Three-term Democrat Sherrod Brown is trying to retain a key U.S. Senate seat in an expensive race

COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) — Three-term Democratic candidate U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio faces perhaps the toughest re-election challenge of his career on Tuesday in the most expensive Senate race of the year, as control of the House hangs in the balance.

Brown, 71, one of Ohio’s best-known and longest-serving politicians, faces Republican Bernie Moreno, 57, a Colombian born Cleveland businessman endorsed by former President Donald Trump, in a contest where expenses have increased $500 million.

Trump appeared in ads for Moreno in the final weeks of the election, while Democratic former President Bill Clinton joined Brown for an election rally in Cleveland on Monday.

Brown has defeated well-known Republicans in the past. In 2006, he ascended to the Senate by prevailing over moderate Republican incumbent Mike DeWine, another household name in state politics.

DeWine, who is now governor of Ohio, parted ways with Trump in the primaries and endorsed a Moreno opponent, says Sen. Matt Dolan — even though he backed Moreno when he won. In October, former Gov. Bob Taft, the Republican scion of one of Ohio’s most famous political families, said he was supporting Brown.

However, Ohio has moved sharply to the right since 2006. Trump won twice the state by wide margins and stripped of its state long-standing whistleblower status.

Brown’s campaign has tried to appeal to Trump’s Republicans by highlighting his work with presidents of both parties and by wooing independents and Democrats with ads touting his fight for the middle class. In the final weeks of the campaign, he came down particularly hard on Moreno on abortion, putting him out of step with the 57% of Ohio voters who established by law to access the procedure in the state constitution last year.

Moreno, who would be Ohio’s first Latino senator if elected, has portrayed Brown as “too liberal for Ohio” and questioned his positions on transgender rights and border policies. Pro-Moreno ads portray Brown as an extension of President Joe Biden and his vice president, Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, particularly on immigration issues. That then blew up as a campaign issue in the state Trump wrongly claimed during his debate with Harris that immigrants in the Ohio city of Springfield were eating people’s pets.

Brown remained slightly ahead in some polls heading into Election Day, though others showed Moreno — who has never held public office — successfully closing the gap in the final stretch. Trump’s endorsement has yet to fail in Ohio, even when he backed first-time Senate candidate JD Vance – now his running mate – in 2022.

Because Moreno and his Republican allies consistently outspent Democrats during the race, they wanted to chip away at Brown’s favorable rating among Ohio voters. He remains the only Democrat to hold a non-judicial statewide office in Ohio, where the Republican Party controls all three branches of government.

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