Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Tim Ryan speaks to students during a campaign stop at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio, on October 19, 2022.
Gaelen Morse/Getty Images
Tim Ryan questioned why national Democrats haven’t gotten involved in his Ohio Senate race.
In an interview with The Washington Post, the congressman spoke of the competitiveness of the race.
Ryan said his campaign shows that the party can still appeal to working-class voters in the state.
Rep. Tim Ryan has arguably run one of the Democratic Party’s strongest Senate campaigns in the 2022 midterm cycle, breaking through with enough voters in Republican-trending Ohio to keep the race competitive against GOP nominee JD Vance — even when many in his party instead looked to Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to flip seats.
Ryan, a ten-term congressman from the Mahoning Valley, has run a deeply populist campaign, traveling to diners and union halls across the state and preaching against unfettered free trade to try to replicate a coalition of working-class voters that used to boost Democratic candidates in the onetime perennial Midwestern swing state. And he has refused to cede any terrain to Republicans, a relief for Democrats who have bemoaned the party’s decline in rural America.
But despite polls showing a tight contest between Ryan and Vance, national Democrats have largely bypassed investing large amounts of money into the Ohio Senate race, which has prompted Ryan to call out what he sees as a shortsighted strategy in fighting for a seat that could be within reach for the party.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Ryan criticized the electoral strategy that national Democrats have pursed as they have struggled to win Senate races in recent cycles in states where they were once competitive, effectively making the party overly reliant on winning in blue states. (Two independents — Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine — caucus with the 48-member Democratic caucus.)
“National Democrats have been known not to make very good strategic decisions over the years,” Ryan told The Post. “There’s a frustration among the rank-and-file Democrats that the leadership doesn’t quite understand where we want this party to be.”
Democrats are defending their fragile Senate majority made possible by dual Senate victories in Georgia in January 2021 and Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking vote in her capacity as vice president. But they are seeking to win in a midterm year when the party in power usually sheds seats, and President Joe Biden’s poor standing in Ohio has been of no aid to Ryan.
In an Emerson College/The Hill poll released earlier this month and conducted among likely voters, Biden’s job approval rating in the state sat at 37%, with 57% of respondents disapproving.
However, the same poll showed Vance only barely ahead of Ryan (46%-45%).
Ohio Republican Senate candidate JD Vance speaks to reporters following a GOP debate at Central State University in Wilberforce, Ohio, on March 28, 2022.
AP Photo/Paul Vernon, File
Despite Ryan’s competitiveness, parties generally have to prioritize races where they have the best chance of winning with a finite amount of funding, and in Ohio — where Democrats not named Sherrod Brown have generally not fared well in recent years — the party’s nominee finds himself in an tough place.
Ryan said that his campaign shows that Democrats can win back many working-class voters who have largely abandoned the party, as many of them backed former President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 before pulling the lever for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. (Obama and Trump both won Ohio each time they were on the ballot in a general election.)
In his interview with The Post, Ryan openly pondered why Democratic Party leaders “don’t smell blood” in taking down Vance, a former venture capitalist who wrote the bestselling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy.”
“We have 350,000 donors,” the congressman told the newspaper. “Those are the people that are frustrated.”
Senate Majority PAC, the major Democratic outside spending group seeking to help the party retain control of the upper chamber, hasn’t contributed to the Ohio race, according to The Post.
However, other organizations have spent at least a million dollars on the congressman’s behalf, per the newspaper.
But Republican groups are now spending more than $30 million to boost Vance, according to Politico.
Still, Democratic-aligned groups are watching the race closely.
JB Poersch, the president of Senate Majority PAC said in a statement to The Post that Ryan is “running a remarkably strong campaign” and noted that the group could still shift its spending plans.
“We’re going to continue making strategic, effective decisions that put us in the best position possible to accomplish our mission: defending our Democratic Senate majority,” he told the newspaper.