Could Religious Bigotry, Racism Benefit Democrats For Once?

Some thoughts about the upcoming elections in Ohio

Democrats are ever hopeful of flipping Maine and even Texas in their respective Senate races. However, Ohio might offer more favorable conditions for white whale hunting.

Democrat Sherrod Brown is staging a comeback for the Senate seat JD Vance vacated in 2025. The Republican incumbent and presumptive nominee Sen. Jon Husted was previously the lieutenant governor, but polling has shown a competitive race. Brown lost the 2024 Senate election by less than four points on the same ballot with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who lost by almost 12 points. Democrats were at a significant disadvantage in 2024. President Joe Biden’s approval had dipped to 37 percent around the Election Day, and most voters believed the economy had tanked and their financial situation had deteriorated over the past four years.

Americans are objectively worse off now. Donald Trump has faceplanted the nation into war, both foreign and domestic, and steered the economy into a ditch. He claims that everything’s coming up Milhouse, but his obvious insanity hasn’t won over voters. History and precedent would show that we’re heading toward not just a Blue Wave but a red bloodbath, which is why Trump so desperately wants to pass the SAVE act. He thinks that will help him steal the midterms, but in this case, the scale of his eventual humiliation is “too big to rig.”

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A March poll had Brown narrowly leading Husted 47 percent to 45 percent with eight percent of voters undecided (you’d never want to order a meal with these people). Healthcare is a top concern for voters, and healthcare is almost always a bad issue for Republicans, who keep trying to take away people’s healthcare. There’s probably a connection.

“Jon Husted’s voting record is clear,” Brown posted last November on social media. “He voted eight times against lowering health insurance costs that are doubling and tripling for hundreds of thousands of Ohioans. Instead, he championed tax cuts for corporations and billionaires.”

Brown was a great senator and it pained me to see him lose to creepy car salesman Bernie Moreno. However, I would love to see Brown return to the Senate in the seat JD Vance vacated.

It’s possible, though, that the Senate race might prove tighter than the gubernatorial one. Incumbent Republican Gov. Mike DeWine is term-limited, and while he’s solidly conservative, he at least presented as relatively normal. That’s not the MAGA way, so the Republican nominee is likely Vivek Ramaswamy, who you might recall from his annoying run for president. Nikki Haley called him “scum” during the GOP primary debates. She didn’t mean it as a compliment, even though these days that might pass for a MAGA endorsement.

Former Ohio Department of Health Director Amy Acton is the presumptive Democratic nominee and at least two polls show her ahead of Ramaswamy. One had her absolutely drubbing Ramaswamy 53 to 43 percent. Another had her just narrowly beating him 45.9 to 44.9 percent. I’ll take any result where he loses.

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Ramaswamy is Hindu, but he’s brown and his name is Vivek Ramaswamy so as far as MAGA’s concerned, he might as well be Muslim. This was clear when Ramaswamy appeared at the Turning Point USA event at Montana State University. One student, who looked like he was about to sing “Tomorrow Belongs To Me,” told Ramaswamy, “Jesus Christ is God, and there is no other God,” one student told Ramaswamy. “How can you represent the constituents of Ohio who are 64 percent Christian if you are not a part of that faith?”

One student reminded Ramaswamy that the late Charlie Kirk’s organization was “founded on Christian values,” which like most white evangelicals, he defines less as “love your neighbor” and more like straight-forward Christofascism: “Isn’t America based on what Protestantism is and based on how those values are? Wouldn’t that contradict what your beliefs are?”

Another student accused Ramaswamy of “masquerading as a Christian,” which he doesn’t. He’s upfront about his faith, which might explain the vicious racist comments on any social media posts featuring his family.

“I’m an ethical monotheist, that’s the way I would describe my faith,” Ramasway said, confusing the TPUSA audience members with the words “monotheist” and “ethical.” He insisted that “I’m not running to be a pastor, I’m running to lead this country.”

This obviously puts Ramaswamy in a weird situation. He told the TPUSA audience, “Last year was a year where we rightly said ‘fight, fight, fight. I think this is the year where we begin to say, ‘unite,’ ‘unite,’ ‘unite.’ We don’t have to be divided. We are stronger as a country when we share the ideals that birthed this country in the first place.” That’s high-minded Obama oratory, not Trump’s hateful rhetoric. Trump is only interested in fighting. He’s not capable of unity. The MAGA movement is one of constant division.

So, Ramaswamy is trying to fake the MAGA funk, which results in him taking positions that his consultants might think will resonate with the base but are actually out of step with the Ohio electorate. For instance, Ramaswamy recently claimed the Buckeye State has too many universities and he wants to get rid of some.

“I love universities in Ohio,” Ramaswamy said in a video his campaign willingly shared on social media. “I want us to have the best universities. We have too many of them. They need to be consolidated. And when you consolidate them, they can actually be centers of excellence, who actually are the best in their respective domains, instead of trying to create replicas and clones of one another throughout the state.”

Political analyst Cliston Brown wrote, “Ramaswamy taking this position that Ohio needs to close colleges — that is a mind-numbingly stupid position to take in a state that has a big number of local colleges and universities that are beloved in their communities and have lots of alumni.”

Acton quickly responded to Ramaswamy’s boner move: “In Ohio, we’re proud of our world class colleges and universities that are centers of community, our economy, create jobs, and produce world class athletes. It’s March Madness, and I’m rooting for our Ohio colleges while my opponent wants to eliminate the teams on your bracket.”

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Ramaswamy supporters — who apparently exist — argue that recent polls are misleading: Ohio Republicans eventually rally behind their nominees. Also, Ramaswamy is doing well among independents — presumably in internal polls conducted among his own household.

Ohio has drifted steadily rightward over the past decade, but it’s still not necessarily a slam dunk for Republicans. Cook Political Report rates the partisan lean in Ohio as five points in the GOP’s favor. That’s slightly less than Kansas where Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has won twice, including in 2022 — a bad year for Democrats, but 2026 could deliver a wave blue enough to wash out Republicans in Ohio.