Can a Democrat win over rural Ohio? Tim Ryan gives it a shot.
Hemmed by cornfields, Rep. Tim Ryan perches on a plastic picnic bench, his back to a red barn. He smiles at the local farmers he’s just met and who are now sitting at tables arranged in a horseshoe.
Mr. Ryan, who is running to be Ohio’s next senator, wears a scarlet Ohio State T-shirt and jeans. His graying hair is swept back above a square-jawed face. He has the physical build and, when he speaks, the steady cadence of a football coach who won’t yell at you – unless he really, really has to.
He’s come to Honey Haven Farm to learn about the issues affecting farming communities, he tells the dozen invitees. “I came to listen, a lot more than I’ll be talking,” he says.
For the next hour he takes questions and sounds out opinions on landownership, inheritance taxes, soil preservation, and rural infrastructure. Only at the end does the conversation turn politically divisive. Karen Welch, a dairy farmer, asks Mr. Ryan what should be done to protect voting rights. “You’re here because we have votes, not just because we’re great people,” she says. “That is so cynical,” deadpans Mr. Ryan, sparking a round of laughter. “But so true,” says Ms. Welch, grinning.
It’s a relatable moment in a slice of Ohio that Mr. Ryan must win. He is the Democratic underdog trying to fill a Senate seat vacated by a Republican. He faces a well-known GOP opponent, venture capitalist and memoirist J.D. Vance, in a state that Donald Trump won twice and where every statewide elected official is a Republican. Once known as a swing state on which presidential dreams turned, Ohio was trending red long before Mr. Trump showed up. And yet, polls show Mr. Ryan’s race against the “Hillbilly Elegy” author is unexpectedly close, and his campaign may hold lessons for other Democrats trying to win back rural, working-class voters.
The rolling green hills of Ashland are unfamiliar political territory for Mr. Ryan, a
