Democrats won big in Ohio on working-class issues. Can they deliver?
Historians and political scientists say that framing the wins as ‘Ohio’s working class has come home’ is too simple At its peak, the Mahoning valley was once the beating heart of the US’s steel economy – a hardscrabble, heavily unionized Democratic bastion in north-eastern Ohio. But de-industrialization, sparked by the mass closure of steel mills in the late 1970s, transformed the region. Tens of thousands of…
Key points
- Ohio elected a Democratic senator, eight Democratic House members and its first Democratic governor in 16 years.
- Historians say framing the result as the working class coming home is too simple.
- Analysts disagree on whether the Democratic gains mark a lasting political shift in Ohio.
Ohio Democrats won a Senate seat, eight House seats and the governor's office on Tuesday, the state's first Democratic governor in 16 years. Amy Acton, Sherrod Brown and Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker who ran on a workers-first platform, were among the winners as the party's blue wave swept the state.
The results followed years of commentary that Ohio's working class had left the Democratic party. Historians and political scientists told the Guardian that framing the wins as the working class coming home is too simple.
What working class means
Michael Pierce, a labor historian at the University of Arkansas, called the idea that Democrats lost a single block of Ohio voters a false narrative, saying many commentators confuse the white working class with the working class. He said Republican gains came among the rural white working class through a politics of grievance and culture wars.
Vladimir Kogan, a political scientist at Ohio State University, said blue-collar work, lacking a college degree and union membership are almost completely unrelated categories, and that income alone does not define the group.
A lot of commentators confuse the white working class with the working class.
— Michael Pierce
Campaigns and open questions
Acton described herself at every stop as scrappy and from Youngstown, and spoke about living in a tent as an unhoused 12-year-old. Brown framed his race as working Ohioans against billionaires and focused on datacenters, blaming Jon Husted for the 226 now operating in Ohio and tying their tax breaks to rising electricity bills.
Kogan said there is a good chance this is a high-water mark for Democrats, recalling how the party's 2006 wave was erased in 2010. Raymond Irwin said the true test comes next year, when voters ask what they have gotten for their support.
