Brown became a U.S. senator in 2006 by unseating the then-incumbent, Cedarville Republican Mike DeWine, now Ohio’s governor. Brown drew 56.2% of the vote in that contest. Brown won re-election in 2012 by besting then-Secretary of State Josh Mandel, a Greater Cleveland Republican, with Brown drawing 50.1% of the vote.
And Brown was a third term in 2018 by warding off a challenge from then-U.S. Jim Renacci, a Wadsworth Republican. Brown drew 53.4% of the vote in that race.
In 2016, Donald Trump carried Ohio in 2020 with 53.2% of its presidential vote and in 2016 with 51.3% of the state’s vote.
Presidential popularity is no necessary index of senatorial success. But while Ohio has not flipped politically toward the Republican Party as much as some national bystanders say – after all, the state twice supported Barack Obama – a strong GOP current runs does through Ohio.
Meanwhile, since Ohioans began to popularly elect U.S. senators in 1914, only three senators have won three terns: The first Bob Taft, the Cincinnati Republican re-elected in 1944 and 1950; Greater Cleveland Democrat Howard. Metzenbaum, re-elected in 1982 and 1988; and Brown, as noted re-elected in 2012 and 2018.
And only one popularly elected U.S. senator from Ohio has won a fourth term – Columbus Democrat John Glenn, who beat GOP challenger Mike DeWine in 1992 with 51% of the statewide vote. (DeWine went on to win a Senate seat in 1994.)
What happens in 2024 unforeseeable, with the economy as always pivotal, flanked by Joe Biden’s popularity (or unpopularity), and the state of a world wracked by war in the Middle East, with the Senate having a particular role in United States’ foreign relations. (And ties between Ohio and Israel are long-standing, with Taft, senator from 1939 to mid-1953, a leading, long-time supporter of the creation and defense of Israel.)
With the Senate so closely divided between the two parties, every 2024 Senate race will be closely watched and, in such states as politically split as Ohio, critical to the congressional hopes of both parties. That should make for a Buckeye donnybrook next year.
***
The state Budget Office’s monthly financial report, released Oct. 10, has generally affirmative news for Ohioans – and for DeWine’s administration. First off, the amount of money coming into the state’s main budget account, the General Revenue Fund, is matching estimates made when the budget was written. Translation: Balanced budget, conservatively reckoned. Another plus for the state’s financial strength.
Fiscal-year to date, GRF tax revenues are almost 1% above the estimate used to write the budget. On the spending side spending by the federal-state Medicaid program – priciest line-item in Ohio’s state budget – was 2.7% below the estimates the legislators made.
All told, the number of Medicaid clients declined by almost 68,000 Ohioans in September. Total enrollment was 3.34 million; of them, about 903,000 patients were enrolled as part of the 2013 expansion of Medicaid coverage made possible by the Affordable Care Act – a legacy of the Obama presidency.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
About the Author