State Rep. Gary Click’s bad Tuesday extended well beyond his own ballot. Every down-ticket Republican candidate Click formally endorsed for a contested 2026 primary lost.

Andrew King lost the Ohio Supreme Court Republican primary to former Franklin County Common Pleas Judge Colleen O’Donnell, 32.15% to 29.72%. Kristina Roegner lost the Republican primary for state treasurer to former state Rep. Jay Edwards, roughly 53% to 47%. And state Rep. Josh Williams lost the Republican primary in Ohio’s 9th Congressional District to former state Rep. Derek Merrin, 44.1% to 25.3%, finishing a distant second in a five-way field.

Click himself survived his own primary in the 88th House District, but only by 599 votes — defeating challenger Eric Watson 52.28% to 47.72% while losing Seneca County to Watson by 8.5 percentage points.

Three formal endorsements, three losses

Click’s connections to the three losing candidates are documented in primary sources.

Roegner’s official campaign endorsements page lists “Gary Click, HD 88” among the Ohio House Republicans backing her treasurer bid — a list that also included Speaker Matt Huffman, Speaker Pro Tempore Gayle Manning, and Majority Whip Nick Santucci. Roegner ran with the backing of gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy, while Edwards consolidated support from Vice President JD Vance and U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno.

Williams’s official campaign endorsements page at joshwilliamsforohio.com lists “Rep. Gary Click” among more than two dozen Ohio House members backing his congressional bid. Williams acknowledged Click’s endorsement on social media on Aug. 11, 2025, calling Click “a strong conservative & voice for faith, family, & freedom in Ohio.” The two have co-sponsored multiple pieces of Ohio House legislation, including House Bill 693 — the so-called “Affirming Families First Act,” which would write a statutory definition of “parental alienation” into Ohio law — and HB 249, the “Indecent Exposure Modernization Act.”

The King endorsement was issued by Click on Facebook. King’s own campaign endorsements page at voteandrewking.com does not list Click among the state representatives backing his Supreme Court bid; King’s site features Reps. Brian Lorenz, Mark Hiner, Thad Claggett, Marilyn John, and former Rep. Mark Fraizer.

The Williams endorsement, in context

Click’s continued backing of Williams was already a documented point of friction inside the Ohio GOP coalition before Tuesday’s results.

TiffinOhio.net reported in March that Williams had posted sexually explicit and degrading content about women on his public Facebook page in 2018 — material that resurfaced as he campaigned on a legislative record built around protecting children from obscenity. When confronted in 2023, Williams declined to apologize, telling The Rooster: “What do I gotta apologize about? I made the post in 2018 being funny while I was in college burning time.”

Click formally endorsed Williams’s congressional campaign in August 2025 — two years after Williams’s posts were first publicly reported. Williams quietly removed state Rep. Rodney Creech from his endorsements page in mid-April after TiffinOhio.net coverage of Creech’s Bureau of Criminal Investigation file, but kept Click’s endorsement on the page through Election Day.

Click’s near-loss compounds the pattern

Tuesday’s results landed against the backdrop of Click’s own narrowly held seat. Watson conceded Tuesday night but pointedly declined to endorse Click in the November general election, telling supporters “the topic of endorsements will not be discussed at this time” and signaling he intends to remain politically active. Watson carried Seneca County by 8.5 points; Click held on only because of his 15.4-point margin in his home county of Sandusky.

Click did get wins at the top of the ticket. Ramaswamy, whom Click endorsed for governor, defeated Casey Putsch and Heather Hill in the GOP primary. U.S. Sen. Jon Husted, whose Sandusky County campaign Click chairs, was unopposed in the Republican Senate primary. But both of those races were structurally favorable to the candidates Click backed — Ramaswamy held the Ohio Republican Party endorsement issued more than a year before the primary, and Husted faced no opposition.

In the three down-ticket races where Click’s preferred candidate had to win on the merits of a contested Republican primary — Supreme Court, treasurer, and OH-9 — Click’s slate went 0-for-3.

A pattern documented before the votes were cast

The Ohio Democratic Party labeled Click — alongside Creech — as one of the GOP’s “most toxic endorsements” in an April 14 release, after Williams temporarily scrubbed Creech from his endorsement page. TiffinOhio.net’s subsequent reporting documented a pattern in which multiple Republican campaigns either removed Click from their public endorsement materials or were caught quietly restoring him after coverage. Ramaswamy’s gubernatorial campaign briefly removed Click in April before restoring him within hours of TiffinOhio.net documenting the change. Watson, in the closing weeks of his own primary campaign, called Click “a liability” and built his closing message around Click’s distancing from other Republican campaigns.

What was characterization three weeks ago is now also a vote count. Three Republican candidates Click formally endorsed asked GOP primary voters to send them to higher office. None of the three got there.

Tuesday’s results across all three races are unofficial pending certification.