When the Democrat Sherrod Brown was first elected to the US Senate in 2006, Ohio, with its large urban populations and manufacturing industries, was fairly reliable territory for Democrats.
Barack Obama claimed the state in 2008 and 2012 on his way to the White House. Democrats boasted strong representation in Ohio’s politics. Analysts zealously watched its voting patterns, such was its prominence as a bellwether state.
In the years since, the state has become older, whiter and more conservative. Manufacturing has shrunk and population has stagnated.
Brown is now the only Democrat holding a statewide seat in Ohio. And he is weeks out from a crucial Senate election against former luxury car dealer Bernie Moreno, a contest that could reshape US politics for years to come,
For one, keeping Brown’s seat is crucial if Democrats hope to maintain their control of the US Senate.
If Brown can win re-election, it would be notable in a state where Republicans have engineered a gerrymandering process to their advantage. They hold a supermajority in the state’s house of representatives and senate, and control the offices of the governor, secretary of state and attorney general as well as the state supreme court. Ohio’s second US senator is none other than Trump’s pick for vice-president, JD Vance.
Brown is facing his most formidable on-comer yet – not because his Republican challenger has resonated particularly effectively with the Ohio electorate, but because Brown has, until now, never run in a year when Donald Trump was also on the ballot.
For James Spencer, who has lived in Moraine, a working-class suburb of Dayton, for 27 years, the former president’s endorsement of Moreno is enough to secure his vote.
As a retired construction contractor, he was unhappy to see the nearby General Motors plant that once employed thousands of blue-collar workers taken over by a Chinese auto glass manufacturer, Fuyao Glass. He believes the perceived problems associated with the company, including a raid by the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies investigating allegations of financial crimes and labor exploitation in July, have only worsened since.
In the past, he said, “Everything went around the plant. Your friends, your family. It was like a big GM community … We’ve lost so much in this area.”
The declining fortunes experienced by white working-class Ohioans such as Spencer have been seized on by Trump and Moreno.
However, Brown, the incumbent, is hoping his longstanding position as a champion of workers’ rights can carry him over the line.
His campaign and supporters have largely disassociated Brown from the Biden administration and Kamala Harris campaign, despite the former helping to bring billions of dollars in infrastructure funding to rural parts of the state.
“Brown has crossover appeal among Ohioans. The labor vote, which has increasingly gone to Trump, has also gone to Brown,” said Thomas Sutton, a political science professor and acting president of Baldwin Wallace University.
“He shares some of the same positions as Trump when it comes to protecting local industry, manufacturing [and] support for farmers.”
Ohioans have been bombarded with ads featuring Brown riding a speedboat while wearing a bullet-proof vest, a scene meant to depict his tough-on-immigration stance.
Critics of Brown say that despite him being an apparent champion of the working class, he has mostly never held a non-political job himself (he worked as a teacher for a few years in the 1970s and 80s).
A representative of Brown’s campaign said he was not available for comment for this article. Emails sent to Moreno’s campaign were unanswered.
Trump’s endorsement of Moreno, a relative political novice, has energized Ohio’s Maga electorate.
“Moreno is doing a pretty good job in handing his campaign over to the professional ad people. They’re using the scare tactics against Brown, tying him to the Biden administration,” said Sutton.
A cryptocurrency industry Pac has spent $40m on Moreno’s campaign, while polling conducted for Moreno’s campaign suggests their candidate has a three-point lead over Brown. Other polls suggest a very close race.
But Moreno’s run, and his record, are not flawless.
Last year, he settled more than a dozen wage-theft lawsuits and was forced to pay more than $400,000 to two former employees of his car dealership.
Recently, he has been criticized for telling attenders at a town hall that women over 50 shouldn’t be concerned about reproductive rights.
“When you take away women’s abortion rights, you take away healthcare, and we in Ohio have voted that that’s none of your business,” said Amy Cox, a Democrat who is running this year to unseat a Republican incumbent in the US House of Representatives in a district that includes Moraine, Dayton and Springfield.
Last year, Ohio Democrats and liberals were revitalized by a rare win at the ballot box when voters decided by a 13-point margin to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution.
“Women and men are really energized by the fall of Roe, and Project 2025 is really motivating people to get out and vote,” said Cox.
A bribery scandal involving a failing energy company and leading Ohio Republicans hasn’t helped them.The former speaker of the statehouse, Larry Householder, was jailed for 20 years last year for racketeering.
“This is going to be won and lost in the three C’s,” the cities of Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati, said Sutton.
And the election will be about “whether more typically Democratic areas have better mobilization and turnout to counteract what would be normal voter turnout in the Republican-leaning rural and small-town areas”, he added.
For Spencer, who lives near the Fuyao Glass factory in Moraine, Moreno’s attack ads that feature Brown’s alleged failures on immigration have hit home.
“I’m hoping that if Trump and JD Vance get in, they will deal with what’s going on over there,” he said.
