Democrat Brown a blue spot amid red sea,
Democrat gets third term with victory against Renacci.
Sen. Sherrod Brown swept to an easy re-election victory Tuesday over Republican Jim Renacci, giving the Ohio Democrat a third term in the U.S. Senate and his fifth statewide victory since 1982.
Brown, a Democrat, won despite Republicans winning all nonjudicial statewide offices.
CNN and the Associated Press called the race shortly after the polls closed at 7:30 p.m. It was widely expected that Brown would handily defeat Renacci, a congressman from the Akron area who aired only a handful of TV commercials during the campaign.
Brown campaigned in part on his signature issue of opposing free-trade agreements such as the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. By doing so, he aligned himself with the trade views of President Donald Trump and resonated with middle-class working families.
But Brown also toned down the combative image of his earlier years. He and Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, worked together on a broad range of issues including reducing opioid addiction. In 2016 when Portman was re-elected, he made a point of publicly working with Brown on a number of issues.
Renacci often appeared to be the reluctant candidate. He had hoped to run for governor, but the White House and GOP officials in Ohio urged him to challenge Brown instead.
But Renacci stumbled consistently through the campaign. He refused to spend much of the $4 million he’d loaned his campaign to counter lackluster fundraising and he garnered headlines and at least one attack ad after the Daily News revealed he was flying around the state in a plane owned by a Cleveland strip club owner.
His performance was so lackluster that privately one GOP analyst suggested that Lt. Gov. Mary Taylor would have been a better candidate.
During the fall as Renacci struggled to make traction with voters, his campaign was an afterthought among national Republicans. When asked in September about the status of the race between Brown and Renacci, one GOP operative quipped, “What race?”
In what GOP officials acknowledged was a political Hail Mary, Renacci and Republicans opted to raise questions about Brown’s messy divorce in 1986 from his first wife, Larke Recchie.
During that divorce, Recchie filed a restraining order against Brown after an incident in which he entered her house by shoving her to the side. An affidavit in the divorce reported that on numerous occasions, Brown “intimidated, pushed, shoved and bullied” her.
But the move backfired when Recchie put out a statement saying the use of their divorce records for a political campaign was “shameless” and “disgusting.”
“Anyone who suggests he is not an honorable man is just wrong,” she said.
For the GOP, raising the divorce records may eliminate Brown’s chances of being the vice presidential nominee for the Democrats in 2020. Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016 interviewed Brown for her running mate, but instead tapped Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va.
Brown has repeatedly said he has no plans to run for president.