The 2024 elections won’t just be about defeating President Joe Biden and maintaining control of the House, but also about potentially taking back the Senate. This time, it’s an especially favorable map for Republicans because many of the seats Democrats are defending include vulnerable incumbents. If not, one race the the race worth watching is Ohio, where Sen. Sherrod Brown is running for re-election. So far, two Republican Party candidates have entered the race, although they will almost certainly not be the only ones who will vote in next year’s primaries.
While Ohio has become increasingly red and is a particularly Trump-friendly state, defeating an incumbent president has its challenges. Tomek Zawistowski, president associated with the tea party My People Conventiontherefore, he believes that the key to victory is name identification and that the candidate who has it best will be Secretary of State Frank LaRose.
“We have Frank LaRose, our secretary of state, who has won state races twice and who will probably have the least money, but his name recognition is about 85%,” he added. Zawistowski told American Family News. “It’s likely that the only person who can beat Sherrod Brown is Frank LaRose.”
The latest is that LaRose has released a “mid to late” summer schedule, According to local news site WLWT that will take us into the future in a few weeks or months. NBC News also reported on this earlier this month that’s what he expects announce “soon”. LaRose won re-election last November, defeating Democrat Chelsea Clark by 20 points, and touted that he was the only sitting secretary of state supported by former and potentially future President Donald Trump.
But speaking of Trump’s support, a candidate in the race who might deserve it has declared businessman Bernie Moreno. He also already enjoys the support of Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH), who won the primary last year to replace the retiring then-Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) after endorsing Trump and ultimately running against former Republican Tim Ryan (D-OH).
Moreno’s son-in-law is Republican Max Miller (R-OH), who Trump supports, and Trump has also said positive things about Moreno, as he did in a post on TruthSocial around the time Moreno entered the race.
Zawistowski noticed that this was not necessarily the case However, it is enough. “We have Bernie Moreno, who has a lot of money and has a kind of pseudo-Trump, but he’s not really,” Zawistowski proposed. “Last time he ran and quit, but his ID is like 9%. We have [state Sen.] Matt Dolan, who comes from a famous family from Ohio. He was a state senator and ran for office last year. It still only has about 15% name recognition.”
Dolan has money. But not only is he so unpopular, he is a Republican who has claimed to want “go furtherfrom Trump, although the former and potentially future president still remains an important figure in Ohio, where Trump won the state by about 8 points in 2016 and 2020. Dolan announced in January.
It’s not only that Zawistowski who he mentioned LaRose as a worthy candidate. FiveThirtyEight’s Alex Samuels, Geoffrey Skelley and Nathaniel Rakich in March discussed his potential candidacy.
As Skelley mentioned, discussing Dolan being the only entrant in the race, “some of the top officials in Ohio they are also watching this raceand they are the ones to watch, especially Secretary of State Frank LaRose, who could be the toughest opponent Brown has grappled with this since he first defeated Mike DeWine for the seat in 2006 (DeWine was a senator then and is now governor). He also mentioned that “although Brown also won in 2018, he faced a lot weak Republican opponent in the then Rep. Jim Renacci. So Brown may not be as great as some people think.”
Rakich called Ohio one of the “top picks for Republicans,” along with West Virginia and Montana. While Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) has not yet announced his intentions and will not do so for some time, Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) is indeed running for re-election.
Samuels, Skelley and Rakich are not alone. A February POLITICO report noted that “The vast 2024 Senate map comes down to these 3 Democrats”, referring to Ohio, West Virginia and Montana.
It mentions that Brown is more than okay with being associated with Biden:
Even in Ohio, Brown said he “assumes” he will campaign with Biden, even if the president is unlikely to view his state as a must-win state.
“I run my own race and my own brand. That’s why I’m not going to run away from Biden,” Brown said. “He also accomplished more than any president in recent history.”
It’s an fascinating plan for Brown, since Biden’s approval rating in Ohio, the figure is 34 percent, and 58 percent disapprove of the job he is doing.
Hill AND Roll call both view Brown as vulnerable, while Ohio is viewed as a pick-up.
Political consultant Shane West wrote in an article for the Associate of Mature American Citizens (AMAC) titled “The most significant Senate race in 2024”, referring to Ohio. As he put it, “there’s still almost a year left until the primary, and there’s still a long way to go in the contest, and the race is just starting to heat up.”
Both Cook’s political report and Sabato’s crystal ball they think the Ohio Senate race is like this “Toss-Up,” while Inside Elections considers it a “battleground Democrat” race.
