By Richard Cowan
WASHINGTON, May 5 (Reuters) – Former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown was projected to win the Ohio Democratic primary election on Tuesday, according to media reports, setting up what is expected to be a competitive race with incumbent Republican Senator Jon Husted.
Brown’s bid to win back the seat he held until his 2024 reelection defeat is one of a handful of U.S. Senate races this year that will help to determine whether Democrats topple Republicans’ Senate majority in November’s midterm elections.
Brown was easily outpacing his Democratic primary opponent, Ron Kincaid, a Special Olympics coach and grants officer for charitable organizations. Brown was winning 91.9% of the vote with 24% of ballots counted.
Husted was unopposed in the Republican primary.
Ohio has trended steadily Republican over the past decade, making Brown’s comeback bid – after a 2024 loss – a test of how far President Donald Trump’s declining popularity is reshaping the 2026 midterm map.
Democrats, who entered the 2026 midterm cycle facing long odds of retaking the Senate, now see an increasingly competitive landscape as voters sour on inflation, the war with Iran and other flashpoints of Trump’s presidency.
Brown, 73, lost his 2024 reelection bid to Republican Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer who capitalized on blue-collar workers fleeing the Democratic Party and who was endorsed by Trump.
Husted, 58, was appointed to the seat in January 2025 when then-Senator JD Vance became vice president. The November special election will fill the remaining two years of Vance’s term.
Ohio also will be electing a governor to replace term-limited Republican Mike DeWine. Former U.S. presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy was projected to win the Republican primary, according to media reports. He is a former CEO of a biotechnology company and briefly held a job in the Trump administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency”, which looked for ways to shrink the federal workforce.
Ramaswamy will face Democrat Amy Acton, a physician and former director of the Ohio Department of Health, in the November election. She ran unopposed in the Democratic primary.
Trump is also playing a role in primary elections for the state legislature in Indiana. He is backing opponents of some incumbent lawmakers who blocked a redistricting effort he had sought in order to redraw U.S. House district lines to favor Republican candidates.
With ballots still being counted, two Trump-backed Republican primary candidates were projected to have ousted incumbents and lead in other races, according to media reports. In another contest, an incumbent Trump had targeted for defeat had won the primary.
The Husted-Brown race is seen as a toss-up by some analysts and a competitive race in recent opinion polls, in striking contrast to Trump’s 2024 romp in Ohio, where he beat Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by 11 percentage points.
The Midwestern state, hit hard in recent decades by massive job losses in the steel and automotive industries, is one of four states Democrats plan to pour resources into for a shot at ending Republicans’ 53-47 seat control of the Senate.
DEMOCRATIC PATH TO FLIP THE SENATE
Recapturing the Senate will be an uphill climb for Democrats, who would have to both defend several competitive seats of their own and flip at least four Republican-held seats.
They think they have momentum nationally, however, as voters gauge Trump’s presidency nearly midway through his second term and are unsettled by rising prices of gasoline and other goods, the U.S. war with Iran and migrant deportations that some view as too extreme.
An April 24 to 27 Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Trump’s approval rating was 34%, down from 47% at the start of his second term. Only 21% of adults surveyed approved of his handling of inflation, a leading concern of voters.
Brown’s “economic populism may be uniquely suited to this moment when affordability concerns are paramount,” the non-partisan Cook Political Report said.
Even so, an April 7 to 14 Bowling Green State University poll found that 55% of respondents in Ohio said they considered themselves to be part of Trump’s MAGA movement, which has been embraced by Husted’s Republican Party.
Beyond Ohio, Democrats think they will have a chance of capturing North Carolina’s open Senate seat and a Maine seat held by longtime incumbent Senator Susan Collins, who is likely to face an upstart Democratic progressive with rising national attention.
In a surprise turn, Democrats also hope to be competitive in the heavily Republican state of Alaska, where Republican Senator Dan Sullivan is seen facing former at-large Democratic Representative Mary Peltola, a candidate with proven cross-party appeal.
Meanwhile, Democrats will have to dedicate campaign resources to Michigan, where Democratic Senator Gary Peters is retiring after narrowly winning reelection in 2020. Trump won Michigan in the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections.
Tight races could also develop over the next six months in Iowa, where Republican Senator Joni Ernst is retiring, and in Georgia, a swing state where Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff is defending his seat.
TURNOUT COULD REFLECT VOTER ENTHUSIASM
Political analysts were closely monitoring voter turnout in Tuesday’s Ohio primary elections. A strong showing by Brown could hint at whether Democrats might score an upset victory in their battle for the Senate.
At the same time, three U.S. House of Representatives races in Ohio could also provide clues on Democrats’ more likely chances of winning control of that chamber, which Republicans now hold with a narrow majority.
Last year, Ohio approved a redistricting plan that Republicans drew up to gain an added edge in the November elections.
That has put Democratic Representative Marcy Kaptur’s four-decade House career in jeopardy. While she was projected to win her party primary, her northwest district in the Toledo area is now composed of significantly more Trump supporters, making her an underdog in the general election, according to analysts.
Similarly, Democratic Representative Greg Landsman’s Cincinnati district is now more Republican-friendly, although he is seen holding an edge against Eric Conroy, an Air Force veteran and former CIA case officer who picked up Trump’s endorsement last month and was projected to win the Republican primary.
Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Emilia Sykes’ newly drawn district in the Akron area could boost her prospects in November in a somewhat competitive race with whichever candidate emerges from a crowded Republican primary field. Sykes is unopposed in the Democratic primary.
(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Edmund Klamann and Stephen Coates)
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