The Ohio governor’s election is more than 17 months away, but I have already written a considerable amount of articles and columns on it as candidates come and go.

Attorney General Dave Yost, a Republican, is the latest to go after coming to the realization that he wasn’t going to beat Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy biotech entrepreneur who has the endorsements of the Ohio Republican Party, President Donald Trump and several prominent Ohio and national Republicans.

It did not take that long for Yost to read the room, announcing his withdrawal from the race May 16. It came a week after the Republican Party’s state central committee overwhelmingly endorsed Ramaswamy.

In a statement, Yost wrote that it is “apparent that the steep climb to the nomination for governor has become a vertical cliff. I do not wish to divide my political party or my state with a quixotic battle over the small differences between my vision and that of my opponent. I am simply not that important.”

It was a very different story when I spoke to him a few weeks earlier in Warren.

Yost said during that discussion that the “main difference” between Ramaswamy and him is “rhetoric and a record of results. I’ve been doing this for the state for the last 14, 15 years and people don’t have to guess whether I’m going to follow through on my promises. They can look at what I’ve actually done.”

I asked him a number of times if he would quit — primarily because I figured he would and not tell me, but I’d have him on the record.

Yost obliged. He said he “can’t imagine” anything that would get him out of the race, and “I’m going to run on my record and let voters decide.”

In the span of a few weeks, Yost, a music aficionado, went from Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down,” to Fleetwood Mac’s “Never Going Back Again.”

Even though Trump endorsed Ramaswamy a few hours after he announced his candidacy, Yost told me he was hoping the president would issue a dual endorsement. That was never going to happen. To quote Aerosmith, “Dream On.”

Trump’s endorsement was fast and emphatic — and there was no way he was going to then also back Yost.

With polling numbers showing Ramaswamy with a commanding lead, Yost sought a way to exit the race gracefully.

While Yost told me he was determined to run for governor, NOTUS, a digital news organization, reported a few weeks later that he was looking in April for an appointment in the Trump administration.

Yost was offered the ambassadorship to Cyprus, which he rejected and that ended any further discussions with the administration, NOTUS reported. The Mediterranean island’s population is about the same as Franklin County.

Yost told me on April 22 that he had no interest in running for any other public offices and had planned to retire after his attorney general term ended before choosing to seek the governor’s post.”

He said governor was the only position that interested him and “I could earn a lot more money in the private sector.”

But in his statement last week, Yost wrote: “I suspect that this is not my final chapter.”

Yost became the latest in a very long line of experienced Republican politicians to find out that being a longtime elected official means nothing when you run against a Trump-backed candidate.

Like Trump before he was elected president in 2016, Ramaswamy has never held elected public office. His political experience is a short-lived presidential bid and an even shorter stint as co-head of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency.

Ramaswamy didn’t even vote in the 2008, 2012 or 2016 presidential elections.

But he was anointed governor by Trump and the state party backed him.

Jim Tressel, lieutenant governor since Feb. 10, remains Ramaswamy’s only possible serious obstacle to capturing the Republican nomination.

A former Youngstown State University president and head football coach at YSU and Ohio State University, Tressel is well known and beloved in Ohio. Tressel said people have asked him to run, but he hasn’t made a decision.

Gov. Mike DeWine, who appointed Tressel as his lieutenant governor, wants him to run.

But it is going to be difficult for Tressel to put together a campaign that can compete in a Republican primary in Ohio against a candidate who has the endorsement of Trump and the party establishment.

David Skolnick is a political writer for the Youngstown Vindicator and Warren Tribune-Chronicle, sister Ogden newspapers with the Columbiana Country newspapers. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dskolnick.Contact David Skolnick by email at dskolnick@vindy.com. Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, @dskolnick.