Republican J.D. Vance held off Rep. Tim Ryan to win Ohio’s Senate race, as the state’s yearslong shift to the right proved too much for the Democrat’s stronger-than-expected bid to overcome.
“We just got a great chance to govern and we need to use it,” Vance told supporters Tuesday night in his victory speech.
Republican leaders said they absolutely had to keep control of the seat being vacated by retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman — viewing it as essential to reclaiming control of the Senate, which has for the last two years been evenly split and controlled by Democrats by virtue of Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote.
Vance’s victory justified the decision of Republican groups to splurge on $30 million in spending to counter Ryan, who waged a competitive campaign by running away from national Democrats and attacking China’s aggressive trade policies.
But the result will also feed into the views of national Democrats who considered Ohio a lost cause and mostly focused resources elsewhere in the belief that the state had turned solidly red after former President Donald Trump easily carried it twice.
Vance, the venture capitalist turned Hillbilly Elegy author and first-time political candidate, was able to rally Republican and Independent voters concerned about inflation after emerging bruised from winning a competitive primary in the spring with Trump’s endorsement.
He worked relentlessly throughout his campaign to tie Ryan to Democratic leaders, noting the 10-term congressman voted largely in lockstep with the agenda of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Joe Biden, who is suffering from low approval ratings.
Ryan, whose 2020 presidential run barely registered, emphasized his unsuccessful 2016 leadership challenge against Pelosi. He also highlighted past votes against giving the Obama administration fast-tracking authority over trade deals and supporting some Trump’s pro-tariff agenda as examples of his ability to buck his own party.
But Ryan also positioned himself as a loyal Democrat in many ways, telling voters he supported killing the Senate’s legislative filibuster and expanding abortion access after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade.
Democrats saw silver linings in Ryan’s competitive campaign, noting that Republican groups were forced to spend heavily on what had seemed to be a safe race for the GOP rather than on Democratic-held seats in places like Arizona and Colorado.
And even in a loss, Ryan’s campaign offered a potential formula for how Democrats could reel back some white working-class voters who have turned away from the party in recent elections, running against free trade and globalization that damaged manufacturing states and districts.
In his remarks to supporters, Ryan called his concession call to Vance a “privilege … because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election, you concede.”
Both candidates grew up in Ohio steel towns that lost manufacturing jobs, but Ryan and Vance had contrasting visions for a path to recovery.
Ryan, running on a brand of progressive populism that eschewed focus on cultural issues, embraced the Biden administration’s use of government subsidies to encourage creation of manufacturing jobs in new industries, such as electric vehicles, solar panels and computer chips.
Vance, who wrote about social costs of deindustrialization in his best-selling memoir, touted Trump’s frequent use of import tariffs and said faster development of Ohio’s plentiful natural gas could create an energy boom at a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has constrained global supply and spiked prices.
He portrayed Ryan as a career politician who had failed to stem the loss of manufacturing jobs, while attacking the Democrat’s model of industrial policy, deriding electric vehicle subsidies in particular as giveaways for wealthy people.
And he pledged to bolster U.S. border security to protect jobs, seeking to connect Biden’s immigration policies with increased fentanyl trafficking in Ohio.
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