On the Republican side

President Donald J. Trump won Ohio by eight points and the Republican Party has dominated state politics for three decades, but only two major newspapers there made an endorsement in the Republican primary this year. They both backed Mr. DeWine.

The meager number of endorsements is in some ways a feature, not a bug, of the Ohio media landscape. The editorial boards of two of its largest papers, The Columbus Dispatch and The Toledo Blade, do not make primary endorsements, and a third, The Cincinnati Enquirer, doesn’t endorse candidates at any stage of an election, representatives for those papers said.

But those that did liked Mr. DeWine. The Plain Dealer, in Cleveland, cited his “experience and practicality.” He has held a long list of government positions, including United States senator, member of the House of Representatives, Ohio attorney general and Ohio lieutenant governor.

The Akron Beacon Journal also endorsed Mr. DeWine. It called him “testy and evasive” but said he had the experience and “capacity to learn” that is required of a successful governor.

But The Vindicator, in Youngstown, excoriated him and declined to make an endorsement in the Republican race. It said it refused to endorse Mr. DeWine because “he dropped the ball on a major public-corruption case” in their city in 2014.