Two years ago, Ohio and other states in the former industrial heartlands of the Great Lakes region catapulted Donald Trump into the White House. Today, in the final stretch to November’s congressional elections, they are showing that Trumpism has its limits as Democrats make surprising gains in races across the region, according to opinion polls. Last week, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Richard Cordray, often described as a liberal “progressive populist,” campaigned in working-class Toledo in a race that has remained tight with election day just two weeks away — a sign of a resurgence in his party in Ohio. “We will change this state for the better. We will change this nation for the better,” Cordray told a room of black voters in downtown Toledo on Thursday. “2018 leads to 2020.” A poll released this month by Suffolk University showed Cordray with a six-point lead, although other polls have showed the race to be essentially a toss-up. Not only is Cordray, the former head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau who has long been vilified by Republicans as an anti-business zealot, staying neck-and-neck with his opponent, Mike DeWine, but US Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat, is on track to keep his Ohio seat in his race against Trump-backed candidate Jim Renacci. That pattern is playing out in other states in the Great Lakes region that Trump won in 2016, where Democratic Senate and gubernatorial candidates are either convincingly ahead of their Republican opponents or, like Cordray, beating expectations and holding their own. Published in Daily Times, October 23rd 2018.