The race between left-wing incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and businessman Bernie Moreno is too close to call at this point. However, with Donald Trump leading the Buckeye State by seven points, this could finally be the year that Ohioans send Brown packing.
The RealClear Politics Average has Brown up by a single point—well within the margin of error. Since winning a three-way primary in the spring, Moreno, a former car dealer and political unknown, has slowly but consistently closed the gap. All the polls since September are within the margin of error, so it's anyone's guess who will prevail on Election Day.
Although Ohio is a solid red state, Brown has been impervious to challenges. He's been in the Senate since 2007, when Ohio was a true swing state. In 2006, he absolutely trounced then-incumbent Republican senator and current Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, 48-56.
In 2018, former Congressman Jim Renaci made a valiant attempt to oust Brown but lost 46-53. Josh Mandel tried in 2012 but lost by six points. That was partly the result of Mitt Romney dragging down the GOP ticket (he lost Ohio to Barack Obama by three points) and also due to Mandel running an ineffective campaign.
Like Joe Biden, Brown portrays himself as a blue-collar guy. He literally wears shirts with blue collars everywhere he goes (I dare you to find a picture of him without one). He claims to be a man of the people, and Ohioans keep falling for the schtick. In reality, he espouses radical positions on issues like transgenders in girls' locker rooms and on their sports teams, and abortion on demand through all nine months of pregnancy.
Brown has held elected office since 1975, when Gerald Ford was president and I was in fifth grade. He's the swampiest of the swamp creatures in Washington, but the disinformation campaign to portray him as a moderate has been wildly successful over the years. To his credit, he excels at retail politics. One independent voter I know told me he likes Brown because he showed up in his neighborhood after a storm to help clean up fallen trees. That's the kind of thing that builds a loyal following among non-ideological voters.
Republicans this cycle, including Moreno's campaign and the Senate Leadership Fund, have poured millions of dollars into ad campaigns exposing the real Sherrod Brown.
One ad from the Senate Leadership Fund declares:
A vote for Sherrod Brown is a vote against Donald Trump. After 31 years in DC, we don’t need another 6 years of Sherrod Brown’s radical liberal policies, like…
- Late-term, partial-birth abortion…
- Transgender biological men in girls’ sports and bathrooms…
- Sex change surgeries for children…
- Amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants…
President Trump and Ohio need Bernie Moreno in the Senate, not six more years of Sherrod Brown’s liberal mess.
He’s voting for they/them…not you. Vote NO on Sherrod Brown!
This is the most vulnerable Brown has ever been in an election. Despite Moreno's massive fundraising deficit ($24 million to Brown's $89 million), polling shows that the attacks against Brown are working.
Like Kamala Harris, he's now trying to portray himself as a border hawk, but we won't know until next Tuesday whether the subterfuge was successful. His attacks against Moreno have mostly been about his past business practices and his ties to Donald Trump. That may sway some of those non-ideological voters but will make no difference with the GOP base.
In an interesting twist, the Ohio Democratic Party is sending out flyers warning that both Moreno and Libertarian Don Kissick are "bad for Ohio."
The Ohio Democratic Party—notorious for running embarrassing, failing campaigns—apparently thinks that promoting Kissick under the guise of warning how dangerous he is will peel off votes from Moreno. Is it a sign that Brown's campaign is worried or just another masterclass in ODP campaign failure? I dunno. Incidentally, just today, I received five anti-Moreno flyers in the mail from the ODP (it's like they found a box of flyers in a storage room that someone forgot to mail and dropped them all off at the post office on the same day.)
With Trump leading by a healthy margin in Ohio, this could finally be the year Ohio gets rid of one of the most radical senators in U.S. history.
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