One Moderate Against the Red Wave

If Democratic strategists could engineer a candidate to test their approach to statewide campaigns in Ohio, the lab might pop out something very close to Tim Ryan. A high-school quarterback who grew up among the Irish and Italian working class in Appalachia’s Mahoning Valley, Ryan can mix comfortably with the kinds of small-town voters who are fleeing his party. Now in his 10th term in Congress, he also holds the experience to navigate tricky political terrain.

“I would argue that Tim Ryan is one of the most skilled candidates of his generation,” says Andrew Ginther, the Democratic mayor of Columbus. “There is no place in Ohio where Tim can go where he won’t connect with folks—whether it’s a church, a labor hall, a corporate boardroom.”

In his campaign for Ohio’s open U.S. Senate seat, Ryan has completed stops in every one of the state’s 88 counties and broken in-state fundraising records, centering his message on economic empowerment for communities left behind by the tech boom and globalization. , he called out China half a dozen times in a refrain that could’ve come out of the mouth of a certain ex-president. A Republican strategist working on the race, who asked to remain anonymous so he wouldn’t be seen as praising an opponent, told me it was “the perfect message for Ohio.”