Ohio is shaping up to be one of 2024’s biggest battlegrounds in the struggle for the Senate. Incumbent and Senior Senator for Ohio, Sherrod Brown (D), is being challenged by businessman Bernie Moreno (R).
Using our new research tool, INDEXALIGN, we were able to analyze data from public companies to find the major backers of both candidates.
The tool analyzes donations of $1,000 or more from over 1500 publicly traded companies and their senior executives during the last three federal election cycle.
During the 2024 cycle, Democratic Senator Brown has largely been supported by Communications and IT companies and their executives. Of these contributions, just over 90% came from executives at the relevant companies rather than the company PACs themselves.
Senator Brown’s top contributors have been Microsoft, Meta, Twilio, Paramount Global, and Procter & Gamble.
During the 2024 cycle, on the other hand, Republican Mr. Moreno has largely been supported by the Finance Sector, which has backed him nearly TEN TIMES as much as his second largest contributing sector, Communications.
To date, Mr. Moreno’s top contributors have been Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Walker & Dunlop, Harte Hanks, and Charles Schwab.
Similarly, the most famous current politician from Ohio, current Junior Senator and Vice Presidential Candidate JD Vance, has also received a majority of his support from the Finance Sector.
Below is a graph of the top sectors giving money to Senator Vance in 2022, the year he first ran for Senate. Finance is still the top sector when looking at the money he’s raised in 2022 and 2024, but his Vice Presidential nomination means much of his 2024 fundraising is mixed in with former President Trump’s, so his 2022 numbers are both larger and more representative of his base of support.
In the 2022 cycle, Mr. Vance’s top contributors were J M Smucker, American Financial Group, TransDigm Group, Cintas, and Wells Fargo.
In sum, although JD Vance and his Ohio counterpart Mr. Moreno both claim to be from “main street,” based on the actual financial contributions the candidates have received to date, they are the candidates of Wall Street.