New ad in key Ohio Senate race touts a vulnerable Democrat's work with Trump

CLEVELAND — A new ad in Ohio’s slugfest of a Senate race draws a positive link between vulnerable Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown and former President Donald Trump, whose past electoral victories here reinforced the state’s heavy Republican lean.

“He wrote a bill that Donald Trump signed to crack down on drugs at the border,” Scott, a Marine Corps veteran and retired detective who lost his son to an opioid addiction, says of Brown in the spot from Duty and Honor, a Democratic group tied to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. “Sherrod’s work will prevent more families from having to go through what we did.”

The ad, shared first with NBC News, will debut Friday on statewide TV and digital platforms and is backed by $2.4 million.

“Sherrod Brown worked across the aisle to pass a bill that increased law enforcement’s ability to crack down on the flow of fentanyl because he is putting the needs of Ohio families first,” Duty and Honor President JB Poersch said in a statement. “Ohio deserves to know that Brown is an independent leader, who will work across the aisle to get things done for Ohio.”

Brown faces Trump-endorsed Republican Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer and blockchain entrepreneur, in a general election that’s expected to see hundreds of millions of dollars in spending. Brown and Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, another red-state Democrat up for re-election, are key to their party’s thin Senate majority.

The Duty and Honor ad represents the first general election push in Ohio by a Schumer-aligned constellation of outside money groups that includes Senate Majority PAC. Another affiliated organization, Duty and Country PAC, aired an ad touting Moreno’s conservative credentials in the final days of the Republican Senate primary — a move widely viewed as an effort by Democrats to influence the results and draw their preferred general election opponent.

Since the March 19 primary, campaigns and outside groups have spent or reserved more than $200 million to advertise in Ohio’s Senate race through the Nov. 5 election, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Democrats have spent or reserved $112.2 million, Republicans $96.5 million. Those figures could change if airtime is canceled.

The new pro-Brown ad references the Interdict Act, which implemented new Department of Homeland Security measures to prevent fentanyl and other synthetic opioids from flowing into the U.S. Brown, an original co-sponsor of the Senate’s version of the bill, was among those in the Oval Office in January 2018 when Trump signed the bipartisan legislation into law.

“Eleven people a day, in my state of Ohio, die from opioid overdose,” Brown said at the signing ceremony, following remarks from then-Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla. “This is an important bill. The next step is that we actually provide dollars to communities so we can scale up treatment.”

More recently, the Brown-sponsored FEND Off Fentanyl Act passed as part of a foreign aid package signed into law by President Joe Biden. The measure, which Brown introduced last year with Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., aims to disrupt fentanyl supply chains by imposing tougher sanctions and financial penalties on drug cartels and other fentanyl traffickers.

Brown, a longtime progressive, has sought to emphasize common ground with Trump in the past, particularly on issues like foreign trade, which both men approach from populist perspectives.

Trump, who won Ohio by roughly 8 percentage points in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections, has criticized Brown’s efforts to project a collaborative relationship.

“He pretends he’s my best friend, until he gets in and then he goes radical left all the time,” Trump said of Brown at a March rally for Moreno in Vandalia, Ohio. “You know, if you listen to his commercials, he sounds like he’s running with Trump. He’s not.”