Ohio’s historically expensive Senate race hinges on Trump ticket splitters

VERMILION, Ohio – Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is fighting for his political life, locked in what polls show is a dead heat between him and Republican businessman Bernie Moreno.

Their clash has already drawn more advertising spending than any other Senate race in history, eclipsing the $412 million spent in Georgia’s 2020 race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue. The Brown-Moreno fight is about to surpass $500 million, according to tracking firm AdImpact.

Brown’s survival, and possibly partisan control of the Senate, depends on split-ticket voters in a state that twice supported former President Donald Trump by healthy margins — and likely will again next week. While Moreno sticks with Trump, Brown tends to avoid talking too much about national political figures from either party.

Each candidate, meanwhile, has come up with a hot-button issue that he believes could tip the race in his favor.

Brown and Democrats emphasize Moreno’s openness to federal restrictions on abortion, even after Ohioans, including many in conservative suburbs and counties, voted last year to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Moreno and Republicans aiming to hurt Brown with Trump voters who might be open to awarding him a fourth term are Broadcasting of advertisements that portrays him as unapologetically supportive of transgender rights.

“There will be enough,” Brown, whose name has never appeared on the same ballot as Trump’s, said of ticket splitters in an interview with NBC News after an event Tuesday at a Teamsters hall in Youngstown. “I say this, and it’s not a cliché, that people don’t see politics — I don’t see politics — as left versus right.”

“They look at people individually,” Brown added, “and people know I’m on their side.”

Brown, 71, is the only Democrat besides Barack Obama to win more than one statewide election in Ohio in the past 30 years. He has populist credentials like his push for a monthly cap on insulin costs and his opposition to trade deals. And he boasts endorsements from several brand name Republicans, including former Ohio Governor Bob Taftthe great-grandson of a former president who, despite leaving office amid scandal in 2006, has a name that still resonates with old-school conservatives.

The progressive senator and his allies also emphasize areas where he and Trump have shared policy goals, including anti-fentanyl legislation.

Trump, who speaks directly to the camera in a Moreno ad who is running strong in the home state for Election Day, has picked up on what Brown is doing — and isn’t happy about it.

“Sherrod Brown, he takes in ads like he’s my best friend,” the former president said Sunday during a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. “He’s not my best friend.”

Moreno, 57, is spending his final week at the trail rally with an entourage of MAGA world favorites like Donald Trump Jr. and Senator Lindsey Graham, RS.C. The result is a highly nationalized campaign that emphasizes Trump’s images, issues, and rhetoric.

After bemoaning higher prices while speaking at a banquet hall Tuesday near the Lake Erie shore in swing Lorain County, Moreno served up an impression of Trump making French fries during a recent photo opportunity at a McDonald’s.

“Big, beautiful fries,” Moreno said, mimicking Trump’s voice. “No one makes french fries better than Donald Trump.”

The counties that could determine the Senate

With Republicans needing to win two seats to secure a Senate majority, and with West Virginia’s open seat almost certain to swing the GOP’s way, Ohio could be the turning point for the chamber on election night.

Graham received a standing ovation after describing that scenario Tuesday at Moreno’s Lorain County event. He also acknowledged the threat of ticket-splitters — and the importance of Trump having coattails long enough to carry Moreno with him.

“Trump is going to win Ohio, the only question is by how much,” Graham told the ballroom crowd of about 500. “Now, if you’re an incumbent like Brown has been, you do Social Security, you help people, and it puts up. … So I’m here to help you convince one or two more people, because if Trump wins (Ohio) by 5 or more, this thing is over.”

Brown deflected questions about how close Vice President Kamala Harris would have to hold the margins in Ohio for him to win.

“I don’t sit up at night thinking, ‘Well, if Kamala does this,’ or, ‘If Joe Biden does that,'” Brown said in Youngstown. “I know what I have to do to win … and that is to stand up for the workers.”

Because Ohio is no longer seen as a competitive state for the presidency, Brown cannot count on a massive national organization like the one on the ground when he and Obama split the ballot in 2012. Still, Brown’s coordinated campaign in the state has banked on more than 1 million doors, called more than 4 million Ohioans and is ahead on those metrics compared to the 2022 and 2018 Senate races, said Rachel Petri, Brown’s campaign manager.

