The 2024 Senate map features several prime pickup opportunities for Republicans looking to regain control of the upper chamber of Congress. Joe Manchin should be beatable for the West Virginia GOP. Jon Tester’s Montana seat is clearly in danger. But while pundits have largely grouped Ohio in with West Virginia and Montana as a trifecta of likely flips, they are seriously underestimating the political savvy of Ohio’s incumbent senator Sherrod Brown.

Steve Daines, head of the Republican Senate campaign arm, told Politico today that the National Republican Senatorial Committee would stay out of the Ohio primary that will decide Brown’s challenger: “When you have three candidates that any one of them could win the general election, we don’t stay up late at night worrying about that.” But Daines is mistaken if he thinks unseating Brown is anything close to a given. Between two eight-point victories for Donald Trump in Ohio in 2016 and 2020, Brown was reelected by a healthy seven-point margin. 

The three candidates Daines is referring to are Ohio secretary of state Frank LaRose, who announced his candidacy this morning, state senator Matt Dolan, and businessman Bernie Moreno. The latter two both contended for Rob Portman’s outgoing seat, eventually won by J. D. Vance. LaRose, for his part, is the most well known of the three, and that fact alone means he should be the first choice for conservatives who want to win. 

As Larose told Politico, Brown has created a “phony persona over the years that he’s a moderate.” But that persona is potent, and Ohioans buy it. If Republicans nominate a candidate who doesn’t seem “normal,” they will lose. And they will once again be responsible for ensuring defeat in a race they can, and probably should, win.