Jane Timken told guests at a meet and greet event in Bellefontaine Tuesday afternoon when she learned in January that U.S. Senator Rob Portman would not be running for re-election, she knew she wanted to step up to the plate.
The recent Ohio Republican Party chair and Cincinnati native is running for the U.S. Senate Seat in the 2022 election. A graduate of Harvard University, where she played rugby, Timken said she will “fight for our families and our freedoms,” calling President Joe Biden’s administration an “unmitigated disaster.”
“As your senator, I’ll step up for accountability. I’m the kind of person who will step up, not just yell at the TV,” she said. “I have the grit and determination and I know which polices in Washington don’t work. And as a former rugby player, I’m not afraid to have a little mud on me.”
After President Donald Trump’s election in 2016, she ran for the Ohio Republican Party chair, with the backing of Trump, and was elected to the seat.
“We needed to unify the party,” said Timken, who holds a juris doctor degree from Washington College of Law at American University. “I’m proud of what we accomplished in delivered in 2018, and even more so in 2020, with a decisive Ohio win for Trump in the presidential election.”
In her role as party chair, Timken oversaw a grassroots effort in Ohio that tallied more than 13 million voter contacts for Trump. She said she logged more than 150,000 miles driving across the state at that time.
Similarly in her campaign for U.S. Senate, Timken is taking a similar “boots on the ground” approach effort in reaching all of Ohio’s 88 counties, she said.
She told attendees she is becoming increasingly concerned at the “attack on our fundamental freedoms” being taken away by the Biden administration, citing freedoms of speech and religion that concern her, and as a proud Catholic, the rights of the unborn as well.
Timken said she wants to get back to “calling police officers our heroes” and also working to restore American energy jobs that the current administration has “decimated.”
A mother of two, Timken lives in Stark County with her husband, Tim.