Congressman Sherrod Brown is just about the strongest possible candidate for the Democrats in the 2006 U.S. Senate race in Ohio against Republican Senator Mike DeWine. While Brown is very liberal, he has a fine political pedigree, was elected statewide as Secretary of State in 1986 (he lost reelection to Bob Taft in 1990), was elected to Congress 5 times from 1992-2000 from a Republican-leaning district, and has been reelected twice more in a district that leans Democrat. Mike DeWine, who has seen his popularity suffer due to his weasely behavior regarding President Bush's judicial nominees (he was one of the Gang of 7 Republicans who capitulated to Democrat demands and promised not to vote for the "constitutional option" for breaking Democrat filibusters), and whose pro-gun-control record won't help him with conservatives either, needs to work hard to motivate Republicans to vote for him in 2006. DeWine may end up getting saved by conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, who if he wins the nomination (he's currently the frontrunner) will get out the vote in conservative communities throughout the state. The Ohio Senate race may be very close.
As for the House seat Sherrod Brown is vacating, it stretches from Lorain County to Summit County (taking in some of Cleveland's and Akron's suburbs) and gave President Bush 44.36% in 2004, so the Democrat nominee will certainly be favored. However, the GOP has a promising candidate in businessman Joe Ortega, who has an interesting life story (http://www.joeiii.com/profile.php) and good issue positions for the district (http://www.joeiii.com/platform.php). But an even more promising GOP candidate would be Craig Foltin (http://www.craigfoltin.com/), who is the Republican Mayor of heavily Democrat Lorain (the city gave Bush a pitiful 28.84% in 2004) and could turn the race into a dead heat if he can run even in the Lorain area. Foltin hasn't declared his candidacy, but Brown didn't announce that he was forgoing reelection until 9 days ago and there's still over 2 months left for the filing deadline.
LOL. The Democrat primary could be fun.