The Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio won the primary
Is Senator Sherrod Brown’s 2020 Campaign a Tossup? Donald LaRose, Bernie Moreno, and the United States
Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent up for re-election this fall, can breathe a little easier now that he’ll face Moreno, by my lights the most unproven and vulnerable of the Republicans in Tuesday’s primary. It could be that President Biden’s unpopularity will be a drag on Brown if they win the election in November.
Moreno will go on to challenge Brown, the Democratic incumbent. The Senate race could help determine who controls the Senate next year, given that Democrats now hold the chamber with a narrow margin.
Economically, culturally and politically, Ohio is more like Missouri now than Virginia, the state I once thought it might evolve to mirror. Only the top statewide elected Democrat is left. The race is widely considered a tossup. Democrats are going to push Brown’s message that mixes an economic recovery story with an emphasis on abortion rights, which was endorsed by Ohio voters last year, in order to paint Moreno as an extremists. Moreno supports a 15-week abortion ban.
He won re-election in 2018 by almost seven percentage points, as Republicans swept other statewide offices. But Brown has acknowledged that this will be his toughest campaign yet.
It worked: The Democratic effort to meddle in Tuesday’s Republican primary in Ohio paid off as Bernie Moreno, a rich guy with no experience in elected office, beat two rivals to win the G.O.P. nomination for a Senate race that will help determine control of the chamber in 2025.
The former car dealership owner defeated his competitors in a three way race in order to win the nomination and get Trump’s support in Ohio.
“We’re going to retake the United States Senate. President Trump will be in the White House. We’re gonna get the America first agenda done,” Moreno said, adding that if elected he would focus on policies Trump pushed while in office, that would include securing U.S. borders, restoring “law and order,” and reducing foreign energy dependence.
In recent polls, Moreno and Dolan traded off the lead, although when LaRose first entered the race, he had been considered the front-runner. He started the campaign with less money and didn’t have any high-profile endorsements.
Dolan and Moreno both had around $2.4 million in their campaign accounts as of their last FEC filings. Dolan loaned his campaign $2 million, and Moreno loaned his campaign $1.2 million. LaRose had just under $600,000 cash on hand, which was close to the end of the primary race.
Brown, who didn’t have a primary opponent, raised about $6.6 million in the last few months. The other three candidates combined had a cash-on-hand total of less than $1 million.
