Senate race set, candidates eye November election

COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) – The primary election is over, and now the race for U.S. Senate is gearing up. The race will be a close match-up between Republican businessman Bernie Moreno and Democratic incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown.

“The Senate is very close, and Ohio is very important when it comes to that vote,” Democratic analyst Brian Rothenberg said.

“We are at 50/50 [in the make-up of the U.S. Senate], so what both parties are going to look at are those states where a Democrat senator is sitting in a (Donald) Trump state,” Republican analyst Bob Clegg said. “There’s only two: Ohio and Montana.”

Experts on both sides of the aisle said the Moreno-Brown match-up is expected to be close, which is why big money is going to be spent.

“Well over $100 million,” Clegg said. “Maybe a couple hundred million.”

“It will be record spending on the Senate race,” Rothenberg said.

Rothenberg said the Republicans have already allocated at least $89 million for TV ad buys for Moreno, while the Democrats have nearly $70 million for Brown. Clegg said each side will waste no time getting on the airwaves.

“Like today,” Clegg said. “Sherrod Brown had no primary opposition and he’s been up on the air for at least a month.”

Rothenberg said that years ago, campaigns really did not ramp up until July or August, but that the political landscape has changed.

“You’re going to start seeing ads the whole way through, trying to move people and keep people engaged as they go through this,” Rothenberg said.

And Republican Gov. Mike DeWine, who endorsed a different candidate in the Republican primary said, now, all Republicans in the state need to rally behind Moreno.

“It is going to be a very close race. It is going to be a hotly contested race,” DeWine said, “and it may determine which party controls the United States Senate, so there’s an awful lot at stake.”

While November’s General Election is still months away, Clegg said Brown is facing a tough battle. Clegg said Brown has never run in an Ohio that is this red and has never run with someone like Trump on the top of the ticket. Clegg said Brown will need to get hundreds of thousands of Trump voters to split their ticket and side with him.

“When he first ran, yeah, that happened all the time,” Clegg said. “Now the party has become so polarized that that ticket-splitting just doesn’t happen on that same level.”

But Rothenberg said Brown is no stranger to a tough race and it’s Moreno who is going to need to come back to the middle to win the race in November.

“If this becomes about Donald Trump, then Sherrod has a very good chance to win by taking about the bread-and-butter issues that matter to people, and not just Donald Trump,” Rothenberg said. “Moreno is bending over so much to go to the far right, he’s going to have trouble sort of coming back and it's going to become a problem when you’re trying to get independent voters as well.”

Moreno was endorsed by Trump. DeWine said clearly, that carried weight in the state, but he said he does not think it is an indication that what it means to be Republican in Ohio is shifting.

“I don’t know if it’s changing. I mean obviously, you all can comment on this as well as I can, but the Donald Trump impact has certainly been a significant impact,” DeWine said. “I am a Republican, I am certainly going to support the Republican nominee for United States Senate, I’m certainly going to support the Republican nominee for president.”