images.

A group of Ohio Republicans have launched an effort to unseat their party’s president, instead backing Democratic candidate Joe Biden for the fall.

The new Operation Grant is affiliated with The Lincoln Project, a national organization of Republican politicos who are campaigning against Trump’s reelection. The Ohio-centered group, named after the former general and president who was born in southern Ohio, is also associated with the Republican Voters Against Trump organization.

Operation Grant launched Tuesday morning with an event at a Lincoln statue located in Cincinnati. Featured were a number of Republican officials and activists, including Chris Gagin, a former chair of the Belmont County Republican Party who resigned in 2018 as a protest of Trump’s policies.

The Lincoln Project began a year ago by a number of well-known Republican strategists, including John Weaver, who has worked on presidential campaigns of John McCain and former Gov. John Kasich. Using the 16th president as a motif for courage and binding a fractured country together, the supporters are backing Biden over Trump this year.

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Tyler Buchanan

Tyler Buchanan is an award-winning journalist who has covered Ohio politics and government for the past decade. A Bellevue native and graduate of Bowling Green State University, he most recently spent 6 1/2 years as a reporter and editor of The Athens Messenger and Vinton-Jackson Courier newspapers. He is a member of the BG News Alumni Society Board and was a 2019 fellow in the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism.