Ohio -- As the dust settles from the midterm elections and the 116th Congress prepares to arrive in Washington in January, Ohio stands out in a particular way.

It’s one of only a few states that still has one senator from both major political parties.

And at a time when it’s hard to imagine a more divided Washington, there’s a glimmer of hope in the U.S. Senate, where it might be easier to be paired with someone on the other side of the aisle.

“As opposed to other states, they’re not rivals within the same party,” said John Fortier, the director of the Democracy Project at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “Often if you have two Republicans or two Democrats, they’re rivals for who is the leader of the party in their state or for endorsements or for who’s the more senior figure.”

Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown don’t agree on everything, but the Ohio lawmakers have more opportunity than most to set an example of bipartisanship.

“It is difficult because the Senate needs a super majority in many cases to get things done, and so it’s important for the ability to work across the aisle,” Fortier said.

Fortier added that Brown, a Democrat, and Portman, a Republican, can usually come together on state-specific issues that impact Ohioans most.

And that ability, according to Fortier, is more important than ever, as the number of split ​Senate delegations shrinks.

“One time, in 1956-57, we had nine,” Fortier said, “but other than that, in the last hundred years, we are really at a low point coming up in the next Congress.”

As it stands right now, the Senate will have only nine or 10 split delegations next year. That factors in Vermont, where Independent Senator Bernie Sanders usually votes with his Democratic colleague, Senator Patrick Leahy.

Both Brown and Portman told Spectrum News that they’ve always worked together for Ohio, and will continue to.

“We’ve made some progress on the trade issue, in order to help protect Ohio workers,” Portman said. “We’ve made some progress on the opioid issue, to provide more resources at the federal level for better treatment, broader prevention and education efforts, that sort of thing. And my hope is we can continue to make progress.”

“We do a lot of judges together,” Brown said. “We don’t always agree, but we come down often on the same side. If it’s Ohio-centric, we figure out a way. Lake Erie, trade enforcement, a lot of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, NASA Glenn [Research Center] in Cleveland, Battelle in Columbus, the National Institution [for] Occupational Safety and Health in Cincinnati, so we find ways to work together for this state.”

Portman and Brown most recently applauded the nomination of Judge Matt McFarland for U.S. Federal District Court judge in the Southern District of Ohio.

And they both worked to include language to protect Lake Erie in a Senate bill that was just passed.