Sherrod Brown's seat in the U.S. Senate has long been seen as one of the most likely to flip this election cycle, a loss in Ohio potentially handing Republicans control over the upper chamber. Besides Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., Brown is the only other Democrat defending a seat in a deep red state, facing a Trump-backed challenger, Bernie Moreno, who is neck-and-neck in the polls.
"Without Ohio, Democrats have no hope. It's just no way," David Niven, a professor of political science at the University of Cincinnati, said in an interview. "It's hard to imagine they can get to 51, so they're playing for 50 and hoping to have the vice presidency. To get to 50, they need Ohio."
Brown's race is one of a number of high-profile Senate contests in 2024, most involving Democrat-held seats that are vital for maintaining the party's razor-thin majority, and one of the most competitive. The retirement of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., has essentially handed the Republicans one seat already. If former President Donald Trump reclaims the White House in November, an additional GOP senator, coupled with the vice president's tie-breaking vote in the upper chamber, would give Republicans the majority needed to take control of the Senate and potentially pass a MAGA agenda.
In addition to Ohio, Democrats are banking that their candidates win open seats in Michigan, Arizona and Maryland, enabling a potential Vice President Tim Walz to be the tie-breaking vote. Their odds of retaining control will be far lower without a Brown victory in November.
The challenge to overcome in Ohio's Senate race is the state's political demographics. Ohio has trended more Republican over the last decade, voting for Trump by an 8-point margin in the previous two presidential elections. Since 2013, Democrats have only notched one state-wide victory in Ohio: Brown's last reelection campaign in 2018.
"The reason why you would assume this should be super close is you have a string of Republican victories versus the one functioning Democrat left standing in Ohio," Niven told Salon. "That sounds like it should be close. I think Brown has not a comfortable, or kicked-back lead, but he has enough of a lead that this race isn't anybody's top priority."
Unlike other candidates in his position, Brown isn't as at risk as the election map may make it seem. He has his status as a fixture in Ohio politics — and Moreno's poorly run campaign — to thank for that.
The latest RealClearPolling Average shows Brown with a 3.6 point lead over Moreno, a millionaire Cleveland businessman campaigning on a by-his-bootstraps immigration story despite his family's wealth and political connections; the Decision Desk HQ and The Hill's polling average places him just 3.2 points ahead, values that fall within the polls' margins of error. The Cook Political Report has labeled the race a "toss up."
The race can be expected to tighten in the weeks ahead, effectively placing the candidates in a "dead heat," according to Jacob Neiheisel, a University at Buffalo professor of political science and Ohio native.
"What makes it more of a toss up and less of a lean-Republican, like possibly the Montana race, is that Sherrod Brown [is a] fairly well-liked guy [and] he's got the power of incumbency behind him," Neiheisel said. His opponent is also Democrats' preferred pick, "based off of experience and his ideological leanings and any number of aspects about him," Neiheisel told Salon. And while Trump has overperformed compared to the polling in past races, polls have often "overestimated support" for down-ticket Republicans, he added.
To boost his candidacy, Moreno has taken to piggybacking off the former president, most recently latching onto the anti-immigrant chaos upending Springfield, Ohio. He endorses Trump's hardline approach to the U.S.-Mexico border, supports a 15-week federal restriction on abortion and has said the minimum wage was "never intended to be a livable" one.
The luxury car dealer has also had his fair share of legal issues stemming from his business: A jury last year ordered him to pay two employees more than $400,000 in back overtime pay, and he has settled 14 similar cases for undisclosed amounts.
Brown, who has been a mainstay in Ohio politics since the 1970s, is a three-time incumbent who's occupied the U.S. Senate seat since 2006. He's built a record of championing the working class and has been able to play to a wide array of Ohio voters, appealing to blue-collar Ohioans from urban centers to the Rust Belt and Appalachia. His economic platform surrounds defending what he calls the "dignity of work" and protecting Ohioans from special interest groups: fighting free trade deals that outsource jobs overseas, making it easier for workers to organize unions and raising the minimum wage.
The Senator's ability to be "relentlessly Sherrod Brown" in that way — staying on message and in character — is what allows him to "transcend the politics of Ohio" as it's become more of a red state, Niven said.
As part of his strategy this go-around, Brown has made it a point to distance himself from the top of his party's ticket. He bailed on the Democratic National Convention last month and has dodged defending Vice President Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden's record on the U.S.-Mexico border, which Republicans hope voters' disapproval of will tank Brown's chances.
Instead, he's focused his campaign on bolstering his brand of economic populism, seeking to draw a direct contrast with the car-dealer tycoon image of his opponent, a task made easier by the controversy surrounding Moreno's Mercedes-dealership empire and discrepancies regarding his background. He's also made efforts to appeal to Republican voters, evidenced in part by his releasing a lukewarm statement on the threats to Haitian immigrants in Springfield that avoided even mentioning the topic of immigration.
Brown's localizing strategy has traditionally worked in his favor, appealing to "middle-of-the-road constituency that tends to appeal to Ohioans," Neiheisel said. Still, with the rightward shift in the political landscape of the state and the nationalization of American politics over time, playing to the "hometown crowd" isn't as easy.
"You're a representative of the brand, and the brand right now for both parties is a national one," Neiheisel said. "So it's a lot more difficult to be a politician who is able to localize and personalize a race. It's not impossible ... but I think it's gotten a lot more difficult in the last couple decades."
Moreno, however, hasn't exactly succeeded in nationalizing his campaign either. His pitch to voters has largely honed in on boosting his name recognition and telling his story as a Colombian immigrant who built a lucrative career and achieved the American dream, rather than playing up his association with the GOP.
"His campaign seems to have misunderstood the task because they talk about Bernie Moreno, and that's useless," Niven said, arguing Moreno's campaign has "trouble chipping away at Sherrod Brown" because of the incumbent's apparent popularity in the state. Moreno's message "should be strictly about Democrats versus Republicans" and trying to get Republicans considering splitting their tickets between Trump and Brown "to come home. I don't think they fully understood party's their asset. Bernie Moreno is not their asset."
Moreno's ads, which he's recently beefed up with $25 million in spending in the final stretch of the race, have taken on what Neiheisel described as a "scattershot" messaging compared to Brown's more "disciplined" communication.
As the election inches closer, Ohioans have been inundated with ads from both camps. The parties have already shelled out or reserved nearly $400 million on ads for Ohio's Senate race as of Sept. 9, according to Axios, with that number likely to climb over the next six weeks.
Republicans have hiked up their spending this month and are set to spend 2.4 times as much as they did in August on video ads boosting Moreno's Senate bid. Outside groups have also ramped up ad spending in support of Moreno, with crypto companies alone set to spend more than $800,000 a day through September to oust Brown, a vocal critic of crypto who serves as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee.
But Niven thinks that Brown's Republican challenger will struggle to negatively define the 18-year incumbent in the weeks ahead.
"I don't think he's understood that he isn't just running as a Republican in Ohio. He's running against Sherrod Brown, and he hasn't quite figured out how to do that," he said. "You're not going to reshape people's opinions of Sherrod Brown. He's been a part of Ohio politics for people's entire lives. You're not going to rewrite that book, so you've got to get people thinking about something else if you're going to overturn this election."
