President Donald Trump‘s appearance in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday underlines the Mahoning Valley as a bellwether of whether Democrats can win back the white, working-class voters that have rapidly shifted away from the party in recent years.
Youngstown, which anchors Mahoning County, has historically been the heavily Democratic, heavily unionized home to many so-called Reagan or Blue Dog Democrats.
Decades after Ronald Reagan was able to appeal to economically liberal but culturally conservative Democrats in 1980 and 1984, so too has Trump since 2016 with his Make America Great Again message that, in particular, speaks to the deindustrialization experienced by the Rust Belt states, including Ohio.
That trend has been personified by Democrats’ performances in Youngstown and Mahoning County as voters drifted toward the Republican Party since 2012. In 2016, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton won by 3 percentage points while then-President Barack Obama prevailed in Mahoning County in 2012 by 29 points.
Trump won the area in 2020 by 2 points before padding his victory to 9 points in 2024.
“Hello to Youngstown, a special place,” Trump said on Monday. “We won this thing by so much in Youngstown, all over the state. We had the highest vote in the history of Ohio politics.”
Looking back, Youngstown-born Democratic strategist Jeff Rusnak acknowledged that voter anger and frustration with “pie in the sky” Democratic promises exacerbated the party’s decline in Ohio amid the popularity of Trump’s personality and politics.
But less than a month before the midterm elections, Rusnak, the president and CEO of R Strategy Group, argued Trump has made the same mistake and that there could be consequences for Republicans running statewide in Ohio, particularly Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH) and GOP gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy.
“This is an election where people want change,” Rusnak told the Washington Examiner.
While Republicans concede that Democratic opportunity in Ohio relies on winning back rural voters, some are skeptical they have the message to do so.
“It is true that to have a path back, Democrats need to win rural voters in Ohio,” but “whether they can is another argument we can make altogether,” Republican strategist Matt Dole told the Washington Examiner.
“Mahoning County is a pretty good bellwether as to whether Democrats are making inroads towards their goal of getting more rural working-class voters to come back to them,” Dole added.
To that end, Democrats and Republicans are pouring resources into Husted’s race to permanently replace Vice President JD Vance in the Senate against former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who lost his reelection in 2024 after 18 years in that chamber and 14 in the other.
The pair are in a statistical tie as of Monday, with Brown averaging 47% support to the incumbent’s 44%, according to RealClearPolitics.
Husted’s campaign, however, projected confidence in his race against Brown, noting that the Youngstown area showed Brown the door in his losing effort against Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH) two years ago.
“Voters in the Mahoning Valley fired Sherrod Brown two years ago because he showed up at the picket line, then stabbed union families in the back in Washington,” the Husted spokeswoman told the Washington Examiner. “That’s why labor unions that previously supported Sherrod Brown have endorsed Jon Husted this cycle. They know that Jon Husted will fight for them.”
The governor’s race between Ramaswamy and Democratic nominee Amy Acton is just as close, with Acton averaging 48% of the vote to Ramaswamy’s 44%.
As Dole, a communications consultant at Communications Counsel, emphasized that “midterm elections are rougher for the party of the president than non-midterm years,” he conceded that this year’s cycle will be defined by the “fundamental economic issues,” such as inflation, specifically the price of gas.
“So Trump [came] to make his case as best he can that he has lowered inflation compared to Joe Biden, and ‘There’s still work to do, but we’re making progress,’” Dole said. “Part of what Trump is doing by coming back to Ohio again is to motivate people to go vote on the assumption that there’s an enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats.”
Rusnak agreed that Democrats’ resurgence in Ohio is a result of national politics but added that the state’s candidates have played a role as well.
“Some of this is driven nationally and by the economy, but, look, Ramaswamy is in the pocket of the data centers and is a billionaire who has taken millions of money from these outsiders,” he said. “Data centers are a local issue. Affordability is also a local issue.”
A Ramaswamy spokesperson did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
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Addie Bullock, a spokeswoman for Youngstown-born Acton, said the Democrat is “committed to showing up for Youngstown, just as her community showed up for her when she was growing up.”
“While Vivek Ramaswamy calls Ohioans ‘lazy’ and ‘mediocre,’ Dr. Acton is laser-focused on meeting Ohioans in the Mahoning Valley and beyond about her plans to lower costs, deliver for Ohio families, and build a state where all of us can get ahead,” Bullock told the Washington Examiner.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
