So Ohio Gonna Find Its Mind Again Or What?
If Texas and Montana (!) have hope, surely Ohio's not too far gone?
Two years ago, Sherrod Brown lost his bid for a fourth term as Ohio’s senior US senator to car dealer and cryptocurrency asshole Bernie Moreno, largely thanks to a huge infusion of $40 million in campaign spending from the crypto industry. It was a pretty crappy day, please no flashbacks to that 2024 election please.
As the Wall Street Journal reports in a good in-depth profile on Brown’s comeback campaign (gift link), Brown started getting ready to do the usual post-Senate-career things like writing a book on the labor movement and setting up a nonprofit. But he soon decided he wanted to take another shot at being America’s Most Rumpled Senator (an eternal contest with Bernie Sanders).
And there was a chance coming right up because Ohio’s other senator, the couch-fucking fake hillbilly with the weird tech billionaire patron, had become vice president, necessitating a special election this year for the remainder of the chinless man’s term. So hey, last August Brown announced he would challenge Jon Husted, the former Ohio lieutenant governor appointed to fill the seat.
Does Brown have a real shot at returning to the Senate? Enough of a shot that election forecasters at the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball have switched their assessment of the Ohio special election from “leans Republican” to “toss-up.” In the most recent reporting quarter, from April to June, Brown raised more than double the campaign funding Husted brought in, with $14.1 million in direct donations (and $3 million from a PAC) compared to Husted’s $3.4 million in direct donations (and another $4.3 million from three PACs).
Successful early fundraising is no guarantee of victory, of course, as Brown could tell you: At this point in 2024, he had a $6 million fundraising advantage over Moreno, but that was before all that crypto industry money (and more) flooded into the campaign later in the year. The 2024 Senate race in Ohio became the most expensive non-presidential campaign in US history (for the moment), and by the time it was over, Republican-aligned groups outspent Brown-aligned Democratic groups by $75 million.
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It’s not going to be an easy fight for Brown, because Ohio remains very, very red and MAGA. Brown’s support is strongest in the cities, and as the Wall Street Journal piece notes, “In some urban areas, voter turnout in the 2024 election hovered just above 60%—far lower than the 80% or more who voted in some Trump-loving regions.”
There’s good reason to think that this year, likely Democratic voters are much more motivated to get to the polls, and even if Trump comes to campaign for Husted, this is not a happy year for Republican enthusiasm or turnout. Nationally, recent polling found that only a third of Republicans said they feel better off since Trump returned to office. And if ICE storms into Ohio cities to start hauling off Haitians who have been stripped of their legal status, angry Democratic voters may be far more motivated to get to the polls than Republican voters who think the cruelty is pretty neat, but are still paying higher prices for groceries and everything else.
Donald Trump won Ohio last time out, but since then, his approval ratings have crashed and burned there, albeit not as badly as nationwide. A June Fox News poll found that 42 percent of Ohio voters held favorable views of Trump, 10 points down from the 52 percent he had in November 2025. His “unfavorable” score went up from 46 percent to 57 percent for the same period.
The same poll found Brown with a 53 percent to 45 percent advantage over Husted. And a solid 46 percent of Ohio voters said they thought Husted was “too close” to Trump. Also good news for Brown: 31 percent of non-MAGA Republicans said they supported Brown. Among voters who said inflation is the most important issue to them, Brown led Husted by 14 points.
And in a year when Democratic voters say they want someone who’ll fight back against Republicans and Trump, Brown is happy to remind them that he’s spent his career taking on Wall Street, big banks, Big Pharma, and utility companies.
Brown’s campaign has also sought to tap into widespread opposition to big energy-sucking data centers, with ads calling Husted “the face of data centers in Ohio” and calling attention to “sweetheart deals” Husted supported as lieutenant governor to attract the ugly blight to Ohio. Brown wants to make data centers responsible for their own energy needs instead of driving up rates for consumers, and has called on Ohio to end its tax breaks for the facilities, although OK that’s a state issue and not something a senator would generally directly influence.
Husted, for his part, keeps voting against any legislation that might limit Trump’s war against Iran, while saying he would like to see an end to the war. When Ohio gasoline prices were up by two dollars in May, Husted shrugged off questions about whether the war is worth higher prices, insisting, “I don’t want my constituents to pay higher prices for anything” and touting his vote for Trump’s big ugly tax cut bill as proof that he really cares deeply about the plight of everyday American billionaires. Just don’t press him on Trump and the economy, OK?
Still, asked if he approved of the president’s handling of the economy, Husted pivoted from Trump, who is facing career-low approval ratings on the issue, to an attack on Brown and trade.
“I’m not going to talk about what the president’s ratings are in polls or things like that,” Husted said.
Husted is also apparently very proud of a populist-sounding insect metaphor his people came up with, although it doesn’t make a lot of sense. In an interview with CNN, Husted said, “Sherrod Brown is the absolute perfect political cicada. This is a guy who comes out of the ground and pretends he’s this moderate, working-class American, and then comes here to Washington DC and he’s a hardcore liberal.”
Cicadas are mostly known for making annoying buzzing noises, not for butterfly-like transformations, but sure, go with that, dude. As the election heats up, we’re sure Husted will also start calling Brown a “communist,” since that’s the magic word MAGAworld has been told to use all the time now.
If you’d like to help Sherrod Brown help Democrats retake the Senate, you should throw some Ameros at his campaign. You could make cicada noises while you do it, even.
We’ll be having a Cleveland Wonkparty Sat., Aug. 8, 1 p.m., at Boss Dog Brewing Company, 2179 Lee Rd, Cleveland Heights, OH 44118. Somebody should look into getting a special guest. It could happen, you don’t know!
[WSJ (gift link) / Politico / CNN / Ohio Capital Journal / Sherrod Brown for Ohio]
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Fuck yeah, lets go Ohio!
The surprise guest to this year's Wonkmeet will not be Geraldo Rivera.
Which yes that actually did happen, 2 years back, Geraldo walked through the middle of the Cleveland Wonkmeet.
I can think of a few better special guests!
I live in Ohio. I’m not optimistic. And I’m deeply disappointed that I have to vote for another grandparent in the vain hope of turning things around.