VERMILION, Ohio (AP) — Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, is fighting for his political life and polls show him in a dead heat between him and Republican businessman Bernie Moreno.

Their faceoff has already drawn more advertising spending than any other Senate race in history, surpassing the $412 million spent on the race between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue in Georgia in 2020. According to tracking firm AdImpact, the fight between Brown and Moreno will top $500 million.

Brown's survival and potentially partisan control of the Senate depends on divided voters in a state that has twice supported former President Donald Trump by wide margins – and is likely to do so again next week. While Moreno sticks with Trump, Brown avoids talking too much about national political figures from both parties.

Each candidate has now focused on a hot-button issue that they believe can swing the race in their favor.

Brown and Democrats emphasize Moreno's openness to federal abortion restrictions, even after Ohioans, including many in conservative suburbs and counties, voted last year to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Moreno and Republicans, seeking to hurt Brown with Trump voters who might be willing to give him a fourth term, are running ads portraying him as an inexcusable supporter of transgender rights.

“There will be enough,” Brown, whose name has never appeared on the same ballot as Trump’s, said of ticket distributors in an interview with NBC News after an event Tuesday at a Teamsters hall in Youngstown. “I say this, and it’s not a cliché that people don’t think of politics — I don’t see politics — as seen from left to right.”

“They look at people individually,” Brown added, “and people know I’m on their side.”

Brown, 71, joins Barack Obama as the only Democrats to win more than one statewide election in Ohio in the last 30 years. He has populist traits, for example through his call for a monthly cap on insulin costs and his rejection of trade agreements. And he boasts the support of several notable Republicans, including former Ohio Gov. Bob Taft, the great-grandson of a former president who, despite leaving office amid scandal in 2006, remains a name that always resonates with old-school conservatives is still well received.

The progressive senator and his allies also highlight areas where he and Trump share common policy goals, including anti-fentanyl legislation.

Trump, who speaks directly to the camera in a Moreno commercial that's playing heavily in the state on the home stretch to Election Day, has seen what Brown is doing — and isn't happy about it.

“Sherrod Brown, he takes ads like he’s my best friend,” the former president said Sunday during a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. “He's not my best friend.”

Moreno, 57, is spending his final week at the trail rally with an entourage of MAGA world favorites like Donald Trump Jr. and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. The result is a highly nationalized campaign heavily influenced by Trump images, themes and rhetoric.

After complaining about higher prices Tuesday at a banquet hall near the shores of Lake Erie in fashionable Lorain County, Moreno presented an impression of Trump making french fries at a recent photo op at McDonald's.

“Big, beautiful French fries,” Moreno said, imitating Trump’s voice. “Nobody does fries better than Donald Trump.”

The Senate could decide on the districts

With Republicans needing to gain two seats to ensure a Senate majority, and with West Virginia's open seat almost certain to change the GOP's path, Ohio could be the tipping point for the chamber on election night.

Graham received a standing ovation after describing that scenario at Moreno's Lorain County event on Tuesday. He also acknowledged the danger of ticket splintering — and the importance of Trump having long coattails to take Moreno with him.

“Trump will win Ohio, the question is by how much,” Graham said to about 500 spectators in the banquet hall. “Now when you're an incumbent, like Brown was, you contribute to Social Security and you help out,” folks, and it adds up. … So I’m here to help you convince one or two more people, because if Trump wins (Ohio) by 5 or more, it’s over.”

Brown brushed off a question about how exactly Vice President Kamala Harris needs to maintain the lead in Ohio to win.

“I don't sit up at night thinking, 'Well, if Kamala does that' or 'If Joe Biden does that,'” Brown said in Youngstown. “I know what I have to do to win… and that is to stand up for workers.”

With Ohio no longer considered a competitive state for presidential elections, Brown cannot count on a massive national organization like the one that was on the ground when he and Obama voted together in 2012. Still, Brown's coordinated campaign in the state has knocked on more than a million doors, called more than 4 million Ohioans, and is ahead in those metrics compared to the 2022 and 2018 Senate races, said Rachel Petri, Brown's campaign manager.

Brown's allies see his path to reelection through places like Lorain County, a working-class district west of Cleveland that he represented as a congressman and won handily in 2018. Trump narrowly won the county in 2020, and Sen. JD Vance, now Trump's vice presidential running mate, narrowly lost it in 2022. Last year's abortion ballot measure passed there by 25 points – higher than the statewide margin.

