By Robert Dean
Guest Columnist
And just like that, Ohio is a swing state. Trump won Ohio three times. And Republicans have been running the table forever. Basically, it’s like midwestern Texas – until now. The Right isn’t so comfortable these days, and they know it. I don’t think Democrats have anything in the bag, but what people are realizing is that politics is like going to a get-together where everyone is lame, and this party sucks. No pun intended.
Jon Husted isn’t exactly a moral or ethical slam dunk, is it? How could working people go to the polls and be hyped when he literally told people to go F themselves in political speak?
Jon Husted is the Republican incumbent holding J.D. Vance’s old Ohio Senate seat, appointed after Vance left to become Trump’s Vice President. He’s a career Ohio politico vampire — former state legislator, Secretary of State, Lieutenant Governor — a safe, unremarkable placeholder coasting to an easy November win. Or he should be. Instead, he’s a liability. He told struggling Ohioans the solution to high prices is to “earn more” and that their “work ethic is broken,” and they’re “not very experienced at navigating the real world” — comments tailor-made for attack ads in a working-class state getting crushed by the Trump economy. He also took over $115,000 in campaign contributions from Les Wexner, a billionaire associate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and is now quietly donating that money out of politics. On top of that, he testified in a public corruption trial involving energy suits who bribed a utility suit — Husted wasn’t accused of wrongdoing, but he was at the dinner.
Sherrod Brown is quietly putting Husted on his heels. His polling numbers are only going up. (Carter County Times readers love a good polling stat.) The RealClearPolling average currently has Husted at 48.5% and Brown at 47.5% — a one-point race. That’s crazy work for a guy who should have this thing locked up. When rural hospitals close and 490,000 people lose their health insurance, this race stops being about Ohio and starts being about whether Democrats still know how to throw a haymaker.
Republicans are dumping $79 million into Ohio — the single largest investment of their $342 million Senate war chest — plus another $8 million from a crypto-backed PAC that spent $40 million against Brown in 2024. Brown has $16.5 million cash on hand, and the race is still a dead heat, which tells you everything you need to know about what Republican money can and can’t buy in 2026.
And the whole time writing this, you can’t help but wish we had campaign finance laws. Half a billion dollars will be spent on fliers you’ll throw away, phone calls you’ll ignore, and commercials you’ll roll your eyes at. And for what? Nothing that’s going to help get food on the table. If we taxed the rich properly and held these red- and blue-tie-wearing used-car-salesman accountable – on both sides – maybe we could see our taxes go back to putting working-class people back on the job. Or maybe retraining people who are losing gigs to AI or rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, but here we are, locked in a race that each party will dump millions into that really won’t do anything but continue to give the screw job to the guy just trying to buy some meat and bread to feed the kids.
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