Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call via AP Images
Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) speaks during a campaign rally at the Communications Workers of America Local 4370 in Brooklyn Heights, Ohio, October 26, 2024.
In any neighborhood in Jackson County, Ohio, somebody’s bound to have a story about U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) helping them. That’s what Lisa Parker, the chair of the Democratic Party in Jackson County, says.
“Anything from their Social Security benefits, to they had trouble with the Postal Service. In my family’s case … veterans’ benefits,” she says. “We have a large [Veterans Affairs] hospital that covers southeastern Ohio, which is kind of a medical desert anyway. Sherrod fought to keep that VA medical center open.”
Despite that, Parker still believes that Brown’s opponent in the 2024 Ohio Senate race, Bernie Moreno, will win the county. However, she thinks Brown will win the seat again in a tight race and more of Jackson’s residents will vote for him than expected.
Brown has served in his Senate seat since 2007 and has won re-election easily thus far, with vote counts over 50 percent in each election cycle. This year, alas, seems to be different. In early September, a Bowling Green State University poll showed that Brown led Moreno by five percentage points, as compared to his eight-point margin in 2018. Then a poll from early October conducted by The Washington Post found an even tighter margin, with Brown up by only one point.
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In 2012, Brown won multiple rural counties in the south and southeast of the state. In 2018, he won the major cities and northeast suburbs, but only won a single county in the southeastern, Appalachian part of Ohio, namely Athens—and that only because of its liberal-leaning college town. His declining margins in rural areas are reflective of a larger trend for the Democratic Party, and it might be why he loses.
The rural vote is the difference between another Trump administration or maintaining a blue executive office. Declining news organizations in rural America led to an absence of voter participation. Since rural Ohio, among other states, is without reliable, high-speed internet, face time between candidates is crucial.
For the past two decades, rural voters have steadily shifted farther right. In 2000, the Republican Party held a narrow advantage over Democrats in non-metro areas—only 51 percent. Now, the GOP holds a 25-percentage-point lead over Democratic candidates.
In The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America, the largest, most detailed set of surveys on rural voters to date, agricultural towns say they feel discarded by the Democratic Party.
In the Prospect’s coverage of Project 2025, Janie Ekere found that under past Democratic administrations, neoliberal trade and regulatory policy benefited corporations at the expense of the rural working class, deepening the population’s mistrust of outside politicians. Economic production and good jobs flowed to a handful of booming cities. In rural regions, the Democratic Party became synonymous with expanding metropolitan areas.
Under past Democratic administrations, neoliberal trade and regulatory policy benefited corporations at the expense of the rural working class.
Since 2009, 77 percent of rural Ohio communities have lost population as 700,000 residents, mostly prime-working-age adults, relocated for better jobs. Aging cities were left with many fewer working residents to fund community infrastructure and benefits.
Approximately 160 rural Ohio hospitals have closed since 2010—or about three-quarters of the total—and the 25 percent that remain are on the verge of bankruptcy. Most clinics have cut back their services to save money, leaving women’s health, including maternity wards, on the chopping block.
Medical staff in Holmes and Tuscarawas Counties attribute growing mortality rates to inaccessible health care. Fewer doctors complete their fellowships or establish roots in the countryside. With scattered communication services, unreliable transportation, and underfunded social programs, rural Ohio cannot sustain its population in the long term.
As a result, there is little remaining trust for Democrats as an institution.
So, how did billionaire Trump foster trust among rural voters? The easy answer is to write off these communities as bigoted, and certainly, there are many voters drawn to Trump’s racism. And it’s also true that most Republicans voted for the same trade and deregulation policies that have devastated rural Ohio.
However, Trump is seen as an outsider, and, led by him, conservatives began seizing the opportunity left by prior Democratic administrations. Republicans convinced voters that liberals cannot understand the needs of rural voters because urban, blue-state politicians do not live working-class lives.
At the same time, Trump used all the usual tools of the demagogue to whip up anger and grievance among rural whites by blaming their plight on immigrants, urban minorities, and other out-groups. He saw an opportunity to use non-urban communities as tools and feed on white rural resentment to further divide rural and urban communities.
Trump’s pitch was and is mostly lies. Republicans falsely promise economic prosperity to rural residents, but when it comes time to pass legislation, they do the same thing they’ve done since the 1980s.
Trump claimed his 2017 tax cuts would boost incomes for those making less than $114,000 by $4,000, but in reality they did almost nothing for that group, while corporate profits and executive salaries soared. Just like his predecessor George W. Bush, Trump oversaw a dramatic rise in the incomes of the top 1 percent, while the bottom 66 percent stagnated. The median income for rural Ohioans, by the way, is around $49,000.
BUT BROWN IS ONE OF THE FEW IN EITHER PARTY who have consistently fought against neoliberal policy, and he has prioritized constituent services for all Ohioans, no matter where they live.
He’s one of the few U.S. senators who really do champion the rural working-class voter. He makes it a priority to show up for constituents, not only with a handshake or a smile, but also in his work. And the reason he’s been tenured so long is practically everyone in the state has heard of how he’s helped Ohio communities. That’s a good example for Democrats across the board.
Interestingly, the Biden administration seems to have learned from Brown. The Inflation Reduction Act and other marquee Biden policies do direct billions of investment into rural communities. Unlike Trump’s tax cuts, the red-hot labor market created by the Biden stimulus package actually has reduced wage inequality. But there is a large legacy to overcome, and the investment is only just starting to bear fruit.
“Rural areas have experienced decades of systematic disinvestment and a slogan or a campaign stop is not going to suddenly erase that reality,” Shawn Sebastian, director of organizing at RuralOrganizing.org, says.
Democrats need to show their support for rural communities in more ways than just a campaign speech, because both urban and rural populations are critical to winning elections. Now that the majority in the Senate may hinge on this race, it’s good to have a candidate like Brown, who appeals to rural voters, running.
In the wake of the uncertainty this election cycle has brought, one thing is certain: Brown is not to blame for his race being as close as it is. Being on the same ballot as Trump, in a state where Trump is expected to win handily, against a Trump-backed candidate doesn’t bode well for any Democrat. This is especially true when simply seeing a “D” next to a candidate’s name can turn away so much of a state’s rural population because they feel abandoned.
“Sherrod Brown has always put Ohio over partisanship or politics,” Isaac Wright, co-founder of the Rural Voter Institute, said. “It’s the Democratic brand, not our candidates, that’s the problem.”
