Why is Trump going to war in an Ohio district?

All of this makes Ohio’s 16th worth watching as an early, distilled look at the potential limits and pitfalls of Trump’s shoot-first, aim-later style, his personality-driven, fealty-fueled, viscerally scattershot politics of retribution. “Anthony’s disloyal, and Max will be a loyalist,” Hill said. “No more complicated than that,” confirmed a person close to Trump. “Trump is such an emotional decider,” former Ohio Democratic Congressman Dennis Eckart said. This nascent race then could help Trump cement a sweeping and lasting influence—or play out as a case study in the ways in which his inchoate urge for revenge might begin to run into reality. Is Gonzalez “going to have a spirited primary? Yes,” Republican strategist Barry Bennett, a 2016 Trump adviser who’s from Ohio and has extensive experience in the state, told me. “Is he the underdog? I don’t think so.”... “It’s a perfect example of how Trump could really hurt not just the near term but the future of the Republican Party,” said David Pepper, the former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “It’s all about a loyalty test to him that almost will put targets on the backs of some of their best people.” The issue within the Republican electorate, of course, is that there is fierce disagreement about who those “best people” are.