Ryan vs. Vance: All eyes on race for Ohio's open U.S. Senate seat

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - The dust is just settling on Ohio’s primaries and candidates are already looking forward to November.

One race the entire country is watching is for Ohio’s open U.S. Senate seat. Local 12 spent the day speaking with both campaigns about the strategy moving forward.

Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Tim Ryan was already on the trail early Wednesday morning at a campaign event.

“Jobs, wages, pensions, benefits, their kids, issues around our kids’ mental health, getting fentanyl out of our communities, rebuilding our communities’ infrastructure,” he said during an interview after an appearance at a technical school. “These are things we all should be willing to agree about.”

There were no public appearances after Republican U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance's victory, but gratitude was given where it was due.

“I absolutely have to thank the 45th, the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump,” said Vance Tuesday night as the crowd at his victory party erupted in applause.

Ohio's Republican Party chairman says aligning himself with Trump is going to be part of Vance's strategy to win in November.

“The policies that he talked about -- tough stance on China, dealing with these bad trade deals, putting America first, dealing with taxes, removing regulations -- those are hallmarks of today’s Republican Party,” said Bob Paduchik.

We asked the president of Ohio's AFL-CIO -- a Ryan supporter -- about the Trump factor.

“How do you tear away the working class of Ohio from Trump to vote for Ryan?” we asked.

Tim Burga answered, “High wage paying jobs, jobs with benefits, jobs with retirement security, jobs with health care. That’s what Tim Ryan is all about.”

What many elections come down to is which party can get the most voters to turn out for the election. If that's the case, Democrats might be in trouble. Only 500,000 turned out to vote in the U.S. Senatorial primary in Ohio. A million Republicans did.

But University of Cincinnati political science professor David Niven says this election won't be a shoo-in for Republicans.

“There’s a Democratic governor of Kentucky; there’s a Democratic governor of Louisiana and Kansas,” he began. “And the way that happened was the Democrats ran thoroughly acceptable candidates who capitalized on the mistakes or the extremism of their opponent.”

Both Democrats and Republicans say the Roe v. Wade issue will energize their bases to turn out and vote. With so many similar strategies between the campaigns, expect a lot of money to be spent trying to differentiate the two and pull the middle to their side.