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l An article in today’s Magazine
section, which was printed in
advance, about Georgia political
hopeful and former athlete
Herschel Walker incorrectly said
that Donald Trump tweeted
“Run Herschel, run!” in March- Trump, who had been
banned from Twitter two months
earlier, said it in a statement
released in March 2021. The
article also incorrectly said that
Trump admonished Georgia Gov.
Brian Kemp to find 11,780 votes
to reverse Georgia’s electoral
results. Trump pressured
Georgia Secretary of State Brad
Raffensperger.
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HANNAH BEIER/REUTERS
J.D. Vance, above, the Republican nominee in Ohio’s Senate race, speaks Friday in Greensburg, Pa., before former president Donald
Trump took the stage. Vance is running against Rep. Tim Ryan. Each will both try to claim the mantle of populist ally.Few issues have
vexed Democrats
more than the
long-running
defection of
White, working-
class voters to the
Republican Party.
Ohio’s upcoming
Senate race will
test whether
Democrats have a formula to win
some of them back.
Ohio Republicans have just
come off one of the most
expensive Senate primaries in
history, with a fractured field
and a fractious, months-long
debate. The winner was J.D.
Vance, a Yale-educated, Silicon
Valley venture capitalist who
surged at the end of the
campaign after securing the
endorsement of former
president Donald Trump. The
author of a best-selling book,
“Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance had
pilloried Trump back in 2016 but
learned to see Trump in a new
light as a candidate for the
Senate.
The Democratic nominee is
Rep. Tim Ryan, a 10-term House
member who represents a
district in northeast Ohio that
has suffered through the decline
of manufacturing in the United
States and the shipment of jobs
overseas. He is a graduate of
Bowling Green University and
Franklin Pierce School of Law.
Ryan once challenged House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
for the post of House Democratic
leader and unsuccessfully sought
the Democratic presidential
nomination in 2020. He is a
centrist who has become more
progressive, once was opposed to
abortion rights and now
supports them. He has
consistently opposed free-trade
agreements that have hurt his
district and the whole state and
has come out of the gate
denouncing those in his party
who have called for defunding
the police.
As the race sets up today, it
will feature two candidates who
both will try to claim the mantle
of populist ally of the working-
class voter.In his victory speech Tuesday
night, Vance said: “The people
who are caught between the
corrupt political class of the left
and the right, they need a voice.
They need a representative. And
that’s going to be me.”
The next morning, Ryan told
CBS News: “I’m from just outside
of Youngstown. And I take on
whoever needs to be taken on —
China, corporate interests,
anybody who’s coming after my
people.”
The two will be competing to
succeed Republican Sen. Rob
Portman, who is retiring after
two terms in Senate and a long
career in Washington that has
included service in the House
and the executive branch.
Ohio once was a swing state in
presidential campaigns,
although with a slight
Republican tilt. Democratic
presidential nominees generally
saw their vote percentages in
Ohio fall only a couple of points
below their national percentage.
Since Trump arrived on the
scene, that has changed
dramatically. The former
president twice carried Ohio by
margins of eight percentage
points, which by the state’s
standards is a landslide.
The shift has come in the
areas outside the major cities, in
the northeastern part of the
state, in Appalachian counties in
eastern and southeastern Ohio,
and in the rural areas in the
western portions of the state.
Trump rolled up huge margins in
those counties and juiced
turnout as well. Even as urban
and suburban areas were
shifting toward the Democrats,
the other parts of the state were
more than compensating. Some
Democrats now consider Ohio a
red state.
Unlike neighboring Michigan
and Pennsylvania, which share
some of its demographics but
have been friendlier to
Democrats overall, Ohio has
appeared out of reach for
Democratic candidates running
statewide. The lone exception is
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D), whose
progressive populism has helped
him to counter the trends.Which brings the story back to
the Senate race and the populist
rhetoric that will be featured.
But if both Vance and Ryan will
make the claim that they best
represent the working-class
voters, they are likely to do it
from different perspectives and
with different emphases.Vance has become a disciple of
Trump’s anti-elite posture. From
the viewpoint of his campaign
team, the core appeal will be to
voters who they believe have lost
trust and faith, who feel not just
economically stressed but, more
important, left behind and
disrespected by the ruling
political powers in Washington
and the cultural and economic
elite — what one Vance adviser
called government, media, big
business, universities and
nonprofits.
“The middle class and
working middle class feel like
everyone has turned their back
on them,” said the Vance adviser,
who spoke on the condition of
anonymity to talk about
campaign strategy. “It’s not just
stupid decisions [by government
and others]. It’s just, ‘You really
don’t care about us.’”
Vance’s advisers do not think
the candidate’s conversion from
Trump foe to Trump acolyte will
be an issue of concern in the
general election, although they
anticipate that the news media
and Democrats will try to keep it
in focus. Their view is that the
media and Democrats are out of
touch with those disaffected
voters.
