EXCLUSIVE: Republicans launch paid ads in bid to propel Conroy to defeat Landsman in the First Congressional District

Republicans have made no secret about their goal of flipping a Cincinnati-area U.S. House seat.

They think they have the perfect candidate in Eric Conroy, and that Ohio’s new congressional map, which adds rural areas to the district and removes some Democrat-leaning Cincinnati suburbs, will swing it even more in their favor. Now, they’re launching paid digital ads in the district.

Last month, President Donald Trump endorsed Conroy, an Air Force veteran and a former Central Intelligence Agency agent from Cincinnati, who is hoping to unseat U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman, D-Ohio, in Ohio’s First Congressional District race in November. As Republicans look to shore up their hold on Ohio, they added Conroy to the 2026 “MAGA Majority” list, a nationwide initiative aiming to flip the map in their favor.

“On city council [Cincinnati], Liberal Landsman led the effort to cut police funding and end cash bail, so criminals go free,” the ad’s narrator says. “Then Landsman voted for the largest tax hike in generations and violated federal law trading stocks. Greg Landsman, too liberal, too corrupt for Ohio.”

Conroy, who was raised on the west side of Cincinnati, emerged unscathed in this year’s Republican primary.

Landsman has been in Congress since 2023. Two years ago, he won reelection in 2024, picking up 56% of the vote to knock off his Republican challenger.

But that was before last year’s redistricting.

“This district, now won by President Trump, has shifted to favor Republicans by nearly eight points compared to its previous iteration,” the National Republican Congressional Committee said in a Nov. 10, 2025, memo. “The new map added all of Clinton County and rural western Hamilton County, while removing some Cincinnati suburbs that lean Democratic.

“A Republican won Clinton County by nearly 80 points in 2024,” according to the memo. “Republicans have a proven history of winning the newly drawn OH-01 district. President Trump won the new district in 2024, Governor Mike DeWine won it twice, and then Senator, now Vice President, J.D. Vance won it in 2022.”

Additionally, this year, Landsman, who defeated Damon Lynch IV, the son and grandson of two Cincinnati civil rights activists and pastors, in this year’s Democratic primary, has faced a drumbeat of headlines about his record, including questions about his vote against funding the Department of Homeland Security and about his fundraising after revelations that he received an overwhelming majority of donations in the first fundraising quarter of 2026 from donors outside Ohio.

The NRCC has launched similar ads in Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District, targeting Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, and the 13th Congressional District, targeting Democratic U.S. Rep. Emilia Sykes.