The Republican Party has a near monopoly on Ohio state politics these days. The GOP holds both Senate seats, 12 out of 18 House seats and majorities in both houses of the state legislature. The Democrats haven't won a gubernatorial contest since 1986. Nonetheless, there are some warning signs that 2006 might be different.

The coingate scandal, in which a major GOP donor lost more than $10 million in Numismatics, threatens to touch almost every major Republican in office in the state. And now, as David D. Kirkpatrick reports for The New York Times, Republican activists are threatening to undermine Ohio's two moderate Republican Senators.

[I]n Ohio, where a social conservative groundswell helped Mr. Bush win the 2004 election, the rebellions of its senators combined to draw considerable ire from Mr. Bush's conservative base.

"Criticizing and undermining the president weakens the war on terror," said the Rev. Russell Johnson of the Fairfield Christian Church in Lancaster, a leader of the Ohio Restoration Project, a conservative advocacy group borne out of the last election. "The two senators from Ohio have become the poster boys for the foreign press to beat up our president."

To strike back at Mr. DeWine, who is up for re-election next year, Christian conservative groups are buying radio advertisements criticizing him and trying to recruit a challenger to oppose him in the Republican primary. Meanwhile, conservative talk radio hosts around the state are exhorting listeners to vote against his son, Pat, a Hamilton County commissioner running in a special election for Congress this spring. Pat DeWine has said he disagrees with his father on the judicial compromise.

A group supporting Mr. Bolton, Move America Forward, has bought radio advertisements urging calls to Mr. Voinovich, 68, whose term ends in 2010. Other conservatives have made him a target of derision. "Weepy Voinovich Begs for 'No' Vote on Bolton" the headline read on a Web site run by the conservative Media Research Center for radio hosts and others.

"That man is a clown, a crying clown," said Bill Cunningham, a conservative talk show host in Cincinnati, adding that he has appeared on national radio programs to apologize for the state's two Republican senators. "These two guys are an embarrassment," he said.

Should DeWine lose the support of the Republican base or face a strong third party challenge on the right in 2006, the relatively safe seat will become markedly more competitive. If ever the Democrats would have a shot at reclaiming Howard Metzenbaum's old seat, this might be it.