VERMILION, Ohio — Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is fighting for his political life, locked in what polls show as a dead heat between him and Republican businessman Bernie Moreno.
Their clash has already drawn more ad 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 battle is about to surpass $500 billion, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.
Brown’s survival, and possibly partisan control of the Senate, hinges on split-ticket voters in a state that twice backed former President Donald Trump by healthy margins — and likely will again next week. While Moreno clings to Trump, Brown tends to avoid talking too much about national political figures from either party.
Each candidate, meanwhile, has homed in on a hot-button issue that he believes can tilt the race in his favor.
Brown and the Democrats are emphasizing 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 the Republicans, aiming to damage Brown with Trump voters who might be open to awarding him a fourth term, are airing ads that frame him as inexcusably 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 cliche, that people don’t see politics — I don’t see politics — as left to right.”
“They look at people individually,” Brown added, “and people know that I’m on their side.”
Brown, 71, is the only Democrat besides Barack Obama who has won more than one statewide election in Ohio in the last 30 years. He carries populist credentials, such as 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 Gov. Bob Taft, the 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 that is running heavily in the state in the home stretch to Election Day, has picked up on what Brown is doing — and isn’t happy about it.
“Sherrod Brown, he’s taking ads in 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 on the trail rallying with a retinue of MAGA-world favorites like Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The result is a highly nationalized campaign that’s heavy on Trump imagery, issues and rhetoric.
After lamenting higher prices while speaking at a banquet hall Tuesday near the Lake Erie shoreline in swingy Lorain County, Moreno served up an impression of Trump making french fries during a recent photo opportunity at a McDonald’s.
“Big, beautiful french fries,” Moreno said, imitating Trump’s voice. “Nobody makes french fries better than Donald Trump.”
The counties that could decide the Senate
With Republicans needing to gain two seats to ensure a Senate majority, and with West Virginia’s open seat almost certain to flip the GOP’s way, Ohio could be the tipping 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 along with him.
“Trump’s going to win Ohio, the question is only by how much,” Graham told the banquet hall audience of roughly 500. “Now, if you’re an incumbent, like Brown has been, you’re doing Social Security, you help people, and that adds up. … So, I am here to help you convince one or two more people, because if Trump wins [Ohio] by 5 or more, this thing is over.”
Brown brushed off questions about how close Vice President Kamala Harris needs to keep the margins in Ohio for him to win.
“I’m not sitting up at night thinking, ‘Well, if Kamala does this,’ or, ‘If Joe Biden does that,’” Brown said in Youngstown. “I know what I need to do to win … and that is stand up for workers.”
Because Ohio is no longer seen as a competitive state for presidential elections, Brown cannot count on a massive national organization like the one that was on the ground when he and Obama shared the ballot in 2012. Even so, Brown’s coordinated campaign in the state has knocked on more than 1 million doors, called more than 4 million Ohioans and is ahead of pace on these metrics when compared with 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 won the county narrowly in 2020, and Sen. JD Vance, now Trump’s running mate, lost it narrowly in 2022. Last year’s abortion ballot measure 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 been gradually moving to the left. Trump’s winning margin there shrunk from 16 to 6.8 points between 2016 and 2020, Brown lost there by about 5 points in 2018, and the abortion initiative passed there by nearly 19 points.
Mahoning, which includes Youngstown, favored Trump narrowly in 2020, the first time the county backed 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 it to Vance in the Senate race 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 the Trump-centric messaging. “And I’m confident that the race that we’ve run can defy gravity if any campaign can.”
Brown’s hope for split-ticket voters is 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’s fewer and fewer of those. We’re seeing a larger number of straight-ticket voters that come in.”
Abortion and anti-trans rhetoric fuels final days
The political realities are evident in how Brown and Moreno are campaigning.
Moreno, with Donald Trump Jr. in tow, packed a strip-plaza tavern with several hundred people Tuesday afternoon in Strongsville, a Republican-leaning suburb of Cleveland. As servers navigated the crowded barroom carrying plates of cheeseburgers and quesadillas, chants of “F— Joe Biden!” and “Fight! Fight! Fight!” broke out spontaneously.
After Moreno asked the audience to give him the chance to “fire Chuck Schumer,” the Democratic leader in the Senate, Trump Jr. took the stage, teeing up grievances that energize Republicans nationally, like “Hunter Biden’s laptop” and “the Russia hoax.”
“We’ve got to have the energy like you’re the third monkey in line for the ark, and it’s starting to rain,” Trump Jr. said, describing the election 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 why we have Social Security. Your activism is why we have civil rights. Your activism is why everybody enjoys an eight-hour day and gets paid time-and-a-half overtime. Your activism is why we cleaned up Lake Erie. Your activism is why we have a $35-a-month prescription for insulin.”
Brown, who talks frequently about the “dignity of work,” also blasted Moreno’s record as a car dealer, referencing a lawsuit over overtime pay that included claims of 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 repeated 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 tired of some old-ass Republican male with salt-and-pepper hair always trying to tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her body,” said Andre Washington, vice chair of the Ohio Democratic Party.
Other speakers also alluded to ads — including one from the GOP-aligned super PAC Senate Leadership Fund — that attempt to brand Brown as supportive of gender reassignment surgeries and of transgender women playing in women’s sports. Brown has pushed back, and his campaign responded with an ad pointing out falsehoods in the attack.
“I’m watching these asinine commercials — Sherrod Brown, they/them,” said Cuyahoga County Democratic Party Chair David Brock, referring to another Senate Leadership Fund ad that mocks Brown for using preferred pronouns for LGBTQ people. “And you know what? That’s right. Sherrod Brown is for they 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 “insanely, nervously optimistic” about his chances — raised the issue unprompted.
“Make sure,” Moreno said, “that you put in the article that Sherrod is for they/them, and I’m for Ohio.”
