“Sherrod is not looking for a viral moment,” one former Democratic elected official told me. “Voters in Ohio know him and he’s the only Democrat to win statewide in near-on two decades.
“Yes, he’s an old white dude in a Red State. But he knows who he is. So do voters.”
The incumbent, Jon Husted, was only appointed to the role last year, replacing J.D. Vance as the state’s junior Senator. In a Fox News poll that closed June 1, Husted was trailing Brown by eight points.
It’s hard not to view those numbers as largely a proxy on Trump. In that same poll, a remarkable 57% of Ohioans carry an unfavorable view of the President. To put that in context, Trump had a 52-46% positive rating in 2024, when he won the White House. It’s a massive shift that is leaving Republicans in Washington
All this helps explain why increasingly frustrated Republicans are sketching out plans to shift the conversation away from Trump, and onto another national figure: Chuck Schumer. The New York Democrat is in line to take back the Majority Leader’s gavel if Democrats win back the Senate. Schumer has seen his unfavorables jump from 52% at the start of Trump’s second term, to 68% earlier this year.
Read the full article here
