Sen. Sherrod Brown’s political problems remain, thanks largely to Biden and his policies
Salena Zito
Video Embed
KETTERING, Ohio — You can learn a lot about a state in a 290-mile back road trip across it. Most importantly, you can learn from voters what they want from the representatives they send to Washington.
From Steubenville to Cadiz, to Zanesville to Beavercreek, and to this suburban Dayton city, people along U.S. 22 and U.S. 40 — and whatever other state roads connected them together to lead to here — said some pretty simple things were utmost on their minds: gas prices, food prices, the cost of construction products, concerns about the crisis at the border and how that was going to ultimately affect their lives in the form of the spread of illicit drugs, labor shortages, and the feeling that the next generation won’t get ahead.
PANDEMIC POLITICS RETURNS TO THE SENATE AS COVID-19 CASES RISE
For most of U.S. history, Ohio has been all over the map politically — although whoever won, it was always in the narrowest numbers. Democrat Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush by a statewide vote margin of 1.83% in 1992, and then his vice president, Al Gore, went on to lose the state to George W. Bush by 3.51%.
Barack Obama won it twice. The first time, his nearly 3 million votes were the most received by a Democratic presidential candidate in the state’s history. Four years later, his victory margin of 4.58% declined to only 2.98%, largely because his shift Left led New Deal Democrats, who are culturally conservative, to leave the party.
In 2016, though, Donald Trump barreled through the state and flipped it red, to the shock of many. By 2020, despite losing the national election, he had solidly flipped longtime working-class counties like Mahoning, which had rarely voted for the GOP, toward the Republicans, and won the state by a whopping 11 points.
Statewide, Ohio has voted for a Republican for governor four elections in a row. It was a streak that began with John Kasich and was reinforced with two robust wins by current Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, including his landslide win last year where he won 85 of the state’s 88 counties. Republicans also won every other statewide office, including what the press believed would be a nail-biter of a race for U.S. Senate between Republican J.D. Vance and Democrat Tim Ryan.
In the end it wasn’t even close, with Vance winning by 8 percentage points despite Ryan’s attempt to amplify the economic populism that kept him a Trumbull County congressman for decades. Voters had become skeptical of him and his allegiance to Biden and Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York, going too far leftward during his failed run for president.
In the midst of all of this, Democrat Sherrod Brown, a U.S. senator here since 2006 who has held a variety of elected offices since he first ran in 1974, has prevailed in every election cycle for his Senate seat, although all of those cycles have occurred in years that were considered bad for Republicans.
Brown has several challenges heading into next year’s reelection race: Biden, the economy, his votes for the taxpayer funding of student loan forgiveness, and the shift of the working class away from Democrats since 2016.
To date, there are three Republicans competing in a March 2024 primary to face Brown: state Sen. Matt Dolan, Cleveland businessman Bernie Moreno, and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
Like neighboring West Virginia, where Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) is up for reelection, Ohio’s Senate seat is one of the few still held by Democrats in states Trump won.
While Brown has spent most of his time running on his working-class bona fides — on Labor Day weekend, the three-term incumbent was in Lorain County discussing the potency of every person, whether they were working at Starbucks or as a steelworker, to join a union.
After the event, he posted a video discussing why he didn’t wear the pin on his label that signifies he is a member of Congress and instead wore a pin of a canary in a bird cage given to him by a group of coal miners who, he said, “didn’t have a union strong enough to protect them or a government who cared enough,” adding, “think about the progress we have made because of whom we elect and because of what we fight for.”
Brown has been a strident champion in pressing the U.S. Department of Labor to update federal standards to better protect miners from health hazards related to exposure to silica dust, which makes his relationship with miners and those who work in the industry complicated as numerous coal-fired power plants have closed in the Appalachian region of the state because of regulations in the past few years.
The year he won his first term in the U.S. Senate, coal generated 87% of the state’s electricity and employed a lot of people. Now, it is down to one-third and has left many workers and their families conflicted by whether Brown, who claims to be an advocate for the “dignity of work,” can really fight for them.
Vistra Corp said it was closing two of its power plants, both located an hour from here: the William H. Zimmer Power Station in Moscow, Ohio, and the Miami Fort Station in North Bend, both citing pressure to reduce their carbon footprint.
A little over half of Ohio registered voters approve of the job Brown is doing in Congress, according to the latest USA Today-Suffolk University poll of the state, which shows cracks in his ability to continue to ride what he refers to as real populism.
Brown’s lead in head-to-head matchups with two of his opponents is slim, and he is tied against LaRose.
Joe Biden’s approval rating here in the state is a dismal 41 percentage points. While the president’s campaign team and the DNC took a victory lap last month when Ohio voters defeated an anti-abortion referendum, they fail to understand the cultural connection and impact is still lingering over his remarks at a fundraiser in California, when he said, “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”
A voter may have never worked in a coal plant or mine, nor lived near one, but the identity of that worker and their impact on this state for a century is potent and not forgotten.
Reps. Mike Turner (R-OH) and Brad Wenstrup (R-OH) were both in this Montgomery County city to visit Brigid’s Path, a newborn recovery center with around-the-clock, one-on-one care from doctors and nurses trained to care for babies born as substance-exposed. When asked what Brown’s biggest challenge was heading into next year’s Senate race, both congressmen said in unison, “A Republican.”
Turner shrugged, adding, “I don’t have anything more to add to that.”
Wenstrup thought Brown’s support for student loan forgiveness odd considering the burden it places on the working class, who Brown often champions.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
“It’s an example of unfairness. And whether you talk to someone like me who paid off all of my student loans, and I worked through school so that I didn’t have as many student loans, that isn’t fair. And he’s missing that,” he said.
Turner pointed out that Brown’s problem on the ballot has to do with his support of Biden and his administration’s policies.
“The open border, the discriminatory economic policies of the Biden administration, inflation, out of control spending are going to be real issues for the Biden administration and anybody who supported those policies,” he said.