Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown is projected to lose to Republican entrepreneur Bernie Moreno in Ohio, a huge blow to Senate Democrats hoping to keep control of the upper chamber.
The results were a stunning rebuke of Brown, who’s been in office for more than 40 years, including 17 years in the Senate. He had previously weathered Ohio’s red shift under Donald Trump with his 2018 reelection, but the presidential headwinds were too much this year for Brown, the last remaining Ohio Democrat in statewide elected office.
Moreno, a former luxury car dealer, has not previously held elected office. He was Trump’s pick for the seat in a state from which Tump’s running mate Sen. JD Vance also hails.
Moreno and his national allies worked to paint Brown as a career politician closely aligned with the Biden-Harris administration, running ads that showed Brown praising Vice President Kamala Harris and downplaying border security.
Brown likely made it this far in Ohio thanks to the economic populist brand he’s cultivated that’s not dissimilar to Trump’s own brand of populism, which Brown has labeled “phony.” As a congressman and senator, Brown was known for bucking the Democratic Party on foreign trade deals and being a close ally of organized labor unions.
He faced one of the toughest races of his career this year, forcing him to distance himself from the Democratic Party and broaden his coalition to include moderate Republicans. Brown made a final appeal to Republicans in a Fox News op-ed describing how he worked across the aisle to combat fentanyl trafficking and pass the bipartisan infrastructure law. A union backing Brown even ran a commercial connecting him to Vance.
Brown acknowledged the challenging nature of his race to reporters earlier this year.
“I wouldn’t win Montana, he wouldn’t win Ohio, I’ll leave it at that,” Brown told reporters in September, describing a Democrat in a similarly challenging race, Montana Sen. Jon Tester. “He’s a good candidate. He’s been a very good senator. So I don’t know the politics there, and I don’t see all the polls, just different states.”
Ohio had one of the nation’s most expensive U.S. Senate races, with both sides and their allies spending over $127 million.
See full results from the Ohio Senate election here.
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