That’s the challenge for Ryan,
to find some way to appeal to
and connect with voters who’ve
lost faith in the Democratic Party
and who feel the party no longer
reflects either their values or
their interests. “There’s no
question that those folks have
drifted away,” said a Ryan
adviser who also spoke on the
condition of anonymity to talk
candidly about the campaign.
“We have to be there, we have to
talk with these folks. They have
to meet Tim. His ads have to be
on target. People need to feel
that he has their interests and
their backs. We have to contrastJ.D. Vance.”
Ryan already has signaled in
his ads how he hopes to do this.
He will try to separate himself
from those aspects of the
Democratic Party that have
alienated working-class voters.
Beyond the issue of crime and
funding the police, he will
highlight problems on the
border and the issue of
immigration. He will run hard
against China and free-trade
pacts generally.
And he will try to portray
Vance as the elitist in the race,
someone who had left Ohio to
make his money and whose
candidacy was aided by millions
of dollars from the billionaire
venture capitalist Peter Thiel.
Some Democratic strategists say
Ryan will have to make the issue
of money and corporate power a
central part of his message
against Vance to appeal to
disaffected working-class voters.
Ryan also hopes to skirt the
issue that has been a major
reason Democrats have lost
support among working-class
voters. “You want culture wars?
I’m not your guy,” he says in one
of his ads. But that doesn’t mean
cultural issues won’t be part of
the campaign and potentially to
the detriment of the Democrat.
The one wild card there will
be abortion. Ryan once called
himself pro-life but gradually
shifted to support abortion
rights. The possible overturning
of Roe v. Wade will inject the
issue into virtually every
campaign this fall, and both the
Vance and Ryan teams will have
to navigate the new landscape.
For Ryan, it’s a p otential help in
the state’s suburban areas.
Democratic pollster Stan
Greenberg said Ryan has the
potential both to win support
from working-class White voters
who have drifted away from the
Democratic Party and potentially
gain support from establishment
Republicans who have become
disenchanted with a party
dominated by Trump. But, like
others, Greenberg sees Ohio’s
overall landscape as challenging
for a Democrat and the national
trends in this election year as
formidable for Ryan’s candidacy.
Given those two factors, plus
the fact that twice as many
Republican ballots were cast
Tuesday as Democratic ballots,
Vance begins the general
election campaign as the
favorite, although both sides
expect a tough and competitive
race.
Ryan appears better
positioned than some others in
his party to bid for the support of
voters whom the Democratic
Party has lost over the years. But
he will need to raise buckets of
money, find consistency in his
campaign message and hope
that voters find him more
personally appealing than Vance.
Even then, he’ll have to execute
everything with precision.
Still, there will be few races
that will more fully explore the
issue of why Democrats have lost
ground with voters who once
were an essential part of their
coalition, and whether there’s
any way to halt and reverse those
trends.Ohio Senate race is a battle for working-class voters
Dan Balz
THE SUNDAY
TAKEUnlike neighboring
Michigan and
Pennsylvania,
which share some of
its demographics
but have been
friendlier to
Democrats overall,
Ohio has appeared
out of reach for
Democratic
candidates running
statewide.
TALK SHOWS
Guests to be interviewed Sunday on major television talk shows
9 a.m. FOX NEWS SUNDAY (WTTG)
Sens. Lindsey O Graham (R-S.C.) and Chris Murphy (D-
Conn.).
9 a.m. STATE OF THE UNION (CNN)
Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves (R); S en. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-
N.Y.); Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations.
9 a.m. THIS WEEK (ABC, WJLA)
Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R); S en. Amy Klobuchar (D-
Minn.).
9 a.m. WHITE HOUSE CHRONICLE (PBS, WETA)
Arshad Mansoor, president and CEO of the Electric Power
Research Institute, discusses the institute’s new climate
initiative and electricity as key to the clean energy future.
10 a.m. THIS IS AMERICA & THE WORLD (PBS, WETA)
Sarah Longwell, co-founder of Defending Democracy
Together and executive director of the Republican
Accountability Project, discusses the changing face of
American conservatism, the weakening of democratic
values a nd what the future may hold.
10:30 a.m. MEET THE PRESS (NBC, WRC)
Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.
10:30 a.m. FACE THE NATION (CBS, WUSA)
Oksana Markarova, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United
States; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.); Rep. Nancy
Mace (R-S.C.); Lockheed Martin CEO James Taiclet; former
attorney general Eric H. Holder Jr.
All programs will be streamed
live at washingtonpostlive.com, on
Facebook Live, YouTube and
Twitter. Email postlive@
washpost.com to submit
questions for our s peakers. All times
listed are in the Eastern time zoneFriday, May 6 | 9 a.m.
“First Look”
E.J. Dionne, opinions columnist,
The Washington PostGeorge F. Will, opinions columnist,
The Washington PostModerated by Jonathan Capehart
Washington Post Live
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