Ohio’s Senate race pits fake populist against real one
Ohio voters have set up a Senate race that will test what happens when a real economic populist runs against a fake one in an increasingly red state.
The contest to replace retiring Sen. Rob Portman is poised to measure whether a Republican who prostrates himself before Donald Trump by repudiating his sharp criticisms of the former president can convince a majority of his authenticity. It will also gauge whether a steadfastly pro-labor Democrat who speaks often and proudly of the “working class” can push aside Republican culture-war extremism and encourage voters to cast ballots on their economic future.
Rep. Tim Ryan, who won the Democratic nomination in a landslide on Tuesday, is certainly the underdog in a state that Trump twice carried comfortably. But Ryan is relishing a battle against Republican J.D. Vance.
In an interview on Wednesday, Ryan previewed his approach, calling Vance a candidate who will “do and say anything he needs to do to gain power,” has “flipflopped all over the place on Trump and every other issue,” “has no core convictions,” is “not interested in helping working-class people” and has “said that quite clearly he thinks America’s a joke.”
Once-swingy Ohio has given Democrats nightmares in recent years. While Barack Obama carried it in 2008 and 2012, only one Democrat has won a non-judicial statewide race since 2008. But Ryan sings from the populist, tough-on-trade, prounion songbook written by that Democrat, Sen. Sherrod Brown.
“I went to all 88 counties,” Ryan told me. “People there aren’t talking a lot about, you know, critical race theory. They’re talking about: ‘How do we get investment in our communities?’ ‘How do we get broadband in our communities?’ ‘How do we get jobs in our communities?’”
As for Vance, his victory has been widely, and correctly, interpreted as a big win for Trump. Vance was running behind multiple GOP competitors before Trump belatedly embraced him. Never mind that
Vance had to atone for past declarations that Trump was “reprehensible” and “cultural heroin.” If Trump is now the political drug of choice among Republican primary voters, Vance proved himself happy to share in the habit.
But another Republican also surged late. State Sen. Matt Dolan rose from single digits in early April to finish a strong third, behind Vance and former state treasurer Josh Mandel.
Dolan became the voice of non-Trump and anti-Trump Republicans by speaking out against
Trump’s election denial nonsense. Highlighting the divide between Republicans in big metro areas and those from small-town and rural Ohio, Dolan ran first in the Cleveland and Columbus areas and just behind Vance in Hamilton County.
Ryan sees Dolan voters as ready to cross over to him: “Republicans who don’t want anything to do with the whole craziness that’s going on.”
Although Ryan got about 15,000 more votes on Tuesday than Vance did, it’s a measure of the challenge facing Democrats that turnout in the far more contested GOP primaries was roughly double Democratic turnout — a far bigger gap than in the 2018 primaries.
But if Democrats hope to expand their political map, they would be foolish to ignore a state where Trump has placed himself squarely on November’s ballot with his embrace of Vance — and where their nominee is willing to trust his fate to working-class voters of all races. He believes he can bring many of them back to the party they once called home.