Other destinations include Delaware and Mahoning counties.

Delaware, which includes the suburbs north of Columbus, has gradually shifted to the left. Trump's lead there shrank from 16 to 6.8 points from 2016 to 2020, Brown lost there by about 5 points in 2018 and the abortion initiative passed there with almost 19 points.

Mahoning, which includes Youngstown, narrowly favored Trump in 2020, the first time the county supported a Republican for president since 1972. Brown won by more than 20 points in 2018. But then-Rep. Tim Ryan, a Democrat who represented much of the region for years, lost the 2022 Senate race to Vance by three points.

“I think their paid media strategy reflects that they've decided that gravity can do all the work for them in this election,” Petri said, referring to the Trump-centric messaging. “And I’m confident that the race we ran can defy gravity, if any campaign can.”

Brown's hope for divided voters is not without skeptics.

“We used to have large numbers in our county,” said Paul Adams, director of the Lorain County Board of Elections. “You see different candidates winning for different parties, but over time there are fewer and fewer of them. We are seeing a larger number of direct voters.”

Abortion and anti-trans rhetoric are fueling the last few days

The political realities are evident in the way Brown and Moreno campaign.

Moreno, with Donald Trump Jr. in tow, filled a Strip Plaza tavern with several hundred people in Strongsville, a Republican-leaning suburb of Cleveland, on Tuesday afternoon. As servers moved through the crowded barroom with plates full of cheeseburgers and quesadillas, they shouted “F— Joe Biden!” and “Fight! Battle! Fight!” erupted spontaneously.

After Moreno asked the audience to give him the chance to fire “Chuck Schumer,” the Senate Democratic leader, Trump Jr. took the stage and aired grievances that rankle Republicans nationally, like “Hunter Biden’s laptop” and “the Russia hoax”. .”

“We have to have the energy like you're the third monkey in line for the ark and it starts to rain,” Trump Jr. said, describing the election in biblical terms.

At a “Souls to the Ballots” event in Cleveland on Sunday, Brown framed the race more locally and based on his record as a legislator.

“Human progress never rolls on wheels of inevitability,” Brown told about 200 people, citing Martin Luther King Jr. “It rolls because that’s how you make it.” Their activism is the reason we have Social Security. Your activism is the reason we have civil rights. Their activism is the reason everyone enjoys eight-hour days and gets paid time and a half overtime. Your activism is why we cleaned up Lake Erie. Their activism is the reason we have an insulin prescription for $35 a month.”

Brown, who often speaks of the “dignity of work,” also criticized Moreno's career as a car dealer, citing an overtime pay lawsuit alleging shredded documents.

The event in Cleveland was attended by dozens of local Democrats and union leaders, including Rep. Shontel Brown, who joked that the senator was her cousin, and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne.

Moreno's opposition to last year's abortion measure and his recent comment that it was “a little crazy” that women over 50 were concerned about the issue were repeated themes, with Brown and others scoffing that Moreno “thinks he knows better.” as women.

“I don’t know about you, sisters and brothers, I’m so tired of an old Republican man with salt-and-pepper hair always trying to tell a woman what she can and can’t do with her body,” he said Andre Washington, vice chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party.

Other speakers also alluded to ads — including one from the GOP-aligned super PAC Senate Leadership Fund — that seek to brand Brown as a supporter of gender reassignment surgery and transgender women in women's sports. Brown has pushed back, and his campaign responded with an ad pointing out falsehoods in the attack.

“I watch these silly commercials — Sherrod Brown, they/them,” said David Brock, chairman of the Cuyahoga County Democratic Party, referring to another ad from the Senate Leadership Fund that mocks Brown for Preferred pronouns used for LGBTQ people. “And you know what? That's right. Sherrod Brown is for them and them. It's for you and me. It is for him and her. He’s there for everyone in Ohio.”

Moreno – who described himself as “crazy, nervously optimistic” about his chances in an interview Tuesday after his campaign rally with Graham – brought up the topic unprompted.

“Make sure,” Moreno said, “that you write in the article that Sherrod is for them/them and I am for Ohio.”