Ohio Senate candidates downplay climate action in closely contested race

This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, independent news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.

JEFFERSONVILLE, Ohio — A massive construction site near this rural Ohio village will soon be a factory making electric vehicle batteries for Honda.

This $3.5 billion project will benefit from tax breaks under the Inflation Reduction Act, a climate and energy measure that was designed to increase domestic production of equipment related to renewable energy and EVs. The bill passed, in 2022, by a single vote.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, voted for the legislation and can see the results with thousands of new jobs and revival of manufacturing, here in Jeffersonville and across the state.

But the IRA is not a major part of the campaign as Brown seeks re-election against Bernie Moreno, a former car dealer. Instead the candidates are focusing on who can better resolve pocketbook issues for workers and seniors, and who has a better plan for dealing with crime and border security.

Climate change is rarely acknowledged, even though the outcome of this race could shape the future of U.S. climate and energy policy. If Brown loses, there is almost no chance that Democrats will retain control of the Senate, making it difficult to pass legislation even if they win the presidency.

At the same time, former President Donald Trump is poised to win in Ohio in November, as he did in 2016 and 2020. To retain his seat, Brown will need votes from Trump supporters, a reality that may be shaping which issues get discussed.

The Jeffersonville battery plant, a joint venture of Honda and LG, would employ 2,200 people. The influx of jobs is leading developers to propose new housing. The arrival of new residents could help to revitalize the village with a population of about 1,300, whose downtown is now dotted with vacant storefronts.

Honda and LG announced plans to build the Jeffersonville factory in October 2022, two months after President Joe Biden signed the IRA, but the idea of the plant had been in the works for a while.

Even though the plant might exist without the IRA, tax credits in the law are helping it to succeed by reducing Honda and LG’s costs of developing the project and giving consumers credits of up to $7,500 for buying EVs.

Asked about how the law affects the plant, a Honda spokesman said the IRA “will be instrumental in supporting the nation’s transition to cleaner vehicles.”

What Working People Want

Few voters or local leaders in the village are giving Brown or the IRA credit for helping support the plant, based on interviews.

That’s not surprising to Ned Hill, an economic development professor at Ohio State University.

“It isn’t like a public works project, where it has this big sign that says ‘brought to you by the federal government,’” he said.

Fayette County, which includes Jeffersonville, is located about halfway between Columbus and Cincinnati and leans strongly Republican. Trump won it with 75 percent of the vote in 2020.

The central square in the county seat, Washington Court House, is home to a big office of the county Republican Party and a smaller one for the county Democratic Party.

Even at the Democrats’ offices, the volunteers preferred to talk about their support for Brown in general terms as opposed to the specifics of what his actions have done to help the county.

“He’s for the working people,” said Dan Shaw, a retired manufacturing worker.

Gayle Brown, a retired school bus driver, said she admires the senator because of what he’s done to protect pensions for workers.

They said Sherrod Brown is able to continually get re-elected regardless of the state’s political trends because he has strong connections to working class voters and people in rural areas.

While they are fond of Brown, they think one of the factors shaping the race is that Moreno isn’t particularly likable. They cite Brown’s attack lines, such as how Moreno has been sued multiple times for not paying workers at his auto dealerships.

They don’t expect Brown to win Fayette County, but they are hoping to keep it close enough that he can win statewide.

Rep. Bob Peterson, a Republican who represents the area in the Ohio House of Representatives, said he has positive working relationships with both Brown and Moreno, but thinks it’s time for Brown to go after about 50 years of serving in state and federal elected office.

“I think there’s a desire for new ideas,” he said.

Peterson describes his district as Republican-leaning but not overtly partisan. He thinks Republicans should get most of the credit for attracting the Honda plant because the tax breaks under the IRA are available everywhere in the country, but it was state and local Republican leaders who helped to create the business-friendly regulatory climate that made Honda choose Jeffersonville.

Contrary to local Democrats, Peterson said one of the reasons he expects Moreno to win is his congeniality.

“Bernie Moreno in particular is one of the brightest, hardest-working, caring individuals that I’ve ever seen run for public office,” he said.

Moving Toward the Middle

Brown, 71, has talked about the transition to cleaner energy in terms of the jobs it can provide.

“I’ve always refused to accept the idea that we have to choose between good environmental policy and good-paying jobs,” he wrote on his Senate website. “We can take aggressive action to combat climate change, and put Americans to work.”

But he is not emphasizing this in the campaign. Instead, he focuses on jobs and the economy, with messages about improving pay and working conditions and standing against business and political interests that don’t care enough about workers.

Brown has a 94-percent lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters. When he has voted against the environmental group’s agenda it has often been because of concerns about jobs and the economy. For example, he voted against a measure in 2023 that would have blocked approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a project that would transport natural gas from West Virginia to Virginia.

Brown has pushed back against the idea that he has taken more moderate positions now that he is about to face voters. He has said he always looks at trade and the environment in terms of how it affects employment.

Moreno, 57, has sought to tie Brown to the pro-environment positions of Biden and other Democrats.

“The whole point of the Biden-Sherrod Brown Green New Deal agenda is to force Americans into electric cars that they don’t want, by making gas-powered cars too expensive to afford,” Moreno wrote in a June Instagram post that referenced updated vehicle fuel mileage standards. “Ultimately, these radicals want to bankrupt America’s oil and coal economy.”

