YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — In the wood-paneled basement of a union hall, retirees sat in folding chairs last week as they recalled how miles of steel mills and plentiful jobs had slowly disappeared.
“We told our children to get your education, get out, and don’t come back," said Al Antonelli, who has been a member of Ohio Laborers’ International Union of North America Local 125 for nearly 50 years. “Because there’s no future here, especially blue collar.”
Versions of Youngstown’s story played out across the industrial Midwest, where disappearing jobs and frustration in longtime Democratic strongholds helped fuel Donald Trump’s political rise. When Trump visited as president in 2017, he promised the jobs that had left Ohio were “all coming back.”
“Don’t sell your house,” one of the retirees recalled Trump saying during his Youngstown visit.
Nearly a decade later, the old industrial economy Trump promised to revive has not returned, and Democrats hope the political tide is shifting again. Two years after Democrat Sherrod Brown lost his Senate seat, he’s attempting a comeback by trying to win back some of the same voters who turned on his party. Brown wants to harness dissatisfaction with the economy, the war in Iran and the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers to dislodge Republican Sen. Jon Husted in November.
Brown's chances of returning to Washington depend largely on whether he can win again in parts of the state that have spent years drifting away from Democrats. His race is also part of a much broader challenge for Democrats, who need to make inroads in Republican-leaning states like Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas if they are to win control of the chamber in November.
Brown outlasted Democrats’ decline in Ohio — until he couldn’t
For years, Brown was able to outrun the Democratic Party’s decline in Ohio. His pro-labor populism resonated with enough swing voters to deliver decades of victories from the statehouse to Congress.
Trump carried Ohio by 8 points in 2016, four years after Barack Obama won it. Yet Brown won his third term in the Senate two years later, in part by continuing to perform well in places like Mahoning County, anchored by Youngstown.
By 2024, even Brown could no longer hold on, losing his reelection campaign to Republican Bernie Moreno by 3.5 percentage points.
Trump carried Mahoning by more than 10,000 votes, a remarkable reversal in a previously loyal Democratic county that Obama had won by nearly 30 percentage points just 12 years earlier. With Trump’s endorsement, Moreno won the county by just 220 votes.
The transformation extends across the Mahoning Valley. Neighboring Trumbull County went from backing Obama by 23 points in 2012 to Trump by nearly 17 points in 2024.
“The Mahoning Valley has struggled with deindustrialization, job loss for years, and the politicians in power have seemed to understand that, but it doesn’t seem like they were doing enough about that,” said Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich, a politics professor at Youngstown State University. “So at some point, 20, 30 years of supporting the candidates, people are gonna say, well, look, this has never worked for us, right?”
Trump and other Republicans offered voters something different, Leftwich said.
“Did they keep their promises? Not at all. Is the county still poor? Absolutely,” she said. “But they at least said they were going to do something different.”
Brown faces a much different environment this year
Democrats’ bid to flip the Senate requires them to net four seats, including by competing deep in Republican territory.
Two months from the end of midterm campaigns, high gas prices stemming from the war in Iran have compounded discontent with the economy.
Trump has also escalated a trade war with neighboring Canada, a fight with particular implications for Ohio. The state exported $17.5 billion in goods to Canada in 2025, or nearly a third of the state’s total exports, according to federal statistics.
Tension from the economic strain is visible in Parma, a working-class Cleveland suburb that split its ticket in 2024, backing both Trump and Brown. At a watch party for the Republican midterm convention in Dallas, supporters who stayed late into the evening cheered Trump but acknowledged that other issues would most likely determine the midterms.
“The real thing that’ll move the needle is going to be economics. Gas prices, grocery prices,” said Parma City Councilor Kevin Kussmaul. “That’s really what’s going to help.”
Parma Republican Party President Doris Peters said similarly that “everyone’s concerned about the high gas prices.”
“It’s all about the economy," she added. “People remember how much money’s in their wallet and how much is not in their wallet.”
The limits of a Democratic rebound in Ohio
Husted presents a different opponent than the one Brown faced two years ago. His restrained demeanor contrasts with Moreno, the brash former car dealer who entered politics as an outsider. Husted spent nearly 25 years in Ohio politics, as a state lawmaker, House speaker, secretary of state and lieutenant governor, before being tapped to fill Vance’s Senate seat.
But Husted may not need to generate much enthusiasm of his own. Except for Brown and candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court, a Democrat hasn’t won a statewide race for state office in Ohio since 2008.
Adam Radogna, 37, who hosted the watch party Wednesday for Parma Republicans at his Italian restaurant, has attended more than 80 Trump rallies and remains an ardent Trump supporter. But Husted is not someone he’s followed closely.
“I don’t know him at all,” Radogna said of Husted. “But I mean, I will vote for him.”
Brown faces enthusiasm problems of his own as he asks voters to return to a 73-year-old former senator whom they rejected just two years ago.
Ellen Zban, 67, a longtime Youngstown resident who said she leans Democratic but has voted for Republicans, said she won’t support Husted because she doesn’t believe he has listened enough to the community.
“I really don't think he's done anything for us," she said. “We never hear from him.”
But Brown isn’t necessarily the candidate she wishes Democrats were offering either.
“He’s my best option,” Zban said. “But I’d like to see younger people running.”
The race is being flooded with money as both sides try to drum up enthusiasm and define the choice for voters. Husted and allied Republican groups have already spent more than $80 million with $86 million more reserved through Election Day, according to AdImpact. Brown and Democratic groups have spent $69 million, with $67 million reserved.
Elon Musk has also waded into the race through his America PAC, which is running online and streaming ads attacking Brown over transgender issues.
“Billionaires are lying to try and bail out their ‘Golden Boy’ because Jon Husted has always put special interests ahead of Ohio," Brown's campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, said in a statement.
Brown has attempted to make data centers central to the race, an issue that has seen bipartisan outrage in communities across the country. Brown's allies have called Husted the face of Ohio’s data center boom, blaming the massive facilities for contributing to rising electricity costs. Husted helped promote Ohio as a destination for data centers while serving as lieutenant governor.
The ads and backlash have generated enough concern among Republicans that an internal party memo described data centers as an “anchor” around Husted in the race.
“Thirty-two years in Washington turned Sherrod Brown into a liar," Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for Husted, said in a statement. "Jon Husted is fighting to lower costs and help Ohioans keep more of what they earn. Sen. Husted introduced legislation requiring data center companies to pay for the power they use and return excess electricity to the grid."
The state's politics could shift again
In Youngstown, the union retirees who watched the Mahoning Valley shift toward Republicans aren’t convinced the movement is permanent.
Rich Troisi, business manager of Laborers’ Local 127, said Republican candidates in recent elections could win support in the area largely by aligning themselves with Trump. This year, he said, that dynamic may not hold.
“I don’t think Donald Trump's endorsement is going to be what it was,” he said.
Antonelli, the longtime union worker, pointed to independent voters, who he said tend to move with their economic circumstances.
“My dad used to say, it depends on how tight your shoes are. Tight meaning, how’s the money?” he said. “Right now, the shoes are pretty tight, no matter who you are.”
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Associated Press reporter Julie Carr Smyth contributed to this report from Columbus, Ohio.
