As a resident of NE Ohio, from my perspective the campaign for Sen. Brown’s reelection is virtually non-existent in NE Ohio.
For probably the last six months Republican attack ads have been unrelenting on streaming TV. For the first four months or so, I will say, the focus was on making Sherrod Brown the lapdog of President Biden, and, more centrally, the cause of high inflation. This has been a full throated effort to tar his policies as damaging to working families.
The Brown campaign has responded with infrequent ads that do not address any of these charges. Instead they cite a bill Brown wrote to fight “Shrinkflation”, putting less product in a carton and selling it at marked up prices. This is wholly inadequate. Who is seriously going to weight “Shrinkflation” as equivalent to inflation as a concept? No one, including myself, has ever even heard that term before. And that is their answer?
After making Brown synonymous with inflation, seeing nothing from Brown personally, they then decided to turn their guns against him as a person, airing ads that have increasingly made him out to be a monster, a Frankenstein. They open with Brown, voice shrill and rising (doubtless digitally altered), saying “It’s just common sense!” then segueing to showing someone allegedly operating on children to turn boys into girls and allow them to turn school athletics into a shitshow, all the while showing a grainy, green image of Brown not looking his best. Frankenstein.
There has been no response from the Brown campaign to push back against these personal attacks. This is campaign malpractice.
Sherrod Brown needs to personally appear in ads to introduce himself to voters as a caring advocate of the middle class. And these ads need to blanket the airwaves in the short time we have left, or I honestly don’t see how he can win this.
