Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is fighting for his political life, locked in what polls show as a dead heat between him and Republican businessman Bernie Moreno.
Their clash has already drawn more ad spending than any other Senate race in history, eclipsing the $412 million spent in Georgia’s 2020 race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue. The Brown-Moreno battle is about to surpass $500 million, according to the tracking firm AdImpact.
Brown’s survival, and possibly partisan control of the Senate, hinges on split-ticket voters in a state that twice backed former President Donald Trump by healthy margins — and likely will again next week. While Moreno clings to Trump, Brown tends to avoid talking too much about national political figures from either party.
Each candidate, meanwhile, has homed in on a hot-button issue that he believes can tilt the race in his favor.
Brown and the Democrats are emphasizing Moreno’s openness to federal restrictions on abortion even after Ohioans, including many in conservative suburbs and counties, voted last year to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Moreno and the Republicans, aiming to damage Brown with Trump voters who might be open to awarding him a fourth term, are airing ads that frame him as inexcusably supportive of transgender rights.
“There will be enough,” Brown, whose name has never appeared on the same ballot as Trump’s, said of ticket-splitters in an interview with NBC News after an event Tuesday at a Teamsters hall in Youngstown. “I say this, and it’s not a cliche, that people don’t see politics — I don’t see politics — as left to right.”