Brown Cruises in Ohio Democratic Senate Primary as Republicans Await Result

Senator Sherrod Brown, the only Democrat still holding statewide elective office in Ohio, was renominated for his Senate seat on Tuesday, as three Republicans duked it out for the right to challenge the incumbent in November.

The winner of the Republican slugfest among Bernie Moreno, a wealthy former car dealer with former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, State Senator Matt Dolan, whose family is the majority owner of the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, and Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state, will enter the general election depleted of cash and bruised by the negative primary campaign.

But he will also be running in a state Mr. Trump won in back-to-back presidential elections, in 2016 and 2020, each time by eight percentage points.

Mr. Brown, who was first elected to the Senate in 2006, evinced little concern over his third re-election bid or which Republican would prevail in the primary. The Democrat has made his reputation as a pro-worker politician who has stood against free-trade agreements and stood for unions in a state where the working class has drifted to the G.O.P. since Barack Obama won it twice.

“We will spend this campaign contrasting my position on taking on Wall Street, my position on taking on the drug companies, my position on trade with theirs,” he told reporters on Monday in Dayton, Ohio.

With control of the Senate within Republicans’ reach, Ohio and Montana — the only states where Mr. Trump won in 2020 and a Democrat is standing for re-election — promise to attract huge attention. Democrats hold 51 Senate seats, but one of those, in deep-red West Virginia, is virtually gone with the retirement of the conservative Democrat Joe Manchin III.

The Senate Leadership Fund, a super PAC aligned with