WARREN — While a brand new slate of officers, led by Denny Malloy as chairman, are running the Trumbull County Republican Party, plenty of discord and infighting remain.

Malloy, who lost reelection in the Republican primary for his county commissioner seat, beat Jim Dunlap, the party’s outgoing first vice chairman, 42-36 during a Thursday vote of GOP central committee members.

After the win, Malloy said, “We know there’s a lot of work to do in this part, but we all have the same goal. We all want to win the Super Bowl. We’re just teams in the same division and we’re all striving for the same thing. Our team will get it together. We’ve got good people as officers now and we’re following the rules. That’s half the battle. We know who our foes are, we know who we’re up against and we’ve got to rally behind our candidates.”

Malloy said, “Our goal should be the person I dislike the worst in this room I still like one step better than the Democrats we’re up against.”

However, Malloy admitted earlier that he voted for Democrat Dan Polivka when he was challenged by Republican Niki Frenchko, who was at Thursday’s meeting, in the 2020 election for county commissioner

Malloy said he would vote against Frenchko, whom he served with for two years when they were county commissioners, “again and again and again.”

Malloy said he previously was a Democrat, but like a number of Republicans, he decided to join the GOP. Malloy unsuccessfully ran in the 2020 election for commissioner as an independent before winning as a Republican two years later.

After his defeat, Dunlap said, “The subversive faction had enough followers to win the chairman vote and most of the people we had lined up for other offices didn’t allow themselves to be nominated because they couldn’t stomach Denny Malloy. It’s going to be the Denny and Regina show at headquarters now and they’ll use it for their own purposes and to settle scores.”

Regina is Regina McManus, a political consultant closely aligned with Malloy.

Dunlap added, “I’m pretty depressed about the future of the party for at least the next four years, if not longer.”

Several Republicans at Thursday’s meeting spoke of the political infighting between the party’s two factions that has existed for at least four years. Despite the issues, Republicans won every contested race on the 2022 and 2024 ballots in Trumbull, which was for decades a Democratic stronghold county.

Julia Shutt said May 19 she wouldn’t seek reelection as chair because she was tired of the infighting and friction between the “warring factions” that have plagued the party.

Shutt threw her support behind Malloy, nominating him to succeed her.

At the meeting, Marleah Campbell, who resigned in October as party secretary, said Shutt repeatedly asked her, Dunlap and Kathi Creed, who was second vice chairwoman, to resign at several officer meetings.

Trumbull Republicans have selected three different chairs during the most recent four-year term won June 10, 2022, by Kenneth Kline, with two others, including Dunlap, serving as interim leaders until elections occurred to select replacements. Shutt was elected Dec. 3, 2024, for the rest of the term.

The rest of Malloy’s slate was elected Thursday, with most of them running unopposed.

Winning unopposed races Thursday were John Fowler for first vice chairman, Randy Swogger for secretary, Carol Jochman for auxiliary chairwoman and Linda Chos for treasurer.

County Recorder Dawn Hanni-Zinni won the race for second vice chairwoman 47-34 over Creed.

Hanni-Zinni said in her nominating speech, “I hate to see the infighting. We shouldn’t (be) knocking heads against each other. We should be standing up against the Democrats. That’s the ones we should be going after.”

She added, “There is no other county in Ohio that has this kind of dispute. I know we all have different personalities, but let’s kind of get together and get the Republicans elected in November.”