As for Moreno’s own agenda, his campaign doesn’t go into much detail. His website lists 16 priorities, including, “Restore American Energy Independence.”

“We should be unleashing American energy and being an energy-dominant country,” Moreno said in a February debate with the other Republicans who were seeking the Senate nomination. “Instead, we have this move toward windmills, solar panels. We need coal, we need natural gas, we need oil. That’s going to drive prices down.”

He cites his experience as a car dealer when talking about why he opposes policies that favor electric vehicles. This is his most direct criticism of the IRA, which he says is subsidizing EV purchases for affluent consumers at the expense of everyone else. (This is a common complaint, but the law has provisions to make sure the wealthiest consumers aren’t getting a tax break to buy the most expensive vehicles, including a $300,000 limit on household income and an $80,000 limit on the price of the vehicle.)

“Dealers are simple people,” he said in an interview last year with CBT News, an outlet that focuses on the auto industry. “If people want pink cars, we’ll stock and sell pink cars. But the reality is, what the marketplace is telling us pretty clearly [is] they’re not ready to adopt electric cars at the scale that the government is mandating them.”

Moreno, who was born in Colombia and emigrated to the United States as a child, would be a first-time officeholder. He rose to prominence as the owner of a group of auto dealerships, starting with a Mercedes-Benz dealership in greater Cleveland that he bought in 2005.

He ran in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate in 2022 but dropped out before voting began.

A lesson from that 2022 race was the importance of gaining Trump’s endorsement, which went to J.D. Vance. Vance won the primary and then won in the general election against Democrat Tim Ryan, and now he is on the national ticket as Trump’s running mate.

Moreno decided to run again and this time he got Trump’s endorsement and won the primary. His GOP rivals included Matt Dolan, a state senator whose family owns the Cleveland Guardians baseball team, and Frank LaRose, the secretary of state.

In the general election campaign, Brown has outspent Moreno and holds a small lead, according to polls.

Hill, the Ohio State professor, knows and likes both men. He used to teach at Cleveland State University, where Moreno was a trustee and a prominent member of the local business community.

“Bernie is an entrepreneur,” Hill said. “He’s a sales guy. He, in some ways, is a ‘ready, fire, aim’ person, which doesn’t always work in the world of public policy. But he’s also very genuine in his exuberant personality.”

One change he has noted in Moreno is a greater emphasis on social conservatism, including limits on abortion. Brown and Moreno have clashed on abortion, with Brown saying Moreno would support a complete ban, and Moreno avoiding use of the word “ban” and saying he supports reasonable limits.

“I think he’s genuinely fiscally conservative,” Hill said of Moreno. “The social conservative stuff is not the Bernie Moreno I know or knew.”

Moreno came under fire in the last week following a town hall event in Warren, Ohio, where he said some suburban women are single-issue voters on abortion and he joked that “it’s a little crazy” that women older than 50 would care about abortion because they are too old to have children.

The comment was widely criticized, including by Nikki Haley, a South Carolina Republican and former United Nations ambassador, who posted on X: “Are you trying to lose the election? Asking for a friend.”

Brown is a familiar figure in Ohio politics whom Hill has known through work on economic development initiatives.

“Sherrod Brown is probably the most genuine human being in the Senate,” he said. “He’s a product of Mansfield, Ohio. He’s a product of 1960s, 1970s union manufacturing. He’s genuinely interested in people with modest incomes and mobility, and he is very progressive, but he’s very progressive in a personal way that Ohio understands.”

A Precarious Path for Climate Action

Even though the candidates are talking little about climate change, this race could help steer the future of U.S. climate policy.

Democrats currently hold a 51-49 majority in the Senate, including independents who caucus with Democrats. The party is likely to lose the open seat Joe Manchin is vacating in West Virginia, which leaves almost no margin for error in close races.

Jessica Taylor, an editor at Cook Political Report, said Brown has a decent chance of holding onto his seat, partly because Moreno defeated candidates in the Republican primary who would have done well in a general election. She thinks Dolan, who finished second in the primary, had the potential to appeal to moderate and independent voters more than Moreno does.

“Of the three candidates, [Moreno] was probably the weakest, and the Democrats have a lot to use against his business record,” she said.

She is not surprised to see Brown placing little emphasis on energy and climate issues and not talking much about the IRA.

“Brown has to separate himself from the national party and sort of run more independent,” she said.

Dan Gearino covers the midwestern United States, part of ICN’s National Environment Reporting Network. His coverage deals with the business side of the clean-energy transition and he writes ICN’s Inside Clean Energy newsletter. He came to ICN in 2018 after a nine-year tenure at The Columbus Dispatch, where he covered the business of energy. Before that, he covered politics and business in Iowa and in New Hampshire. He grew up in Warren County, Iowa, just south of Des Moines, and lives in Columbus, Ohio.

Publisher's note: A free press is critical to having well-informed voters and citizens. While some news organizations opt for paid websites or costly paywalls, The Highland County Press has maintained a free newspaper and website for the last 25 years for our community. If you would like to contribute to this service, it would be greatly appreciated. Donations may be made to: The Highland County Press, P.O. Box 849, Hillsboro, Ohio 45133. Please include "for website" on the memo line.