Abortion Is at the Center of Ohio’s Senate Race as Brown Battles for Survival

Senator Sherrod Brown has spent his decades in Congress establishing a track record as a populist champion on economic issues. But in the closing days of his re-election race, abortion has become a key emphasis.

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Senator Sherrod Brown is the last Democrat in a statewide office still standing in Ohio, a onetime bellwether that has become a reliably red state that twice voted for Donald J. Trump.

Senator Sherrod Brown, the raspy-voiced Democratic mainstay of Ohio, has spent decades building a political brand focused on opposing free-trade deals that harm local workers and working to raise wages and benefits at home.

Even his signature wrinkled suits are made at a unionized plant near his home.

But in the final days of his re-election race — a contest that is on track to cost half a billion dollars, the most expensive Senate race this year, and whose outcome could decide which party controls the chamber — a campaign built to highlight workers’ rights is instead laser-focused on another issue altogether: protecting access to abortion.

“Bernie Moreno has made it clear he thinks he knows better than Ohioans,” Mr. Brown said at a news conference in Powell, Ohio, last week in which he touted his support for abortion rights and called out his Republican opponent. “These decisions should not be made by politicians. These are intensely, intensely personal decisions, and should be made by women and their doctors.”

Mr. Brown is the last Democrat in a statewide office still standing in Ohio, a onetime bellwether that has become a reliably red state that twice voted for Donald J. Trump. Mr. Brown, who is seeking his fourth term, has managed to keep winning not because of any special charisma, but because of his populist bona fides.

He talks about how cities like his hometown, Mansfield, where he went to junior high school with children of tradespeople who worked in plants, have been hollowed out by globalization, its union workers ignored by what Mr. Brown refers to as “the coastal elites and corporate America.” He has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris, though voters in Ohio will never catch him criticizing Mr. Trump.

ImageMr. Brown talks about how Ohio cities have been hollowed out by globalization.Credit…Maddie McGarvey for The New York Times

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