CANFIELD, OHIO – With a key federal election taking place here this year, the U.S. Senate race between Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown and Republican Jim Renacci, you’ll see campaign signs on the lawns, many of them handmade, spelling out the name Donald J Trump.
Ohio is one of 10 states Trump won in 2016 where the Democratic senator is trying to keep his seat. Trump carried the Buckeye State with ease, and it is theoretically part of an broad universe where Republicans could make historic gains.
But will they do it? That question looms in Ohio, where Brown has effectively tamped down his leftist policies and amped up his populist rhetoric — which will lend a hand him win back Democrats from Trump’s coalition and stay in office, that is, if he can play just as well in downtown Columbus as possible in the Mahoning Valley.
Can Brown pull it off? Can a far-left liberal win in Trump Country?
Dr. Paul Sracic, a political science professor at Youngstown State University, believes Brown can do it. “He can be a model for how to get errant Democrats back into the Legislature not only in the midterms, but also in the 2020 presidential election.” Scraic cited Brown’s position on trade, which is consistent with Trump’s.
Polls so far, including the Suffolk poll and last week’s Quinnipiac University poll, show Brown with a clear lead over Renacci.
Flushed with money, Brown quickly posted an ad that read, “Jim Renacci was a lobbyist even while in Congress.”
At a time when “Trump” and “populism” are considered bad words by the mainstream media, that is not the point here. Renacci’s biggest obstacle won’t be Trump, but his difficulty raising money. Brown’s problem isn’t his populism, but how far his party has gone in the culture wars over God, guns, Hollywood and the national anthem.
The Ohio race may hinge on voters like Jim Sarene, the kind of hidden voter that pollsters missed and who swung the 2016 election to Trump. Will Sarene come out again? I went out and asked him, but the first thing I knew about him was that I didn’t call him Jim. Why? Everyone calls him “Geege.”
Sarene lives in the town of Canfield in the Mahoning Valley, a leafy suburb of Youngstown that is strikingly different from the dilapidated former industrial center a few miles away.
Mahoning County is deep blue, or at least it was. Once known as Steel Valley, it is located along the Pennsylvania state line. With the exception of George McGovern in 1972, every Democratic presidential candidate has won this county in the past 60 years.
In a stroke of brilliance, Trump visited the Canfield Fair in September 2016. The 172-year-old star guest is the largest county fair in the state, and his appearance was vigorously greeted by expelled Democrats and weary Republicans looking for something different.
Even though Hillary Clinton was a classic Labor Day campaign stop for any candidate running for president, for some inexplicable reason, Hillary Clinton did not show up. Then-Vice President Joe Biden was sent in her place.
Trump didn’t win Mahoning County, but the shift in voter preferences was jarring; former President Barack Obama won massive in both 2008 and 2012 by about 30 points. Trump finished 3 points behind Clinton, keeping her below 50 percent.
Sarene has never voted in his life. He said: “I once considered voting for Ross Perot, but I wasn’t motivated enough. I knew he wouldn’t win. But then Donald Trump came along.”
Sarene came from a working-class family in nearby Liberty, Ohio. He married a local girl and they moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. Two sons and a decade and a half later, they divorced. He lives in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. He’s in Canfield with his girlfriend, who works at a high-end beauty salon.
He said: “Everyone here was a hidden Trump voter, they didn’t want to admit it because they were afraid of how people would judge them; if you were a democrat you enjoyed his support and so did the republicans and so did women and successful people so no one said anything.
Sarene weathered the capricious economy with gusto. He moved from Charlotte to Raleigh; when the company he worked for downsized, he reinvented himself.
He said: “Whenever a company was bought or closed due to financing or any other reason, I always outsourced it. I said, ‘Here it is again about survival of the fittest, making things happen, being creative, being innovative.’ Eventually, I turned myself and my skills into my own business model.”
Now, five years later, his life sciences company is doing well, allowing him to return home.
He said: “Years ago, when I heard Trump speak, I never liked him. I thought, ‘What an idiot. What an idiot». But my perspective was different. Now that I’ve been through the trenches and started my own business, I understand it. I looked up and realized that this was what the president should be.
His interest in the election surprised his girlfriend: “I… I’ve never watched the news with this intensity… I started watching Trump. My girlfriend and I literally watched Game of Thrones and watched the news. She said, “Don’t you want to watch something else?” I say, “No.”
Not much has changed in his support or viewing habits since the election. But is he motivated to vote in the 2018 midterm elections and in the races for Congress, Governor and the U.S. Senate?
“Yes,” he replies without hesitation. “And I vote for Renacci.”
He added: “I think it’s important that the president has support in Congress, and I’m motivated to show up, give him that support and vote for Renacci.”
For Geege, it’s that uncomplicated.
