Vice President JD Vance closed his campaign for Ohio Republicans where his own Senate career began, headlining an election-eve rally near Toledo on Monday with Donald Trump Jr., gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy and Sen. Jon Husted, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
The Swanton rally was the sixth Ohio campaign stop in six weeks by either Vance or President Donald Trump, The Columbus Dispatch reported, underscoring how much of the national midterm fight runs through Ohio this year. “I am closing out this campaign right where it all started for me, the great state of Ohio, because I know you’re going to choose right tomorrow,” Vance told the crowd, according to USA TODAY.
At the center of the stop was the race for Vance’s old Senate seat. Husted, the former lieutenant governor appointed last year to fill the vacancy, faces former Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is seeking a comeback two years after losing reelection. The winner serves the remaining two years of the term, and the nonpartisan Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up, USA TODAY reported. A New York Times/Siena poll released Nov. 2 put Brown at 49 percent and Husted at 44 percent, according to USA TODAY.
“It’s definitely personal to me, and hopefully he’s going to pull it out. I feel good about it,” Vance told USA TODAY of Husted on the Joint Base Andrews tarmac. On stage near Toledo, he urged the crowd to back Republican Derek Merrin in Ohio’s battleground 9th Congressional District, held since 1983 by Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur. “You can vote for the crazies, or you can vote for a guy like Derek Merrin,” Vance said, according to The Columbus Dispatch. “You make an Ohio boy proud, but don’t chant my name or his name. Get out and vote.”
Ohio voters will also decide the governor’s race between Ramaswamy and Democrat Amy Acton on Tuesday, along with the state’s other statewide offices and several battleground U.S. House seats that could shape control of Congress, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Democrats held their own election-eve rally in Columbus, where Acton pledged to make life more affordable for families. “This is not about party,” Acton told supporters, according to The Columbus Dispatch. “This is about extreme wealth, power, special interests and ideology against the rest of us.”
Voters at the Toledo-area rally offered a different read. Heather Mullins of Maumee, who brought her daughter, told The Columbus Dispatch she wants to see Republicans do more over the next two years: “I want to hear the plan for how we move forward. I need something tangible.” David Subleski of Toledo told The Columbus Dispatch that Democrats had left Ohio behind as factories closed.
About 1.7 million Ohioans had already cast ballots during early voting before the final rallies, according to The Columbus Dispatch. Polls are open Tuesday from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., and results in the Senate and governor’s races will be among the most closely watched in the nation on election night.