Bernie Moreno, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, said, “If I win Mahoning County, the race is over, over. It’s over.”

He’s right.

Mahoning and Trumbull counties were two Democratic strongholds for 80 years until Republican Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016.

Trump narrowly lost the 2016 general election in Mahoning County to Democrat Hillary Clinton and beat her in Trumbull, which had typically supported Democrats but not as strongly as Mahoning.

In 2020, Trump beat Democrat Joe Biden in both counties. Also, both counties have elected Republicans since 2018 – more in Trumbull than Mahoning, and the party’s candidates did better when Trump wasn’t on the ballot. But Trump is likely to help Republicans in the two counties in this election.

Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, the 18-year Democratic incumbent, has counted on Mahoning and Trumbull counties to help him win Ohio, which has become much more Republican since Brown’s first Senate race in 2006.

Back in 2006, Brown defeated Republican incumbent Mike DeWine for his Senate seat by 12.3%. In Mahoning, Brown got 73.5% of the vote, and in Trumbull he received 73.1% of the vote. Those are remarkable percentages, particularly against a sitting statewide incumbent.

In the 2012 election, which was the first presidential year in which Brown ran for the Senate, Brown did better in Ohio than President Barack Obama, a Democrat.

Obama beat Republican Mitt Romney in Ohio by 3%. Brown beat Republican Josh Mandel, then the state treasurer, by 6%.

Brown got 66.4% of the vote in Mahoning and 62.6% in Trumbull. It wasn’t as big as 2006, which was an exceptionally good year for Democrats nationwide, but still solid.

In 2018, two years after Trump was elected president, Brown won Ohio by 6.8% against Republican Jim Renacci, then a congressman who wasn’t a strong candidate.

In a show of shrinking but still good support, Brown got 60.4% of the vote in Mahoning and 57.9% in Trumbull in 2018.

Two years later, Trump won Trumbull and Mahoning.

During the Republican Senate primary in March, Moreno’s biggest wins were in Mahoning with 61.4% and Trumbull with 61.1%.

The Brown-Moreno race is the most expensive U.S. Senate contest and one of the most competitive in the country this year. Moreno, a wealthy and successful businessman, is running for office for the first time. He was a Senate candidate in 2022, but withdrew the day after the filing deadline at the request of Trump, who backed J.D. Vance. Moreno then endorsed Vance.

Trump and Vance backed Moreno in the Republican primary and continue to support him.

Naturally, Brown and Moreno want to win Mahoning and Trumbull. Not only are they among the most-populous counties in Ohio, but with Brown’s support slipping in Mahoning and Trumbull with each election and Trump’s popularity growing — and Moreno’s win is largely dependent on Trump’s performance — the results in the two counties will likely determine the Senate race’s winner.

Trumbull is going to be a greater challenge for Brown as there is little doubt Trump is going to win that county.

Brown has a track record of supporting the Mahoning Valley.

He — along with then-U.S. Sen. Rob Portman, then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan (in particular) and Bill Johnson, a former Republican congressman — helped get eight new C-130J Super Hercules aircrafts, costing $878 million, committed to the Youngstown Air Reserve Station as well as steered tens of millions of other federal dollars for the air base, the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport and numerous other projects in the Mahoning Valley for housing, job creation, brownfield cleanups and recreation.

Brown successfully lobbied the Obama administration to secure an America Makes manufacturing and innovation location for downtown Youngstown and strongly backed United Auto Workers Local 1112 at Ultium Cells in Lordstown as it successfully got included in the national union contract providing significant pay increases for its members.

Moreno said the state has lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs since Brown started serving in the Senate.

On Moreno’s candidate questionnaire under a request to list his main priorities and how you would tackle them, his campaign wrote: “My goal if elected is to fix our economy, secure our southern border, stop reckless spending and return our nation to energy independence.”

At a Wednesday event in Struthers, Moreno said of Brown: “He’s running basically a fraudulent campaign. He makes things up when he’s on the campaign trail.”

For example, Moreno said Brown says he supports Ohio, but when he goes to Washington, D.C., he backs Biden and Kamala Harris 100% of the time and opposed Trump 100% of the time when the Republican was president.

“He’s a reliable vote for the left-wing, progressive policies that are destroying this country,” Moreno said. “He has not accomplished any bipartisan legislation.”

Brown supported the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, getting two provisions into it. He also voted in favor of Trump’s USMCA (United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement) that renegotiated the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Skolnick covers politics for the Tribune Chronicle and The Vindicator.

dskolnick@tribtoday.com