The biggest takeaway from the Mahoning County Republican Party Lincoln Day dinner, headlined by Vivek Ramaswamy, and the town hall with Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is that this area is not lacking in political enthusiasm.

This is the case even though the presidential election was five months ago, and we’re in an off-election year with only local government candidates on the ballot. The statewide election is more than a year away.

The impact of that presidential election is being felt with Republicans still excited about Donald Trump’s victory and his subsequent policies with a GOP-controlled Congress while Democrats are bothered, angry and / or concerned about what the president and his administration are doing.

Ramaswamy, a Trump ally who is running for governor in next year’s election, was a huge attraction at the April 3 Mahoning Republican event.

The cheapest ticket for the dinner was $100 – with a “gold sponsorship” costing $5,000. With no advertising, the event sold out about three weeks early.

Mahoning County Republican Party Chairman Tom McCabe got Waypoint 4180, the Canfield venue where the dinner was held, to add six more eight-person tables. They were also able to add a couple of more tables and the event, held on a Thursday night, was sold out with 740 in attendance and a waiting list of about 50 more.

McCabe said he wanted to do back-to-back events with Ramaswamy the following day. But Ramaswamy wasn’t available.

That’s because Ramaswamy was speaking at the Clermont County Republican Party’s Lincoln-Reagan Dinner the next day.

Ramaswamy spent last week delivering virtually the same stump speech at county Republican dinners to sold-out audiences. He has headlined and will headline numerous other county GOP events as he campaigns around the state.

I interviewed Ramaswamy after a private event in another part of Waypoint 4180 and before he went into the dinner.

After that, I headed inside and Waypoint 4180 was so packed that I was only able to wave at people from across the room. I also spoke to Republicans in the days after the dinner who said they saw me at the event and couldn’t get through the crowd to say hello.

While the Republicans had great enthusiasm at the Lincoln Day dinner, the response for Walz on Monday at the DeYor Performing Arts Center in Youngstown was overwhelming.

I spoke with Walz outside Foxconn, the former Lordstown General Motors plant site, about 90 minutes before the town hall. I then drove to Youngstown to get there before Walz. As a downtown Youngstown parking expert, I found a spot a short distance from DeYor and worked through the line around the block to get inside.

I spoke again to Walz before the town hall.

It was just five months ago that Mahoning and Trumbull, two former Democratic strongholds, soundly rejected the party’s ticket of Kamala Harris and Walz for president and vice president, respectively.

Yet about 3,000 people showed up on a Monday night to hear Walz talk and answer questions. He wasn’t running for anything. People just wanted to be there and definitely fed off the energy of the crowd.

When Walz came on stage, the place erupted with cheers.

Walz and Ramaswamy were both talking to friendly, welcoming crowds who wanted to hear them speak their language, and that’s what both delivered.

Walz came to Youngstown on Monday — and actually spent three days in Ohio, stopping at numerous locations — in response to Republican House members not holding in-person town halls.

Walz has held several of these events in Republican congressional districts in the past month in Iowa, Nebraska, Texas, Wisconsin and in his home state of Minnesota.

When Walz served 12 years in the U.S. House, he said town halls were a regular responsibility of members of Congress and he held several of them, largely to defend his support of the Affordable Care Act.

Asked why he came to Youngstown, Walz said, “It was a simple request to do a town hall, which is a time-honored tradition.”

I’ve covered politics in the Mahoning Valley for 25 years and during all that time, I only recall one in-person town hall in the area by a sitting member of Congress that wasn’t thinly veiled as a campaign event.

That was May 29, 2018, when then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat, held a town hall at Youngstown State University’s DeBartolo Hall. Yes, Ryan was running for reelection that year, but this was a genuine town hall.

The event drew a largely friendly audience of about 125 people. After it was done, Ryan told me he would hold four town halls in his congressional district a year. Ryan didn’t hold another town hall in the Mahoning Valley.

But to the best of my recollection, it was one more actual in-person town hall than any other sitting member of Congress held in the Valley in the last 25 years.

David Skolnick covers politics for the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator.