COLUMBUS, Ohio — The women whistled and chanted, packing a room in the public library to see Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.
A local Planned Parenthood board member praised him for standing up for abortion rights, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, gushed about Brown’s mother, and those in the audience eagerly raised their “Women for Sherrod” signs.
Brown didn’t disappoint them, criticizing the “stench of bigotry” emanating from President Trump’s White House, and the “hostility” it directs at marriage equality, equal rights, and civil rights.
In this moment, “with a president we’d never thought would be possible, in a country that doesn’t look at all like we thought it would at this time in our lives,” Brown called on the women to educate their neighbors, and get people to the polls this November, especially “young people.”
Brown is one of the 10 Senate Democrats up for re-election in a state Trump won, and that makes him a top GOP target. But unlike centrist Democrats trying to survive in states like Missouri or North Dakota, Brown is a darling of the Left who stands a strong chance of winning in Trump country.
Not only is his future critical to Democrats flipping the Senate, but also the party’s chances in the 2020 presidential election. The urgency of this race isn’t lost on him, and he admits it feels different.
“You’ve seen the, ‘It’s the most important election in our life,’ kind of lines and people will say, ‘This one really is,’” Brown told the Washington Examiner. “This one really does affect the direction of the country.”
A day later, the two-term senator traveled north to Youngstown, the once-booming steel city across the border from Pennsylvania. The city voted for President Barack Obama twice and flipped for President Trump in 2016.
Trump came up twice in the hour-long roundtable with veterans living in Mahoning Valley, a region, according to analysts, any candidate running statewide must carry.
The Department of Veterans Affairs still has no secretary, and Brown, alluding to the chaos at the White House, vowed that he would fight for a secretary that opposes privatization. He listened to frustrations about the inability for veterans suffering from PTSD to receive the care they need. Private therapy sessions are held in a room the size of a closet with no windows. The main problem: The facility isn’t big enough.
“President Trump, when he was here, promised that we would get a VA hospital, a bigger clinic,” Dominic Diloreto, a Vietnam veteran, reminded Brown.
Youngstown is nestled inside Mahoning County, which is home to more veterans than most other parts of the state. It’s also home to the blue collar workers that flipped for Trump.
And they’re still with Trump. Diloreto considers the Russia investigation a “witch hunt” and likes that Trump “speaks the truth.”
But Diloreto is a Brown man, too. He plans to vote for the senator again in November.
“Oh yeah, I think he’s great. I like him, I like his views,” Diloreto said.
The same goes for Susan Krawchyk, an Iraq veteran, who lived in Ohio her entire life until two years ago when she moved to Pennsylvania. She commutes into Youngstown every day for her job at the Mahoning County Veteran Service Commission. She’s voted for Brown in the past and would vote for him again if she could.
Krawchyk supports Trump, who is “doing a great job,” but people in Youngstown “trust” Brown.
“He’s so involved in the veteran community,” Krawchyk said of Brown. “I do still support him anywhere I can.”
The crossovers, the people who voted for Brown in 2012 and Trump in 2016, are the kind of voters Republicans hope they can keep in their corner. It requires severing the connection blue collar workers have had with Brown for decades. But Trump’s victory in the state wasn’t a one-off, Republicans argue, it was a realignment.
“Ohio is a Trump state, Ohio is going to move forward with the Trump agenda, and Ohio is going to get anybody that’s an obstacle, including Sen. Brown, out of the way,” Republican Congressman Jim Renacci said to supporters after securing the GOP nomination to take on Brown.
Like elections past, Brown will have to split the difference between his image as one of the most liberal lawmakers in the Senate with his persona as a pro-union, anti-free trade champion. For Brown, it’s nothing new. The Trump effect in Ohio doesn’t change his calculus.
“I’m going to go back to Mahoning valley and I’m going to win votes there, and I’m going to talk about what matters in their lives,” he told the Washington Examiner.
For example, he’ll point out what General Motors just did to Lordstown, where a Chevy Cruze plant that assembled the crossover sedans nonstop in 2016 will become a single-shift-a-day factory.
“The top five executives in GM make $100 million in compensation and they just laid off 1,500 workers,” he said.
But what will voters in the Democratic strongholds of Cleveland and Columbus say about his economic embrace of Trump, who is reviled by the Left? Brown backs Trump’s efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which crippled wage growth and jobs in Ohio when it took effect 25 years ago. He applauded Trump’s proposed steel tariffs. Don’t call it an embrace though, he said.
