The chair of the Ohio GOP party, Matt Borges, lost reelection Friday amid complaints he wasn't loyal to Trump during the campaign. After a close vote that took several rounds, the new chair will be Jane Timken, who was consistently loyal to Trump. (Timken will also be the first female leader of Ohio GOP.)

This vote was arguably a proxy battle for the direction of Ohio's Republican Party -- and a glimpse of how focused Trump can be on settling political scores, no matter how minor.

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The president-elect personally called some of the undecided members this week to lobby for the eventual winner, while Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R) -- who never endorsed Trump during the election -- made calls for his guy, Borges.

In some respects, the proxy battle was even bigger than just Trump v. Kasich. Ohio Republicans tasked with choosing between the two's choice for leaders also faced a broader decision: Whether the state's Republican Party should realign itself to Trump.

It's a question facing much of the Republican establishment across the country. By and large, the Republican Party's leaders were never that enamored with Trump, who is often at odds with traditional GOP orthodoxy. Now that Trump won, these leaders must chose how to interpret his victory: Is a Trump presidency a four-to-eight-year detour for the party, or does it signify a fundamental shift within the party?

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One thing that's crystal clear is the message this result sends every GOP elected official and party leader in the country: confront Trump at your political peril -- he does not forget a slight.

This tension was particularly acute in Ohio even before Friday's leadership election. When the nation was shocked by Trump's "Access Hollywood" hot mic tape in October, Borges told Republicans they wouldn't be punished if they wanted to take back their endorsements of Trump.

A week later, the head of Trump's campaign in Ohio severed ties with Borges. It was a jaw-dropping move that came just 24 days before the election. The campaign accused the state party chair of trying to undermine Trump's general election campaign in that critical swing state. (Several Ohio Republican leaders came to Borges's defense.)

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After all that drama, the voters of Ohio came around to Trump anyway. Kasich beat Trump by more than 10 points in Ohio's presidential primary, and yet Trump beat Hillary Clinton by nearly 10 points in the general election.

While the realignment of the Republican Party to Trump is certainly something we'd expect Trump and his allies to be interested in, it was frankly surprising just how involved Trump got at settling this particular score.

The Cincinnati Enquirer reported that when Trump called some of the undecided voters this week -- on the same day he was expected to sit for hours in a deposition -- some of them thought it was a joke.

“This is the leader-of-the-free-world-to-be, and you would think of all the appointments that he's doing and all the people he’s filling his cabinet with and getting ready for the inauguration, why would he take the time out to call me?" Milford's Greg Simpson told them.