Republican senators vying for re-election this year have had to contend with a cratering economy and an unpopular president. Senator Jon Husted of Ohio appears to have an additional challenge: Even some of the state’s most devoted conservatives don’t know who he is.
Mr. Husted’s Democratic opponent is Sherrod Brown, a fixture in Ohio politics since the 1970s, who lost his Senate seat two years ago. Mr. Brown’s renown has become something of a liability for the sitting senator, who needs the state’s MAGA-friendly Republican base to care enough about the seat to vote in a year when President Trump is not on the ballot.
But being perceived as the challenger may also benefit Mr. Husted at a moment when voters are struggling economically and don’t think Congress has done enough to help. With polls showing Mr. Brown and Mr. Husted in a tightening race, the Republican’s campaign has leaned into the misconception, spending millions of dollars on ads that refer to his opponent as “Senator Sherrod Brown.”
“I don’t know a whole lot about Husted,” said Debbie Grenko, 67, a Republican, as she stroked her pony, Spirit, at the Delaware County Fair in central Ohio last week. “It’s Sherrod Brown in there, right?”
One Republican strategist in Ohio, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the race, said the campaign was intentionally casting Mr. Brown as the incumbent, a rare opportunity amid dismal Republican approval ratings for the party to harness anger at the status quo.
“Name ID is not everything,” said Drew Thompson, Mr. Husted’s campaign manager. Ohioans, he said, “are familiar” with Mr. Brown’s record “and they rejected it two years ago.”
The approach has reached some voters, including Ted Hull, who on Wednesday night was watching a “wiener dog race” at the Delaware County Fair. He said he planned to vote for Mr. Husted. Mr. Hull, 72, said that Mr. Brown, whom he thought was still in office, seemed to have “become lazy” on the job.
“There should be term limits,” Mr. Hull said.
Mr. Brown served for nearly two decades in the Senate and 14 years in the House of Representatives. Mr. Husted was appointed to the Senate two years ago, when JD Vance vacated the seat to become vice president. A former lieutenant governor and speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, Mr. Husted is far from the firebrand that many have come to associate with the modern Republican Party. He is mild-mannered and more comfortable talking about economic policy than rousing a crowd.
Quality polling on Ohio is limited, but one poll released last week found that nearly a quarter of voters believed Mr. Brown was the incumbent.
The high-stakes race has become one of the most expensive in the country, with nearly $400 million of spending on advertisements, according to AdImpact, for a seat that both parties believe could determine control of the Senate. So far, Republicans have outspent Democrats by more than $75 million. The cryptocurrency industry’s main super PAC, Fairshake, launched a $30 million advertising campaign against Mr. Brown last week.
Mr. Trump plans to campaign in Ohio on Saturday, the Republican National Committee announced. It will be the first of “more than two” trips the president hopes to make before Election Day, according to one person familiar with his plans who was granted anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.
In Washington, Senate Republicans are also hoping to help Mr. Husted this week by voting on a bill to address the growing data center backlash by encouraging — but not requiring — state utility regulators to insulate consumers from rising energy costs associated with the facilities. Mr. Husted put the bill forward himself, after Democrats blitzed the airwaves with ads seeking to define Mr. Husted as the “face of data centers” in Ohio.
As lieutenant governor, before public backlash had emerged about rising energy costs and unsightly development associated with data centers, Mr. Husted supported tax incentives for such projects. In August, the National Republican Senatorial Committee circulated a memo warning that data center politics was endangering him.
All of these dynamics have left both sides bracing for a nail-biter in a red state that Mr. Trump won two years ago by double digits, according to a half-dozen Democratic and Republican operatives interviewed by The New York Times.
“The environment is bad, but there is a sense in D.C. that this race is over, and it’s not,” said Jai Chabria, another Republican strategist in Ohio and one of Mr. Vance’s top political advisers. “Senator Husted is in a much better position than is conventional wisdom.”
The landscape is tough across the country for Republican incumbents, with prices persistently high and Mr. Trump’s approval rating hovering near an all-time low for modern presidencies. In Ohio, fluorescent signs remind voters that gas frequently costs more than $4.40 per gallon. At the height of harvest season, diesel was even more.
For their part, Mr. Brown and Democrat-backed PACs have sought to take advantage of Mr. Husted’s relative unknown, with ad after ad trying to define him before voters hear from the senator himself. Aside from data centers, the ads also highlighted Mr. Husted’s votes to cut federal health care benefits.
“Sherrod has done a really good job reminding Ohio voters that he was one of the original economic populists in Ohio,” said Aaron Pickrell, a Democratic strategist who ran former President Barack Obama’s campaign in Ohio in 2012, the last year the state was truly a presidential battleground. “This race is extraordinarily close.”
Some of the attacks against Mr. Husted appear to be working. Ben Meddles, 55, a firefighter in central Ohio, said he regretted voting for Mr. Trump, and that in turn was affecting his choice for Senate.
“You go in to vote and you feel good,” said Mr. Meddles, watching his daughter’s dachshund Frankie compete in the “wiener” dog race. “And then sometimes, six months to a year later, you’re sorry for the way you voted.”
He said he was frustrated with the president for starting a war with Iran, imposing tariffs on Canada and spending so much time trying to take control of Greenland, which Mr. Meddles dismissed as “showboating.” It all felt like a distraction, he said, from the president’s failure to deliver his signature campaign promise: economic relief at home. That promise, Mr. Meddles said, was why he had cast three ballots for Mr. Trump over the last decade.
Mr. Meddles, who said he makes about $80,000 annually, wanted to make sure he chose a candidate who had shown that they would focus on improving the economic outlook. Mr. Husted “hasn’t stood out in the crowd doing anything good,” he said.
Mr. Husted will need to balance keeping enough distance from the president to retain voters frustrated by his second term while also embracing Mr. Trump enough to energize the conservative base, several Republican strategists said in interviews this week.
In the last few months, Mr. Husted has spoken at the Republican Party’s midterm convention in Dallas and appeared with Mr. Vance at a steel manufacturing plant in Ohio. Last week, Mr. Husted voted to block a resolution that would have required Mr. Trump to seek congressional approval to continue the war with Iran.
But he has also stressed that he wants to see a swift end to that war. On Friday, at a manufacturing company outside of Cleveland, Mr. Husted declined to answer questions from a reporter about whether he supported the White House’s handling of the war, which has driven up gas and diesel prices.
At the fair, Ms. Grenko had spent nearly $7 per gallon on diesel to fill up the five trucks she needed to cart her ponies to the event.
That cost had been so crippling, she said, that she swapped her favorite mac-and-cheese brand, Kraft, for the Great Value version sold at Walmart. She also started to buy off-brand coffee creamer and toilet paper, and to eat more rice each week to fill up.
In some ways, Ms. Grenko embodied both the opportunities and the challenges facing Mr. Husted. A loyal Trump Republican who gets her news exclusively from Fox, Ms. Grenko said she didn’t mind making those sacrifices if Mr. Trump was doing what he thought was best for the country.
But her willingness to give up comforts for Mr. Trump does not mean she will vote for Mr. Husted, given how little she knows about him.
“I want him to step out, step up and say, ‘OK, this is what I think,’” she said, an American flag blowing in the wind behind her.
“Like Trump,” she continued. “Trump’s not afraid to say what he stands for.”
