‘I think we’re going to win. I’m pretty sure — well I’m sure of it,’ vulnerable Brown told Democratic officials and volunteers on a campaign call.
Seven weeks out from Election Day, one of the country’s most endangered Senate incumbents is cautiously optimistic that he can win reelection against a challenge from Republican car dealer Bernie Moreno — no small feat in this red-trending battleground Donald Trump carried by eight points in both 2016 and 2020.
“I think we’re going to win. I’m pretty sure — well I’m sure of it,” Brown said on a campaign Zoom call with Ohio Democratic officials, activists, and volunteers earlier this week, according to a recording shared with National Review. Declining to mention the 2024 Senate map, which election experts say narrowly favors Republicans, Brown went on to express optimism about Democrats’ chances this fall on the presidential and congressional level: “I think we’re going to win the White House. I think we’re going to win the House.”
Brown, who is now leading Moreno by 3.6 percentage points in the RealClearPolitics polling average, views his own Senate race as being inextricably tied to other Democrats’ electoral fortunes this fall. “I think that — but I’m not going to consider it a total victory in Ohio unless we win Donnelly and Forbes and Stewart, and we win on gerrymandering,” he continued, referencing a few of Democrats’ state supreme court candidates as well as a ballot measure aimed at transferring state legislative and congressional redistricting authority to an independent redistricting commission.
Also on Monday’s Zoom call, Brown urged those working to reelect him against being becoming “too intimidated by the dollars” raised by Republicans working to unseat him. “We have raised close to $70 million already,” he said. “Most I ever spent was about $28 million.” Brown pointed to some of his recent fundraising successes, including his own donation plug on MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell’s TV show, which he said raked in $105,000, as well a fundraising email from California Governor Gavin Newsom that pulled in $85,000.
In this final stretch of the race, ad spending could make or break either candidate’s chances. The Mitch-McConnell aligned Senate Leadership Fund and its group American Crossroads have reserved tens of millions in ad spending to flip this seat. After winning a nasty GOP primary in March, Moreno largely stayed off air until late August, when the campaign pledged a $25 million ad buy on TV, digital, mail and streaming platforms, as Politico reported last month. The campaign’s first 30-second ad in this buy skewered Brown on immigration, laying blaming on the Democrat for the crisis at the southern border and pledging voters that “political outsider” Bernie Moreno will secure the border by “deporting illegals” and “building the wall.”
The Brown campaign’s recent organizing Zoom call also gives a mid-September look at how his team is hoping the senator’s populist approach to campaigning may help him stave off an upset in this state Democrats are expected to lose at the presidential level. Different members of Brown’s political team took turns sharing their outreach efforts to run up electoral margins in different Ohio voting blocs, from black, Hispanic, and Asian voters to labor unions, college campuses, and rural communities.
Brown’s deputy political director Irene Lin, for example, spoke about an “Appalachia listening session” the campaign held on August 28 in Athens that was aimed at juicing rural turnout and featured former governor Ted Strickland and former Representative Zack Space. At the event, Lin explained, campaign surrogates spoke about “saving people’s pensions,” as well as the All-American Flag Act, which requires the federal government to only purchase American flags manufactured in the U.S. “Some of you guys have maybe seen our ad on that, which is, takes place in Coshocton, which is Appalachia rural county, where there’s a flag manufacturing plant,” she said.
Expect Brown to continue leaning into that populist, pro-worker messaging stick heading into November. Pressed in early August by CNN whether he could “defend” Vice President Kamala Harris’s record to his constituents now that she’s the Democratic Party’s nominee, Brown deflected: “My job is to fight for Ohio workers. You can talk about the presidential race.”