Brown’s allies see his path to re-election running through places like Lorain County, a working-class area west of Cleveland that he represented as a congressman and won comfortably in 2018. Trump narrowly won the county in 2020, and Sen. JD Vance, now Trump’s running mate, lost it narrowly in 2022. Last year’s abortion vote passed there by 25 points — higher than the statewide margin.

Other targets include Delaware and Mahoning counties.

Delaware, which includes suburbs north of Columbus, has gradually moved to the left. Trump’s margin of victory there shrank from 16 to 6.8 points from 2016 to 2020, Brown lost there by about 5 points in 2018, and the abortion initiative passed there by nearly 19 points.

Mahoning, which includes Youngstown, narrowly favored Trump in 2020, the first time the county endorsed a Republican for president since 1972. Brown won it by more than 20 points in 2018. But then-Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represented much of the area for years, lost to Vance in the Senate by 3 points in 2022.

“I think their paid media strategy reflects that they’ve decided that gravity can do all the work for them in this election,” Petri said, referring to Trump-centric messaging. “And I’m confident that the race we’ve run can defy gravity if any campaign can.”

Brown’s hopes for split-ticket voters are not without skeptics.

“In our county, we used to have a large number,” said Paul Adams, the director of the Lorain County Board of Elections. “You would see different candidates for different parties win, but over time there are fewer and fewer of them. We see a greater number of direct voters coming in.”

Abortion and anti-trans rhetoric fuel the last days

The political realities are evident in how Brown and Moreno campaign.

Moreno, with Donald Trump Jr. in tow, filled a tavern Tuesday afternoon with several hundred people in Strongsville, a Republican suburb of Cleveland. As servers navigated the crowded bar room with plates of cheeseburgers and quesadillas, yelling “F— Joe Biden!” and “Fight! Huge! Huge!” broke out spontaneously.

After Moreno asked the crowd to give him the chance to “fire Chuck Schumer,” Senate Democratic leader Trump Jr. the stage and raised grievances that energize Republicans nationally, such as “Hunter Biden’s laptop” and “Russian hoax.” .”

“We’ve got to have the energy like you’re the third monkey in line for the ark and it starts raining,” Trump Jr. said. and described the choice in biblical terms.

At a “souls to the polls” event Sunday in Cleveland, Brown framed the race more locally and around his accomplishments as a lawmaker.

“Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability,” Brown, quoting Martin Luther King Jr., told a crowd of about 200. “It rolls in because you make it so. Your activism is the reason we have social security. Your activism is the reason we have civil rights. Your activism is the reason everyone gets paid overtime. Your activism is the reason we cleaned up Lake Erie for us to have a $35 a month prescription for insulin.”

Brown, who often speaks of the “dignity of work,” also blasted Moreno’s record as a car dealer, citing a lawsuit over overtime pay. included requirements for shredded documents.

The Cleveland event drew dozens of local Democratic and labor leaders, including Rep. Shontel Brown, who jokes that the senator is her cousin, and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne.

Moreno’s opposition to last year’s abortion measure and his recent remark that it’s “a little crazy” for women over 50 to be concerned about the issue were recurring themes, with Brown and others scoffing that Moreno “thinks he knows better” than women do.

“I don’t know about you sisters and brothers, I’m so sick of some old-ass Republican man with salt-and-pepper hair always trying to tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her body,” said Andre Washington, Vice Chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party.

Other speakers also alluded to advertisements – below one from the GOP-aligned super PAC Senate Leadership Fund — this attempt to brand Brown as supportive of gender reassignment surgery and of transgender women playing women’s sports. Brown has pushed backand his campaign responded with an ad points out untruths in the attack.

“I see these crazy commercials — Sherrod Brown, they/them,” Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chairman David Brock said, referring to another announcement for the Senate Leadership Fund that mocks Brown for using preferred pronouns for LGBTQ people. “And you know what? That’s right. Sherrod Brown is for them and them. He’s for you and me. He’s for him and her. He’s for everybody in Ohio.”

Moreno — who in an interview Tuesday after his campaign event with Graham described himself as “crazy, nervously optimistic” about his chances — raised the question unprompted.

“Make sure,” Moreno said, “that you write in the article that Sherrod is for them/them and I’m for Ohio.”