JD Vance’s deadlocked race against Democrat Tim Ryan for a U.S. Senate seat in Republican-leaning Ohio exemplifies the struggles besetting the GOP seven weeks before the midterm elections, wh…
By Mark Niquette | Bloomberg
Republicans are still favored to win the House, where they need just five seats to take control. But control of the Senate, which is split 50-50 with Vice President Kamala Harris holding the tie-breaking vote, is considered a toss-up. Ohio was once a quintessential battleground state. But Trump easily won Ohio twice, capturing working-class voters disenchanted with the Democratic Party and overwhelmingly carrying rural voters.
Jerry Dobbins of Middletown, Vance’s hometown, said he knows the “Hillbilly Elegy” author and his family, but would vote for him even if he didn’t. A retired manufacturing worker who voted for Barack Obama before supporting Trump twice, Dobbins said Vance, 38, is the better choice. At his rally in Youngstown on Sept. 17, Trump called Ryan “a militant left-winger who is lying to your faces, acting as though he’s my friend on policy, pretending to be a moderate so he can get elected and betraying everything that you believe in.”
Steve Ortner, 55, a grain farmer from Wakeman, Ohio, said he’s voting for Vance by default because he’s a Republican who doesn’t like Ryan, though he isn’t yet sold on the venture capitalist. Ryan, a high school quarterback, responded with an ad in which he throws footballs at flat-screen televisions showing Vance and footage of the attack ads, saying, “I’m not that guy.”