Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose formally announced his 2024 U.S. Senate run on Monday as the third prominent Republican to challenge incumbent Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown.
“Like a lot of Ohioans, I’m concerned about the direction of our country,” Mr. Larose said in a statement. “As the father of three young girls, I’m not willing to sit quietly while the woke left tries to cancel the American Dream. We have a duty to defend the values that made America the hope of the world.”
After two terms in the Ohio State Senate, Mr. LaRose won his bid for Secretary of State by a narrow margin in 2018, winning his re-election with the most votes in the history of the office four years later.
Mr. LaRose profiles himself as a conservative, a family man, a Christian, and a veteran. High on his agenda are governmental fiscal responsibility, reducing crime, ensuring election integrity, and addressing “the raw deal our kids are getting from education bureaucrats.”
Strongly pro-life, Mr. LaRose is one of the leading proponents of a ballot measure that would make it more difficult to amend Ohio's Constitution.
The proposal would raise the threshold needed to change the Constitution from a simple majority to 60 percent. It would also require that ballot initiatives be supported from voters in all of Ohio’s 88 counties, rather than the current 44.
Though the proposal was not brought forth with one specific goal in mind, Mr. LaRose later proved critics right when he admitted it was designed to push back against another ballot initiative aiming to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s Constitution.
Ohio’s Senate race looks to become one of the most competitive races in the country in next year’s elections. Mr. LaRose will be running against entrepreneur Bernie Moreno, a Trump loyalist cheered on by the former president but as yet without his official endorsement, and State Sen. Matt Dolan, a more moderate conservative whose family owns the Guardians, Cleveland’s Major League Baseball team.
Running for his fourth term, Sen. Brown might face strong headwinds at the ballot, as the once-reliable bellwether state has been voting increasingly Republican over the past decade, handing a decided victory to former President Donald Trump both in 2016 and 2020.
“I’m on a mission to give back to the state that has given me so much. To continue to serve the country I love and fight to protect the values we share. That’s why I’m running to serve as your next United States senator,” the GOP candidate said in his campaign announcement video.