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TOLEDO, Ohio — The candidates in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race are making their final appeals for votes ahead of Tuesday’s primary.

From Steubenville to Columbus, Lakewood to Lebanon, the five Republican and two Democratic candidates in the top-tier made multiple stops across the state throughout the weekend.

Spectrum News checked in with each candidate as they made their final sprint for votes.

Most of the attention is on the crowded Republican race, which has become one of the most expensive in the country with more than $65 million spent on TV and radio ads, according to the tracking firm Medium Buying.

“It’s impossible to turn on your TV without seeing my fat head saying something six years ago that I wish I hadn’t said, frankly,” candidate J.D. Vance told supporters at a stop in Cuyahoga Falls on Sunday.

The latest public polls show Vance, a venture capitalist and author of ‘Hillbilly Elegy,’ vaulting to the top of the Republican field after he won former President Donald Trump’s endorsement, despite having been a sharp critic of Trump in 2016.

The Republican primary is the first major test in 2022 of how much sway Trump still has in Republican politics.

Vance spent the weekend holding rallies with some of Trump’s most popular — and controversial — supporters, including Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who’s under federal criminal investigation for child sex trafficking, and Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a noted conspiracy theorist.

“The person that I met was someone that absolutely fell in love with President Trump’s policies because he saw how good they are and they serve America First,” Greene told a crowd of mroe thanm 100 in West Chester on Saturday.

Some of Vance’s new supporters came out to hear him over the weekend.

“We actually were not going to vote for J.D. before the Trump endorsement, so this changed everything,” said Mike Minnillo, who attended Vance’s Cuyahoga Falls event.

At the West Chester rally, Andy Fogarty explained he and Vance had similar journeys to becoming Trump supporters.

“I’m definitely one of those that was converted by his policies, not by his personality. And I think that’s what J.D. is saying,” Fogarty said.

The Vance endorsement was an enormous setback for former state treasurer Josh Mandel, who spent months courting Trump’s support.

Mandel seemed on Trump’s mind Sunday because the former president mixed up his name and Vance’s while speaking at a rally in Nebraska.

“We’ve endorsed J.P., right? J.D. Mandel and he’s doing great,” Trump said.

Mandel has campaigned almost exclusively in churches and stumped at Solid Rock Church in Lebanon on Saturday with Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

“There is no one that’s drawing crowds like we’re drawing. And the reason is, our support is real. We’re not buying it,” Mandel told Spectrum News.

During their rally, Cruz explained why he’s backing Mandel.

“In any race, I look for the strongest conservative who can win,” he said.

Several Trump supporters at the event said they were comfortable breaking with the former president in this race.

“I believe Trump did a lot of great things and I will support Trump, but I believe that him supporting somebody else is his own opinion,” Jeff Conover said. “And my opinion is that Josh Mandel is the man for the job.”

State Sen. Matt Dolan is the only top Republican who did not beg for Trump’s support or back his baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen. 

Dolan, whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians, has invested more than $10 million of his own fortune into the race. He’s recently been rising in the polls.

“My focus has been on Ohio Republicans who want somebody to go to Washington and execute. If a voter wants something other than that, well then I can’t help that,” Dolan told Spectrum News.

Over the weekend, Dolan attended a Lincoln Day Dinner in Columbus and went door to door in the Cleveland suburbs. He found several Republicans who support moving on from Trump.

“A lot of the ideas are fine, but don’t just tag team onto that,” said Jamie Spacek, who met Dolan as he was out canvassing.

Investment banker Mike Gibbons and former Ohio GOP Chair Jane Timken have been fighting to keep their candidacies afloat since Trump bypassed them.

Gibbons led in the polls earlier this year, thanks to the more than $16 million of his own money he’s poured into his campaign, but comments he made last fall about the middle class paying more in taxes recently resurfaced and took a toll.

“The people that have seen me speak know that it was a dirty political trick,” Gibbons told Spectrum News. “The people that don’t may believe it, and we have to counter that with the truth.”

In Port Clinton on Sunday, some voters Gibbons met with shared his frustration that Trump endorsed Vance.

“Actually, I was very disappointed. And I told Mike today, I said you know Mike, Trump isn’t always 100% either. I was very surprised,” Sis Bush said.

Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, whose retirement prompted the entire race, backs Timken. But her campaign was struggling even before Trump made his pick.

Timken campaigned in Steubenville on Friday with West Virginia Sen. Shelley Moore Capito on what she called a “Mom on a Mission” tour.

Timken is hoping her time as Trump’s hand-picked state party chair will fuel a come-from-behind win.

“Voters in the Republican primary know who’s been in the trenches fighting for those America First policies,” Timken told Spectrum News. “I was there. A lot of the other candidates were not.”

At the event in Steubenville, Capito talked up Timken’s experience as party chair.

“She understands the different dynamics of a big and vast state, and I think that’s a challenge,” she said.

On the Democratic side, frontrunner Tim Ryan, a congressman from northeast Ohio, has felt so confident that he spent part of the weekend in Lakewood campaigning for fellow U.S. House member Shontel Brown, D, OH-11.

Ryan told Spectrum News that it does not matter to him who ends up with the Republican nomination.

“To me, they’re all the same. They’re here to divide, they’re here to put people down, they’re here to start unnecessary fights. And I’m here to unify and help rebuild,” he said.

Ryan’s main primary opponent is attorney and organizer Morgan Harper, a progressive who’s been calling for a new generation of leadership.

“For us, all that it takes is people knowing that I’m running,” Harper told Spectrum News. “We have seen that the message I’m talking about — guaranteeing opportunity for every Ohioan — is landing with people all over the state, but our biggest barrier is that they’ve heard of us.”

Harper knocked on doors in Toledo on Monday, though her campaign is far behind Ryan in fundraising and polling.

Back in Lakewood, voters said they are comfortable with Ryan’s approach.

“I like Tim because he’s blue collar, he knows us,” said Cindy Strebig. “He says a lot of the same things about Ohio that I know to be true.”