Senator Sherrod Brown, the raspy-voiced Democratic mainstay of Ohio, has spent decades building a political brand focused on opposing free-trade deals that harm local workers and working to raise wages and benefits at home.
Even his signature wrinkled suits are made at a unionized plant near his home.
But in the final days of his re-election race — a contest that is on track to cost half a billion dollars, the most expensive Senate race this year, and whose outcome could decide which party controls the chamber — a campaign built to highlight workers’ rights is instead laser-focused on another issue altogether: protecting access to abortion.
“Bernie Moreno has made it clear he thinks he knows better than Ohioans,” Mr. Brown said at a news conference in Powell, Ohio, last week in which he touted his support for abortion rights and called out his Republican opponent. “These decisions should not be made by politicians. These are intensely, intensely personal decisions, and should be made by women and their doctors.”
Mr. Brown is the last Democrat in a statewide office still standing in Ohio, a onetime bellwether that has become a reliably red state that twice voted for Donald J. Trump. Mr. Brown, who is seeking his fourth term, has managed to keep winning not because of any special charisma, but because of his populist bona fides.
He talks about how cities like his hometown, Mansfield, where he went to junior high school with children of tradespeople who worked in plants, have been hollowed out by globalization, its union workers ignored by what Mr. Brown refers to as “the coastal elites and corporate America.” He has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, though voters in Ohio will never catch him criticizing Mr. Trump.
But even here, Mr. Brown is leaning on abortion to galvanize voters in a race that is too close for comfort. He has a small but consistent edge against Mr. Moreno, a wealthy former car dealer and businessman, according to public and internal polls.
That is in part because of a significant gender gap in the race. A recent New York Times/Siena Poll that showed Mr. Brown essentially tied with Mr. Moreno found that 55 percent of female voters in Ohio supported Mr. Brown, while only 38 percent of male voters intended to vote for him. For Mr. Moreno, 54 percent of men support him, while 34 percent of women do.
Abortion was second only to the economy on the poll’s list of issues driving respondents’ votes — nearly one in five Ohioans cited it — and a clear majority, 63 percent, said abortion should be mostly or always legal. Last year, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment ensuring access to abortion.
Mr. Moreno, the first-time political candidate who is backed by Mr. Trump as well as tens of millions of dollars from the cryptocurrency industry, last month created a clear opening for attack on the topic when he lamented that so many women were what he called “single issue” voters on abortion rights.
“It’s a little crazy, by the way — especially for women that are, like, past 50,” Mr. Moreno said at a town hall in September. “I’m thinking to myself: I don’t think that’s an issue for you.”
Mr. Brown’s campaign has seized on the gaffe, which Democratic operatives have described privately as the kind of comment you cook up in a lab to lose an election. His aides have rounded up offended conservative women to respond on his behalf.
“How insulting was that?” said Elaine Nishwitz, 82, who introduced herself on a Zoom call hosted by the Brown campaign as the Republican wife of a farmer from rural Piqua. “We have daughters; we care about their future.”
“Bernie Moreno frankly appalled me,” said Penny Schmitthenner, a 63-year-old former Republican voter. “Call me crazy, but I was appalled by his remarks.”
Mr. Moreno has brushed it off as a quip that fell flat, but Mr. Brown is not letting go.
“I don’t think people should joke about women’s health,” he said, adding that Mr. Moreno “also said he was 100 percent pro-life with no exceptions. He has been on the wrong side of the issue.”
Aftab Pureval, the mayor of Cincinnati, attributed Mr. Brown’s survival as one of the last red-state Democratic senators to his status as “a known quantity” in Ohio. “He has so many personal relationships, it’s hard to paint him as any other D.C. politician. He’s worked so hard not to be.”
But Mr. Moreno has tried.
“He wants to be there for 36 years; maybe he wants to be Dianne Feinstein, vote on Thursday, die on Friday,” Mr. Moreno said of Mr. Brown, standing on the porch of a supporter’s home in Circleville last Friday. “That’s not the way politics should work.”
