Ohio's U.S. Senate race is heating up

Next year's U.S. Senate race is starting to take shape in the Buckeye State, with at least two Republicans vying for a chance to take on Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown.

Why it matters: The stakes are high for the Democratic Party, which holds a narrow Senate majority and faces a particularly tough electoral map in 2024.

State of play: Ohio, West Virginia and Montana are states that Donald Trump won in 2020 and each is represented by a Democrat up for re-election, Axios' Josh Kraushaar reports.

• Brown, 70, joins three Supreme Court justices as the only Ohio Democrats remaining in statewide office.
• State Sen. Matt Dolan and car dealer Bernie Moreno are campaigning in the Republican primary. Both ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022, but lost the GOP primary to J.D. Vance, who ultimately won the seat.

The latest: Secretary of State Frank LaRose teased his impending campaign announcement on Twitter.

The intrigue: With a majority of Republican voters undecided at this early juncture, a Trump endorsement would catapult a candidate to front-runner status.

• Trump has yet to make one, though he called Moreno a "highly respected businessman" who would "not be easy to beat."
• Sen. Vance has endorsed Moreno and the two were recently photographed together in support of the Issue 1 campaign to make it harder to amend the state constitution.

Meanwhile, LaRose once did advance planning work on Trump's 2017 inauguration and was backed by the former president during his 2022 re-election campaign as secretary of state.