(Bloomberg) -- Josh Ayers is the union shop chairman at an Ohio battery factory, just the kind of blue-collar worker Democrats long relied on but have lost to Donald Trump’s “America first” populist message.
Still, the two-time Trump voter came to a local United Auto Workers hall to hear Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator in a close race for a fourth term, rail against Chinese electric cars and free-trade deals. Brown’s support for organized labor helped earn him Ayers’ vote in the past but the 47-year-old is not so sure this time.
Under Trump, Ayers said, “the economy was way better, things were a lot cheaper.”
The stakes go far beyond the Ohio Senate race, which at nearly $500 million in spending, is on track to be the most expensive US congressional battle in history. A Brown defeat could cost Democrats their Senate majority, a vital asset for the party if it holds the White House and a powerful check on Trump if he wins.
At the same time, Brown’s ability to keep the support of voters like Ayers would show that Democrats can retain at least some of the coalition that has kept them competitive in races across the country despite Trump’s appeal.
The 71-year-old incumbent has a narrow edge in most polls. But in a state Trump is expected to win easily, Brown’s Republican challenger, car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur Bernie Moreno, has been gaining ground.
A native of Colombia, he blasts Brown for supporting policies of the Joe Biden administration that Moreno blames for inflation and an influx of immigrants. He has been bolstered by massive outside spending by Republican-aligned groups as well as $40 million from a crypto industry super PAC seeking to replace Brown — chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and a longtime skeptic of the industry — with Moreno, a booster.
For his part, Brown is counting on his personal brand of supporting labor and opposing trade deals like Nafta decades before Trump entered politics and made protectionism popular again.
Last year, he walked the UAW picket line at Stellantis NV’s Toledo plant and supported the union’s successful push to organize workers at the Ultium Cells LLC factory where Ayers works. This year, he’s opposed Nippon Steel Corp.’s takeover of United States Steel Corp. and pushed tariffs on steel, solar panels and other imported products that compete with those made in Ohio.
On the campaign trail, he rarely mentions Vice President Kamala Harris by name. Instead, he touts administration initiatives that benefited local residents, including saving more than 62,000 union pensions in Ohio, capping insulin costs in Medicare, expanding veterans’ health benefits and sending billions into the state for new bridges and factories.
That kind of bring-home-the-bacon politics used to help senators hold their seats even when voters in their states backed presidential candidates from opposing parties. But such ticket-splitting has faded as political polarization deepened in recent years.
Brown still has the backing of Trump voters like Joanna Colucci, a Trumbull County government worker who praised him for fighting trade deals since the 1990s.
“I trust him,” she said in an interview at the Yankee Kitchen restaurant north of Youngstown. “Sherrod Brown has experience and this guy coming in, who knows what he’s going to do.”
Colucci, 59, objected to Moreno’s recent mocking of suburban women who prioritize access to abortions whenever they want as “a little crazy,” especially if they are over 50.
“The government shouldn’t be involved in people’s personal business,” Colucci said.
Brown has sought to use abortion as a wedge issue in a state that voted 57%-43% last year to enshrine reproductive rights in the state constitution — a measure Moreno opposed.
In the Mahoning Valley, it was the economic dislocations from the collapse of the steel industry and jobs shipped overseas that fueled Trump’s rise. The shift helped turn Ohio from a perennial presidential battleground to one where Brown is the last Democratic lawmaker holding a statewide office.
“People are hurting, and Trump saw this, and Sherrod sees this, and that’s why there are Trump-Sherrod voters,” said David Betras, who as chairman of the Mahoning County Democratic Party in 2016 warned Hillary Clinton’s campaign that she was losing the industrial Midwest. “When you are hurting and you lost your job and your city got beat up, you want someone to see you at least.”
Biden has pointed to the battery plant where Ayers works as a model for how his policies have helped areas like this recover. Ultium, a venture of General Motors Co. and LG Energy Solution, got a $2.5 billion government loan under Biden for three factories, including the Ohio one.
But at the union hall nearby, Brown said presidents from both parties have let down workers with a series of trade deals that sent thousands of jobs to Mexico and China and hollowed out towns across eastern Ohio.
“You know all too well what happens when politicians and corporations sell us out,” Brown told scores of auto workers, many of whom used to work at the massive Lordstown factory that GM shuttered in 2019. He called on Biden to bar sales of Chinese EVs, including ones made in Mexico, that could undercut US automakers and hurt workers at the Ultium factory.
Ayers, for his part, said while he doesn’t like how Trump says things, a lot of good happened on his watch, with inflation under 2%.
He said Biden’s EV subsidies - which Trump has criticized and Moreno opposes - have benefited workers at the Ultium plant, which supplies GM products like the electric Cadillac Lyriq he drives. But he wants whoever wins to tighten the rules so they support only US-made vehicles.
A week after Brown’s speech at his union hall, Ayers said he’s still undecided. “I’m more than likely to not vote for anyone in the Senate race,” he said.
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