Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown Looks Likely To Ride This Year’s Anti-GOP Wave Back to the Senate

ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Before the interstate highway system enabled drivers to enjoy efficiency by forgoing interesting experiences, traffic to and from the East and Midwest on Route 40, “the National Road,” flowed through, rather than around, cities. At this one, it crossed the famous Y Bridge that spans the confluence of the Licking and Muskingum rivers.Depending on which fork of the Y drivers choose, they can cross the bridge and wind up on the same side of a river they started on. The structure is a metaphor for Ohio’s current Senate race.Two years ago, Democrat Sherrod Brown failed to win a fourth Senate term, losing by just 3.6 points while President Trump was carrying Ohio by 11.3 points. This year, Mr. Trump is as unloved in football-crazed Ohio as Michigan’s Wolverines. Mr. Brown probably will turn 80 in 2032 as a senator.He plunged into politics from Yale, elected to the state legislature at age 21. His thinking is familiar to Ohioans after half a century advocating economic populism and cultural liberalism. He was for same-sex marriage during his seven terms in the House of Representatives, two decades before the Supreme Court settled the issue. His protectionist credentials are so impeccable he must feel plagiarized by Mr. Trump. He favored protectionism before this foolishness became fashionable.Mr. Brown’s opponent, Senator Jon Husted, was appointed in 2025 to the seat JD Vance filled for a little more than two years before becoming vice president. Mr. Husted’s thinking might not be a concern for voters. They might reasonably assume his convictions are supplied by the president, toward whom almost all congressional Republicans are vigorously subservient.This year’s surprising annoyances for voters are data centers serving the artificial-intelligence infrastructure. Inconveniently for Mr. Husted, Mr. Trump adores them as much as many Ohioans detest them. The electricity and water these centers require are hardly insuperable challenges, but they symbolize irresistible change imposed by unfathomable technocracies.Mr. Trump was his colorful self (“We’re gonna shove it up their ass, okay?”) when, in a recent speech 116 miles from here, he delivered this endorsement: “Even if you hate Jon Husted … you’re gonna vote.” He immediately amended his stream of semiconsciousness, saying “nobody” hates Mr. Husted. So there.On a college campus here recently, Mr. Brown spoke empathetically about the Ohio farmer he met who says he will pay an extra $100,000 — approximately the farmer’s anticipated profit this year — because of higher fertilizer prices. Farmers might blame these on an increasingly disorderly world. Will they vote as if Mr. Trump is somewhat blameworthy?Ohio soybean farmers, most of whom surely voted for Mr. Trump, are suffering from a promise Mr. Trump has kept. Predictably, other nations have targeted American agricultural exports in retaliation against the tariffs that are Mr. Trump’s signature achievement. Regarding the price farmers are paying for diesel fuel, largely because of the Iran war, Republicans in Ohio, as elsewhere, say: Let’s talk instead about transgender people — boys in girls’ sports, okay?Addressing a late-afternoon gathering here, Mr. Brown, who will turn 74 six days after Election Day, was younger than many of the 100 or so in the room. Elderly Americans have more time than most others to pay attention to politics. And more reason to. Medicare and Social Security are 36 percent of spending by the federal government, which is increasingly an elder care institution with a military.Mr. Brown spoke about his devotion to Social Security, but not — why spoil a balmy autumn day? — about the 2032 exhaustion of its trust fund. There will be plenty of time after the election to ignore this certainty.The Almanac of American Politics calls Ohio “the first entirely American state,” the first to begin neither as a British colony nor to be carved from three of the original 13. Ohio was a swing state that swung in tandem with the nation in all but two 20th-century presidential elections. Mr. Brown, whose two dogs are named Franklin and Walter, for Franklin D. Roosevelt and Walter Reuther, militant head of the United Auto Workers, 1946-1970, might make Ohio less crimson, briefly.With tousled hair, imperfectly pressed clothes and a voice sometimes sandpapery from half a century of selling progressivism in a zillion Zanesvilles, Mr. Brown sometimes resembles an unmade bed. Yet for voters recoiling from the synthetic in politics — Mr. Trump’s persona is an acquired taste, but certainly authentic — Mr. Brown’s familiarity breeds contentment.He has the unprepossessing manner of someone who actually enjoys the activity that is 98 percent of what democracy demands of its practitioners: making small talk with strangers. Amazing.The Washington Post

Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown Looks Likely To Ride This Year’s Anti-GOP Wave Back to the Senate

Ohio Democrat Sherrod Brown Looks Likely To Ride This Year’s Anti-GOP Wave Back to the Senate

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