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Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan announced Monday that he is running for the U.S. Senate in 2022, aiming to win the seat currently held by Republican Sen. Rob Portman, who announced in January that he would not seek reelection.
Ryan represents Ohio’s 17th district, in the northeast section of the state that includes Youngstown, a former steelmaking hub that later came to attract car manufacturers. The region has suffered from the wave of deindustrialization that has weakened the economies of states across the Rust Belt, including parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan.
Ryan, who has represented the district since 2002, has long set his sights on higher office, mounting a failed bid to unseat Nancy Pelosi as House minority leader in 2016 before launching a brief campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination for president.
Democrats see the Republican-held seat as one of their opportunities to add to their razor thin majority in the Senate, though it will likely be an uphill battle given the state’s rightward shift in recent years. Once a perennial battleground state, former President Donald Trump won Ohio by more than 8 percentage points in 2016 and 2020. Trump even won Ryan’s home county of Mahoning by nearly 2 percentage points, the first Republican to capture it since Richard Nixon in 1972.