He claims that a young Mr. Brown once said, “If you’ve been in Washington, D.C., for more than 10 years, you’re probably a crook.”
But while Mr. Brown early in his career supported term limits, Mr. Moreno’s campaign could not cite any record of him ever referring to longtime lawmakers as crooks.
Democrats were relieved when Mr. Moreno emerged as the nominee after a competitive Republican primary. They saw him as the weakest possible candidate in a general election, given the fact that he had been sued by former employees for not paying them overtime, and then lost or destroyed evidence to avoid paying them. He also falsely claimed that he never sold Chinese-made cars on his lots.
“He has no history of public service, no history of working on these issues — he’s a rich guy trying to buy it,” Mr. Pureval said. “The only thing people know is he’s a rich guy who has a history of stealing from his employees.”
Mr. Moreno and his wife, Bridget, do, in fact, look very rich and present a strikingly different image from Mr. Brown and his wife, Connie Schultz, who joke about how often the senator has been described as “rumpled.” The Morenos’ teeth are straight and bright white, their skin is smooth and their hair is perfectly coifed, so much so that they did not blend into the crowd at the annual pumpkin festival in Circleville, where they spent Friday evening greeting voters.
Mr. Moreno, who made his $100 million fortune buying and selling car dealerships, was recognized by many people as he walked through the throngs, shaking hands and posing for selfies. That is because if you watch “Jeopardy,” or Ohio sports on television, you have seen his campaign ads so often you can probably recite them by heart.
“I’ve seen you on TV!” a child shouted at him from over the carnival dart game.
“Too much, right?” Mr. Moreno replied. “Just 18 more days and you won’t have to do that anymore. I’m sorry.”
Mr. Moreno cites his lack of experience in politics or public service as a selling point. He touts himself as a self-made businessman who came to the United States from Colombia as a child and created wealth for himself and jobs for his community, glossing over the fact that he was born into a rich and politically connected family in Bogotá to parents educated at elite American universities.
And he appears to have adopted the Trumpian view of politics that doubling down is better than apologizing.
“What are you gonna do,” he told Megyn Kelly during a podcast interview, addressing the outrage directed at him for his statement on older women and abortion. “If you wake up every day waiting to be insulted or outraged, it’s a pretty sad life. Sometimes quips are made; sometimes they land, sometimes they don’t.”
He has sought to turn the issue around on Mr. Brown, accusing him of voting to preserve access to a procedure sometimes used to terminate pregnancies after the first trimester that critics call “partial-birth abortion.” (As a congressman in 2003, Mr. Brown voted against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, which many Democrats opposed, arguing it could hamper access to a broad array of abortion methods.)
“Is that Ohio values? I don’t even think that’s Massachusetts or California values,” Mr. Moreno said on Friday night.
He also routinely disparages Mr. Brown for his record on social and immigration issues. “He’s voted against allowing only American citizens to be counted in the census,” Mr. Moreno said. “Sherrod wants to count citizens and noncitizens; what say you?”
Mr. Brown, along with all Senate Democrats, voted in 2022 against a measure that would have barred noncitizens from being counted in the census. Democrats have long rejected such proposals as unconstitutional moves by Republicans aimed at weaponizing the census, which dictates the allocation of congressional seats, for political advantage.
Josh Mandel, the former Ohio State treasurer who ran unsuccessfully for Senate three times, said Mr. Moreno would be the Republican to finally topple Mr. Brown.
“He’s seen as a tired old politician of yesteryear who is in lock step with Kamala Harris,” Mr. Mandel said. “When voters go to the polls in Ohio, they’re going to see Sherrod Brown and Kamala Harris tied at the hip.”
In an interview, Mr. Brown was uninterested in discussing how Democrats have lost Ohio voters, or how the political landscape in his state has shifted under his feet.
“I don’t spend time thinking about that; it’s not a productive use of my time,” he said. “I think the message I used for my whole career still works: Stand up for workers.”
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