Dolan, whose family owns Cleveland’s Major League Baseball franchise, was about as close to a perfect test case for a credible MAGA alternative as you could find. He was less toxic to base Republicans than a never-Trumper, having voted twice for the former president. Rather, Dolan was an “enough-with-Trumper,” said Mark Weaver, a Republican strategist and former deputy attorney general of Ohio who advised Dolan on a previous campaign.

Dolan had money — he spent more than $10 million out of his own pocket on the race — and name recognition. And among Republican politicians betting on “an appetite for something that does not involve wearing a red hat,” Weaver said, Dolan had the lane largely to himself.

The problem for Dolan — and for any 2024 hopeful of the same mold — is that lane was nowhere near wide enough…

“If you look on the spectrum of support for Dolan, his highest level of support came from people who are the least supportive of Trump — a small number of people,” said Tony Fabrizio, Trump’s 2020 pollster.

In 2024, he said, “There isn’t a lot of room in that lane. … It’s not big enough to support one [candidate], never mind four or five.”