With polls showing Ohio鈥檚 U.S. Senate race is deadlocked, the next two weeks of campaigning will likely be intense. Monday night several thousand people came out to hear Dave Matthews perform for free to rally for Democratic candidate Tim Ryan.
The line to get into the free show snaked around the Kemba Live venue, with Aneesa Bhimani-Trimble of Dayton at the front of it. She and her crew had arrived before noon.
鈥淲e鈥檙e big Dave Matthews Band fans and we appreciate the politics that will be talked about tonight," Bhimani-Trimble said.
John Low and his wife Anne came from Sunbury with five-year-old Kameron.
鈥淗e鈥檚 our son and he鈥檚 our future and he鈥檚 a little Dave Matthews Band fan," said Low.
Tom Jaeger is retired from the Air Force and lives in Scioto County.
鈥淧ersonally, I wasn鈥檛 familiar with Dave Matthews because I spent all of the 鈥�90s overseas," said Jaeger, who added that he took time to listen to Matthews' music over the weekend. 鈥淚鈥檓 glad we got the opportunity to learn about him and come and listen to him.鈥�
Denny Dibacco turned up sporting a shirt bearing the word "hero" under the likeness of the late Jim Traficant, the legendary Youngstown politician who was expelled from Congress in 2002 and did seven years in prison for bribery and other charges.
鈥淚 think that he鈥檚 kind of following the footsteps of my man here. I think he鈥檚 a hero. A lot of people in Youngstown do, obviously," Dibacco said.
Ryan was one of Traficant鈥檚 aides, and won Traficant鈥檚 district in 2002.
Another familiar Mahoning Valley figure at the rally was former Browns quarterback Bernie Kosar, who spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland.
Ryan and Vance, the Republican endorsed by former president Trump earlier this year, have been battling for the lead in an expensive U.S. Senate race that polls show is very close. That鈥檚 gotten the contest national attention.
Matthews has been doing similar 鈥済et out the vote鈥� shows for Democratic candidates around the country. He'll perform on Wednesday in Pittsburgh for Democratic U.S. Senate candidate John Fetterman, who's running in a tight race against Mehmet Oz, also a Trump-endorsed Republican.
