Democrat Sherrod Brown is making a long-shot bid to reclaim his Ohio Senate seat two years after losing it, betting that frustration over the economy can win back the same voters who turned on his party. Brown, who served three terms in the Senate before losing his 2024 reelection campaign, is challenging Republican Sen. Jon Husted in November, a race that will help determine which party controls the chamber.
Democrats need a net gain of four seats to flip the Senate, and Brown’s race is part of a broader push into Republican-leaning states including Ohio, Iowa, Alaska and Texas. He is trying to harness dissatisfaction with the economy, the war in Iran and the expansion of artificial intelligence data centers to dislodge Husted.
Brown was able to outrun the Democratic Party’s decline in Ohio for years, with his pro-labor populism delivering enough swing voters to fuel decades of victories from the statehouse to Congress. President Donald Trump carried Ohio by 8 points in 2016, four years after Barack Obama won the state, yet Brown won his third Senate term two years after that.
By 2024, however, even Brown could not hold on. He lost to Republican Bernie Moreno by a margin of 3.5 percentage points. Trump carried Mahoning County, anchored by Youngstown, by more than 10,000 votes, a reversal in a previously loyal Democratic county that Obama had won by nearly 30 percentage points just 12 years earlier. With Trump’s endorsement, Moreno won the county by just 220 votes.
The political shift extends across the Mahoning Valley. Neighboring Trumbull County moved from backing Obama by 23 points in 2012 to backing Trump by nearly 17 points in 2024.
“The Mahoning Valley has struggled with deindustrialization, job loss for years, and the politicians in power have seemed to understand that, but it doesn’t seem like they were doing enough about that,” said Cryshanna Jackson Leftwich, a politics professor at Youngstown State University. “So at some point, 20, 30 years of supporting the candidates, people are gonna say, well, look, this has never worked for us, right?”
Leftwich said Trump and other Republicans offered voters something different.
“Did they keep their promises? Not at all. Is the county still poor? Absolutely,” she said. “But they at least said they were going to do something different.”
Brown faces a different political environment this year. High gas prices stemming from the war in Iran have compounded discontent with the economy. Trump has also escalated a trade war with neighboring Canada, a fight with particular implications for the state.
The economic strain was visible in Parma, a working-class Cleveland suburb that split its ticket in 2024, backing both Trump and Brown. At a watch party in Dallas for the Republican midterm convention, supporters who stayed late into the evening cheered Trump but acknowledged that other issues would most likely determine the midterms.
“The real thing that’ll move the needle is going to be economics. Gas prices, grocery prices,” said Parma City Councilor Kevin Kussmaul. “That’s really what’s going to help.”
Parma Republican Party President Doris Peters said “everyone’s concerned about the high gas prices.”
“It’s all about the economy,” she added. “People remember how much money’s in their wallet and how much is not in their wallet.”
Husted presents a different opponent than the one Brown faced two years ago. His restrained demeanor contrasts with Moreno, the brash former car dealer who entered politics as an outsider. Husted spent nearly 25 years in Ohio politics, as a state lawmaker, House speaker, secretary of state and lieutenant governor, before being tapped to fill Vice President JD Vance’s Senate seat.
But Husted may not need to generate much enthusiasm of his own. Except for Brown and candidates for the Ohio Supreme Court, a Democrat has not won a statewide race for state office in Ohio since 2008.
Adam Radogna, 37, who hosted the watch party Wednesday for Parma Republicans at his Italian restaurant, has attended more than 80 Trump rallies and remains an ardent Trump supporter. But Husted is not someone he’s followed closely.
“I don’t know him at all,” Radogna said of Husted. “But I mean, I will vote for him.”
Brown faces enthusiasm problems of his own as he asks voters to return to a 73-year-old former senator whom they rejected just two years ago.
Ellen Zban, 67, a longtime Youngstown resident who said she leans Democratic but has voted for Republicans, said she will not support Husted because she does not believe he has listened enough to the community.
“I really don’t think he’s done anything for us,” she said. “We never hear from him.”
But Brown is not necessarily the candidate she wishes Democrats were offering either.
“He’s my best option,” Zban said. “But I’d like to see younger people running.”
The race is being flooded with money. Husted and allied Republican groups have spent more than $80 million with $86 million more reserved through Election Day, according to AdImpact. Brown and Democratic groups have spent $69 million, with $67 million reserved.
Elon Musk has also waded into the race through his America PAC, which is running online and streaming ads attacking Brown over transgender issues.
“Billionaires are lying to try and bail out their ‘Golden Boy’ because Jon Husted has always put special interests ahead of Ohio,” Brown’s campaign manager, Patrick Eisenhauer, said in a statement.
Brown has tried to make data centers central to the race, an issue that has drawn bipartisan backlash in communities across the country. Brown’s allies have called Husted the face of Ohio’s data center boom, blaming the massive facilities for contributing to rising electricity costs. Husted helped promote Ohio as a destination for data centers while serving as lieutenant governor.
The ads and backlash have generated enough concern among Republicans that an internal party memo described data centers as an “anchor” around Husted in the race.
“Thirty-two years in Washington turned Sherrod Brown into a liar,” Amy Natoce, a spokesperson for Husted, said in a statement. “Jon Husted is fighting to lower costs and help Ohioans keep more of what they earn. Sen. Husted introduced legislation requiring data center companies to pay for the power they use and return excess electricity to the grid.”
In Youngstown, union retirees who watched the Mahoning Valley shift toward Republicans are not convinced the movement is permanent.
Rich Troisi, business manager of Laborers’ Local 127, said Republican candidates in recent elections could win support in the area largely by aligning themselves with Trump. This year, he said, that dynamic may not hold.
“I don’t think Donald Trump’s endorsement is going to be what it was,” he said.
Al Antonelli, the longtime union worker, pointed to independent voters, who he said tend to move with their economic circumstances.
“My dad used to say, it depends on how tight your shoes are. Tight meaning, how’s the money?” he said. “Right now, the shoes are pretty tight, no matter who you are.”
