Sherrod Brown, a longtime politician, is running on a “change” message to try to reclaim a Senate seat in Ohio, which has trended increasingly conservative.
Read more As war evolves, more female troops make the ultimate sacrifice
ZANESVILLE, Ohio — Sherrod Brown, the former Democratic senator, worked a crowd of about 100 supporters into a frenzy in the back of a brewery in this small eastern Ohio city earlier this month.
“You want to take this country back!” Brown said as the crowd roared.
But the disheveled populist quickly qualified his statement, as the crowd grew quiet again. “Not back to exactly what we had,” he said. “The system’s been rigged against workers, against the middle class, against poor people for a long time. But it’s gotten a lot worse in the last year.”
Brown walks a tightrope this election cycle. He is trying to persuade Ohioans to send him back to Washington just two years after they booted him out, and to represent “change” after decades of serving in Washington.
Senate Democrats can’t accomplish their uphill battle to control the chamber again without at least three Democrats carrying red states that voted for Donald Trump by double-digit margins two years ago.
The increasingly red state has been on an antiestablishment streak as it’s purged its Democratic officials. In recent years, Ohio voters have taken a chance on political outsiders who vow to shake up the system — from Trump to political neophyte and ex-car dealership owner Bernie Moreno, who beat Brown in 2024. And Democrats around the country are also hungry for change and fed up with the party’s leaders.
“It’s very much tilted in Republicans’ favor,” said Christopher Devine, a professor of political science at the University of Dayton. “You have to assume he’s at a disadvantage here.”
But the ex-senator, 73, who was a top recruit by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York), also has two assets he lacked last time around. He faces a low-key and fairly unknown-to-voters political opponent, Sen. Jon Husted (R), whom some political insiders see as an easier foe than Moreno. And the political environment has shifted considerably in Brown’s favor, as high gas prices and other economic factors have pushed Trump’s approval down in the state.
“Normally you’d say Sherrod Brown’s done. He’s been around a long time, and people aren’t for politicians spending their whole life in public office,” said Tim Ryan, the former Democratic congressman who lost a 2022 Senate bid to JD Vance, then a newcomer to politics. “But given the circumstances and Husted’s ties to Trump, it absolutely puts the race in play.”
Husted, the 58-year-old former lieutenant governor, was appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine (R) to fill Vance’s seat. The November special election will be to serve out the remaining two years of Vance’s Senate term, and its winner will face another election in 2028.
Brown has started his campaign with two blisteringly negative ads. They raise questions about the political donations Husted has received from Les Wexner, an Ohio billionaire with close ties to deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. (Wexner, who employed Epstein as his financial adviser for decades, has said he had no knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.)
“Of all 535 members of Congress, who’s taken the most money from associates of Jeffrey Epstein?” a narrator asks. “Jon Husted, that’s who.”
Husted’s team rejects the attacks and says it donated $34,300 of the funds to an antitrafficking charity. The campaign blasts Brown for taking funds from others who associated with Epstein, including former Harvard professor Larry Summers in 2025.
“Brown’s ads are hypocritical and raise more important questions: Why does Sherrod Brown still refuse to donate the funds he received from Epstein’s associates?” Husted spokeswoman Amy Natoce said in a statement.
But the senator is so unknown in the state that Brown could get a jump on defining him negatively and potentially depress Republican turnout for him in the fall. Husted also recently testified remotely in a bribery trial involving energy executives in the state dating to his time as lieutenant governor. (Husted has not been accused of wrongdoing.)
Just 26 percent of Ohio voters in a recent Bowling Green State University survey see Husted favorably, with 40 percent having no opinion. Brown’s favorability share was at 37 percent, with 24 percent having no opinion.
Read more French Open starts amid a heat wave in Paris. Djokovic to play Perricard in the night match
Husted declined to talk this week to The Washington Post about his race. “I can’t talk about politics in the government building,” he said, before speeding into the Senate chamber to cast a vote. His campaign declined to make him available for an interview.
Husted is introducing himself to voters back home while wearing a quilted puffer vest in TV ads, saying he started out his life in a foster home and believes in the value of hard work. A narrator credits him for bringing thousands of new jobs to Ohio. Another Husted ad criticizes Brown for spending decades in politics, blaming problems on the U.S.-Mexico border on him and featuring a clip of Trump saying, “You’re fired.”
But it hasn’t worked on some voters. Jim Chase, a Republican from Delaware, Ohio, who was out with his wife for breakfast on a recent Saturday, said he was unenthusiastic about Husted.
“I don’t like Husted enough right now to say I would vote for him,” Chase said. “My impression is he is a yes-man.”
Chase said he also didn’t like Brown, although he said he had been supportive of some of what he did in the Senate in the past.
“He’s too old to go back into office,” Chase said.
Some of Brown’s supporters, however, delight in his familiarity.
“He always kind of reminded me of Columbo,” said Kim Maxwell, 70, a retired nurse who identified herself as an independent and came to see Brown speak in Zanesville. She imitated the decades-old TV detective’s most famous line: “And just one more thing.”
Ohio Democrats are hopeful that enthusiasm among their voters will propel Brown, and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Amy Acton, to victory in the fall. Democratic turnout in the May primary matched that of Democratic wave year 2006.
“There’s something happening, and I think there’ll be a reckoning,” said Tim Burga, president of the state’s AFL-CIO union.
This time around, Brown also has more time to campaign for the seat, since he is not tied up in Washington with a day job. He’s making stops deep into often overlooked rural counties. Before his Zanesville event, Brown hopped onto an RTV to be driven around by a farmer showing him the Angus cattle scattered around his hilly acreage in Noble County.
In his campaign stops, Brown points to a congressional record that includes helping pass the PACT Act for veterans exposed to burn pits, pushing legislation restoring Social Security benefits for many public workers and backing a $35 insulin cap for Medicare recipients.
Husted is touting his vote for the sweeping tax cuts bill last year.
But Republicans are counting on voters rejecting Brown as a part of the system he is railing against.
“Really, at the end of the day it’s just going to come down to a career spent in Washington and not really getting the results he talked about,” said Alex Triantafilou, the state’s Republican Party chairman.
The race is already shaping up to be among the most expensive of the midterms. The GOP-aligned Senate Leadership Fund has reserved $79 million to boost Husted in digital and TV ads, while the Democrats’ Senate Majority PAC has announced it will commit at least $40 million in TV ads for Brown.
Brown said in an interview he believes voters in Ohio realize he would seek to change the way Washington works if he becomes a senator again, pointing out that various corporate interests spent tens of millions of dollars against him in the 2024 race.
“They know what I’ll fight for,” he said. “And I spent my career taking on this rigged system, and I’ll continue to.”
Read more Cavaliers seek more from Evan Mobley as East finals shift to Cleveland for Game 3