“I don’t embrace anybody,” Brown said in an interview. “If I think he’s right, I support him. I’m not embracing anybody. That’s what I’ve always fought for, fair trade.”
Even in areas where Brown agrees with Trump’s trade policy he finds the nuances to distance himself. On tariffs, Brown reasons he supports “generally the idea” of Trump’s proposal because “they are temporary.”
“They are not a trade policy, they are not a trade war, they are a tool of enforcement,” Brown said. “And that’s what’s been missed in all this by everybody.”
If Trump is right on something, Brown is “with him.” Brown’s no stranger to bucking his party, pointing out that he “opposed President Obama on trade.”
Brown’s populist streak doesn’t appear to tarnish his credibility with progressives. To win, he’ll rely on heavy turnout from Ohio’s Democratic strongholds like Cleveland. Elsewhere, Republicans expect to chip away at his blue-collar support by casting him as an enemy of Trump.
“Pointing out all the votes he’s taken against Trump priorities, that may influence some Trump voters,” said Jennifer Duffy, senior editor for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report.
“Just calling him a liberal is not going to work because it hasn’t worked before,” Duffy said,
But, “Republicans have a lot of work to do here” to make Brown a top-tier target, said Duffy, who has the race rated as “lean Democrat.”
Republicans are already highlighting the distance between Brown and Trump, reminding voters that Brown didn’t vote for the president’s tax plan, opposes Trump’s nominees, and resists the administration’s agenda.
Trump’s trade policies will likely take center stage in the race and that could backfire on Renacci. Unlike Brown, Renacci loved free trade before he hated it. To fix that, Renacci will try to convince voters to view him as Trump. What Trump wants, Renacci wants, and therefore Trump voters should vote Renacci.
“The hope is the loyalty to Trump will trump any loyalty to Brown,” said David Cohen, a political science professor at the University of Akron.
Republicans can try to say Brown isn’t truly aligned with Trump on trade, but, Cohen said, “Brown has been a populist his entire career.” Brown wrote the book on the “Myths of Free Trade.” Going all the way back to President Bill Clinton when Brown first entered the U.S. House, he fought NAFTA.
“The loyalty and support for Brown is deep and it’s longstanding, but loyalty and support for Donald Trump is about a mile wide and an inch deep,” Cohen said.
Though Cohen thinks Brown will survive the challenge, he said the “Democratic party in Ohio has been reeling for years.”
“The one thing that they’ve been able to point to is Sherrod Brown in that U.S. Senate seat,” Cohen said. “A loss by Brown would be devastating to Democrats in Ohio because he is the leader of the party.”
Trump is sure to play a personal role in trying to secure Brown’s defeat. “You’ll see Trump take a big interest in the race because of 2020 implications,” said one Republican operative who specializes on Senate races. “You’ll see president Trump visiting a lot and pushing his trade message, in support of Renacci.”
On Tuesday, more voters chose the Republican ballot in Ohio’s open primaries, a sign the GOP said of more enthusiasm for their candidates. But a closer look at the numbers show that there was a 100,000 vote drop-off from those who cast a vote in support of Mike Dewine, who won the Republican gubernatorial nomination, and those who backed Renacci.
Places like Youngstown that are ancestrally union-supporting and have voted Democratic for years, the operative said, have now “realigned with the Republican party under Trump.” The president’s influence, the GOP strategist said, is strong enough to get voters to abandon Brown.
“And I would like to be 7’5” and a star for the Cleveland Cavaliers,” said David Betras, chairman of the Mahoning County Democrats. “Just because the president says Renacci is for blue collar workers doesn’t make it accurate.”
When the results rolled in Election Night in November 2016, and Hillary Clinton lost Ohio by 8 points, Betras wasn’t surprised.
“In my patch of the Earth, you might as well tell someone to go fuck themselves if you try to convince them that globalism and free trade is good for them,” he said. “People where I live were hurt personally by NAFTA. If you come into our area and you say NAFTA is bad you’re going to attract voters, and Sherrod Brown’s been talking about how bad NAFTA’s been for the Mahoning Valley his entire political career.”
So don’t expect the Democrats across Northeast Ohio, in Youngstown and beyond, to vote for Renacci because Trump supports him, Betras said.
“People are not that stupid,” he said. “And Jim Renacci is late to the table.”
And that gets to the heart of how liberal Sherrod Brown hopes to succeed in the Trump era.
“I opposed NAFTA before Donald Trump probably knew what it was,” said Brown.
