Ohio Republicans deliberately built a strategy around portraying Sen. Jon Husted as the underdog challenger rather than the sitting incumbent, hoping to capitalize on anti-establishment anger. Instead, the tactic appears to have genuinely confused voters about who actually holds the seat, reported The New York Times.
One anonymous GOP strategist told The Times the campaign intentionally framed Democrat Sherrod Brown as the incumbent, seeing it as a rare chance to channel frustration with the status quo at a moment when the GOP's own approval numbers are dismal. Husted's campaign poured millions into ads referring to his opponent as "Senator Sherrod Brown," even though Brown lost his Senate seat two years ago and Husted was the one appointed to fill JD Vance's vacancy when Vance became vice president.
The confusion is showing up on the ground. At the Delaware County Fair, 67-year-old Republican Debbie Grenko admitted she barely recognized Husted's name at all while grooming her pony.
"I don't know a whole lot about Husted," Grenko said. "It's Sherrod Brown in there, right?"
Another fairgoer, 72-year-old Ted Hull, watching a wiener dog race, said he planned to vote for Husted but believed Brown, who he assumed was still serving, had simply "become lazy" in office. A recent poll found nearly a quarter of Ohio voters believed Brown was the current incumbent.
Husted's campaign manager, Drew Thompson, defended the strategy, arguing name recognition isn't the whole game since voters already rejected Brown's actual record two years ago. "Name ID is not everything," Thompson said.
The Ohio Senate race has become one of the nation's most expensive, with nearly $400 million spent on advertising so far, and both sides now bracing for an unexpectedly close finish in a state Trump carried by double digits in 2024.
Republican strategist Jai Chabria, a longtime Vance adviser, insists the conventional wisdom declaring the race over is simply wrong. "The environment is bad, but there is a sense in D.C. that this race is over, and it's not," Chabria said. "Senator Husted is in a much better position than is conventional wisdom."