Anthony Gonzalez’s career in the NFL was brief and mostly uneventful. Drafted out of Ohio State University in 2007 by the Indianapolis Colts, Gonzalez had two decent seasons and even scored a touchdown in a playoff game. After that, however, he suffered a knee injury and only started one more game before he was cut in 2012.

He wasn’t your average football player, however. He studied philosophy in Columbus and got a Masters Degree in business administration from Stanford after his football-playing days were over.

In 2018, he ran for an won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, serving Ohio’s 16th congressional district. A Cuban-American by heritage, Gonzalez become one of just a handful of minority Republicans serving in Congress. He voted to impeach Donald Trump in his second trial, stemming from the January 6 insurrection.

The chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party, Jane Timken, had been hand-picked by Trump. And she was a Trumper through and through. But she felt compelled to provide some lukewarm cover for Gonzalez’s decision. Now she’s seeking the Republican nomination to run for retiring Rob Portman’s seat in the U.S. Senate, and her decision to stand with Gonzalez is causing her problems.

During Jane Timken’s tenure as Ohio’s GOP chair, Donald Trump won the one-time bellwether state by a whopping 8 percentage points. She put 150,000 miles on her car driving to the state’s 88 counties as a surrogate for the president. And she raised a total of $5 million for his two campaigns.

But that sterling record of MAGA support might not be enough to guarantee the former president’s support in her bid for the GOP Senate nomination. Timken’s sin? In her capacity as state party chair, she failed to immediately condemn home-state Republican congressman, Anthony Gonzalez, for voting to impeach Trump in response to the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6.

To be clear, Timken didn’t stand with Gonzalez for long. While she initially said that Gonzalez had a “rational reason why he voted that way. I think he’s an effective legislator, and he’s a very good person,” she soon changed her tune. In February, after announcing her candidacy for the Senate, she said that Gonzalez should resign.

“It is clear Congressman Gonzalez’s wrongful decision to vote with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to impeach President Trump has undermined his ability to effectively represent the people of the 16th district,” Timken’s statement said. “Gonzalez should immediately resign so the Republican Party can unify behind new, conservative leadership for the 16th district.

“President Trump is the leader of our Party, and we must have conservative leaders committed to the team if we are going to keep Ohio red and win back majorities in the U.S. House and Senate in 2022,” Timken’s statement said, adding that Gonzalez by stepping down would put his constituents and the Republican Party first.”

This was quite a turnabout, but it didn’t erase her original sin. In fact, it made no one happy. No matter who you ask, she was egregiously wrong at least once–either when she defended Gonzalez or when she turned on him.

Now her Republican competitors for the nomination are making sure that neither the primary electorate nor the former disgraced president forget that she defended Gonzalez, and it could easily cost her the chance to serve in the Senate.

Timken’s foes and two dozen conservative activists penned an open letter this weekend to the state Republican Party that called on primary voters to reject her candidacy.

“Timken is everything that President Trump stood against: politicians who say one thing and do another,” read the letter, a hard copy of which was also sent to Trump and the National Republican Senatorial Committee. “Timken defended Anthony Gonzalez’s vote to impeach President Trump, then called for his resignation the moment it became politically toxic for her to stand with Gonzalez.”

As far as I know, there are no candidates who take a contrary view and are willing to defend Gonzalez, so the contest will come down to whether or not Timken’s sin is too big for the voters to stomach. To defend against this possibility, she will try to be the most pro-Trump sounding candidate in the race.

And, while Democrat Sherrod Brown serves in the other Ohio Senate seat, the winner of the Republican primary will have basic advantages that should make them the favorite to win the November election. The Buckeye State voted for Trump twice, and it had trended to the right over the last couple of decades.

The Ohio GOP should value a Cuban-American with a philosophy degree from Ohio State and a master’s degree from Stanford, but they consider Gonzalez a pariah. This is driven by what the voters are telling them rather than any objective problem with Gonzalez’s position, which is that the president of the United States should not send a mob to attack the U.S. Congress in order to remain in power after losing his reelection bid.

The GOP is not healing. It’s in a death spiral, and they’re going to pull us all down with them.