Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio, always had the luxury of running for election during his party’s remarkably good years. He won his seat in 2006 during the backlash to the Iraq War, won re-election in 2012, the last time a Democrat led the state, and did so again in 2018 amid a nationwide presidential reckoning Donald J Trump.
His 2024 campaign will be different and most likely the toughest of his career, with a Republican Party determined to win his seat and a Democratic president hanging on him like one of his signature rumpled suits. In an election year in which control of the Senate depends on the Democratic Party’s ability to win every single contest, an enormous weight rests on the stooping shoulders of the notoriously disheveled 71-year-old.
“I fight for Ohioans,” Mr. Brown said in an interview Wednesday. “There’s a reason I’m winning in a state that’s a little more Republican.”
Since he was elected Ohio secretary of state in 1982, Mr. Brown’s tousled hair and gravelly voice have appealed to working-class voters. His arms may be wrapped tightly around his chest, but he exudes a casual confidence that he can once again firmly win in red Ohio, where he is the last Democrat to hold statewide office.
But there is anger behind this picture. On Monday, he had just received an endorsement from the 100,000-member Ohio State Building and Construction Trades Council when a retired bricklayer, Jeff King, pulled him aside in a weathered union hall in Dayton.
Mr. Brown had many successes, Mr. King, who traveled from his home in Cincinnati, told the senator. But, he asked, in a blue-collar state that has twice delivered 8 percent victories to Mr. Trump, would workers understand who should get the credit?
“That’s the mission,” Mr. Brown said, leaning forward. “You don’t know enough.”
The party and its union allies have made re-electing Ohio’s senior senator a top priority — “right at the top,” said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees and chairman of the AFL. Political Committee of the CIO.
The election could pave the way for Mr. Brown. With Mr. Trump’s support — and a push from a Democratic super PAC — Democrats’ preferred Republican opponent, Bernie Moreno, easily prevailed in the Republican Senate primary on Tuesday, giving the incumbent a opponent with staggering wealth but little political experience and the imprimatur of a former president that could prompt some voters to split their votes.
The next day, the Biden administration announced an $8.5 billion deal to fund Intel Corporation’s semiconductor manufacturing, much of which was earmarked for Ohio, thanks to legislation Mr. Brown helped pass. Because of Mr. Brown, that law, the Chips and Science Act, requires so-called project labor agreements to be entered into between management and union workers before construction of the factory can begin. As a result, 7,000 union workers will be employed at the massive Intel complex outside Columbus.
That same Wednesday, the government approved tough new emissions standards for cars and trucks intended to increase production of electric vehicles at the Stellantis Jeep complex in Toledo and at automotive battery plants around Youngstown.
Finally, around election time, construction was expected to begin on a long-sought replacement for the Brent Spence Bridge, which connects Cincinnati to its Kentucky suburbs. This was also put forward in part by Mr Brown.
But Republicans are extremely confident for a much simpler reason: political gravity. In the March polls, Mr. Trump leads Mr. Biden in Ohio by just nine percentage points and as much as 18 percentage points. Mr. Brown will most likely lead Mr. Biden in the state, Republicans say, but will not win by enough.
“We now have the opportunity to retire the old classmate,” Mr. Moreno announced at his victory celebration on Tuesday, referring to Mr. Brown.
In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. Brown stressed that his toughest Senate race was his first, when he ousted Mike DeWine, who went on to win two terms as governor of Ohio.
And Mr. DeWine gave that confidence credibility Monday night by urging voters in Columbus to cast their ballots for the candidate he believed could beat Mr. Brown, state Sen. Matt Dolan.
“This won’t be an easy race, folks,” Mr. DeWine said at the Hey Hey Bar & Grill in Columbus’ German Village. “I ran against this man.”
This year could be different.
“Nothing can save Sherrod Brown from voting with Joe Biden 99 percent of the time,” Moreno said.
Compared to Mr. Moreno, a political newcomer, Mr. Brown is a fixture in Ohio. “People just know I’m standing up for them,” he said.
Two years ago, Tim Ryan, then a U.S. representative, ran for Senate as a blue-collar Democrat from the Mahoning Valley, an offshoot of Mr. Brown. Despite running what was almost universally hailed as a textbook campaign, he lost to JD Vance by six percentage points.
But Mr. Ryan said he lacked something Mr. Brown had: a solid identity across the state. To win in Ohio as a Democrat, he said, “The only thing you have to do is wear the name Sherrod Brown.”
This fight will be about Mr. Moreno trying to define Mr. Brown’s policy agenda — and the Democrat removing Mr. Biden’s name from it. Mr. Brown talks about his action to save more than 1,460 Ohio union drivers’ pensions through the Butch Lewis Act, a pension provision named in memory of an Ohio Teamster and inserted into the enormous Covid relief bill, the American Rescue Plan .
He tells the audience about his role in the huge law signed by Mr. Biden that extended veterans’ health care to former service members exposed to toxic “burn pits” in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was also named after an Ohioan, Sgt. First Class Heath Robinson, who died of lung cancer at the age of 39.
He speaks highly of the CHIPS Act, which will ensure union-trained workers are employed in the two new semiconductor factories being built in Ohio with federal money.
But even he said he understood the road ahead, especially when Mr. Moreno called his record “job-killing Green New Deal radicalism.”
“You know the successes,” Mr. Brown said. “They just don’t really know who did it.”
The incumbent will almost certainly be able to match the Republicans dollar for dollar and then some. Between the loyalties he has built in the labor movement and corporate interests with business before the Senate Banking Committee, which he chairs, Mr. Brown has built an impressive war chest: $33.5 million raised since 2019 , and $13.5 million in cash at the end of last month.
After a brutal three-way primary, Mr. Moreno emerged with $2.4 million in cash, federal campaign finance records showed at the end of February.
And Mr. Brown said behind Ohio’s pro-Trump tilt lies a state that is less conservative than Republicans believe. Last August, Ohioans defeated a ballot measure planned by Republicans to make it harder to pass future ballot measures, an apparent attempt to prevent an upcoming vote on abortion rights. Three months later, they enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution by 13 percentage points. That same day, they voted to legalize marijuana – by 14 points.
“That should scare them,” Mr. Brown said of his Republican opponents. “They have to figure out how to win these voters.”
The extent to which Mr. Brown can continue to outperform national Democrats is a matter of debate in Ohio. David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party, said the senator outperformed the rest of the Democrats by more than 10 percentage points in 2018 and beat Republican James B. Renacci by 7 percentage points as Mr. DeWine defeated his Democratic opponent for governor Richard Cordray by 3.7 points.
“The question is, how competitive is Biden here?” said David Pepper, a former chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. “When he competes hard, he keeps it within reach for Brown.”
At the Dayton union hall of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 82, it was impossible to find anyone who wasn’t firmly in Mr. Brown’s camp.
“Absolutely as many pensions as he saved,” said David Bruce, president of the Dayton Building Trades Council.
But behind the bravery lay an appreciation for the work ahead.
“This is our fight,” said retired bricklayer King, pointing to the stream of right-wing information many of his union brethren consumed. “As union leaders, we are called upon to implement our message better. The problem is, we are bricklayers. We don’t understand messages.”
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2024-03-22 14:36:39
www.nytimes.com
