Ohio voters are returning Democrat Sherrod Brown to the U.S. Senate, giving the 73-year-old champion of workers’ rights a political comeback and handing President Donald Trump’s Republican Party a defeat in a state it had increasingly dominated.
With 87% of the vote counted, Brown bested the 59-year-old Jon Husted with 48.6% of the vote compared to Husted’s 46.5%, according to the Associated Press, which called the race just after 11 p.m.
For Democrats, any road to a majority in the Senate improved with a Brown win in Ohio. The Associated Press, based on voting results across the country, determined late Tuesday night that Democrats would take control of the U.S Senate.
“You sent an undeniable message tonight: Ohio is not for sale,” Brown said during a victory speech.
Brown also reflected on his loss two years ago.
“Go back a short time, think about two years ago, when all of us began this journey to fix the state and fix this country,” he said.
Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Husted, a seasoned Republican, to the seat in January 2025 to fill the vacancy created by JD Vance’s election to vice president.
Victory for Brown comes two years after his loss to Republican Bernie Moreno that ended his 18-year stretch in the Senate. Except for Brown, the Democrats haven’t won a statewide partisan election in years.
The term Brown won Tuesday lasts only for two years – the remainder of the term originally won by Vance. This means Brown will be up for re-election during the 2028 presidential cycle. Brown will be junior senator to Moreno. Brown did not mention the election ahead during his speech.
Rising prices pinch incumbents
Tuesday marks a stinging loss for Husted, also a longtime state politician who served as DeWine’s lieutenant governor for six years.
Trump has won Ohio by wide margins in each of the last three presidential elections. But Tuesday’s election points to the limits of Trump’s political influence in an era of high gas prices and rising inflation, which critics attribute to Trump’s decisions to levy tariffs and instigate a war in Iran.
Brown’s time in public office dates back to 1975. Husted emphasized that Brown’s career began when Husted was still in elementary school. Brown served in the Statehouse, the U.S. House of Representatives and as Ohio secretary of state. He was a U.S. senator from 2007 through 2025. He built a populist image in office based on his opposition to free trade and other labor-backed policies while taking on cryptocurrency and technology interests that have spent lavishly against him.
Both parties saw their roads to a majority running through Ohio. As such, the race attracted tremendous spending.
Brown’s campaign raised more than $68 million, compared to Husted’s $20 million. However, outside interests – especially from crypto and artificial intelligence interests that gave money to political action committees – helped Husted close the gap. The New York Times last week reported that Democrats paid for about $208 million in ad spending on the race versus Republicans’ $288 million. Overall, Ohio’s race was the second-most expensive in the country, trailing only Texas, which has roughly three times as many residents as Ohio.
Data centers became a key campaign issue
As much as Tuesday’s election is a win for Ohio’s Democrats, it’s a loss for data center developers in the state.
The issue, hardly on the political radar even two years ago, emerged as a major topic that loomed over the race. Brown initially hesitated to attack Husted on the issue because state labor unions represent workers who build and maintain the massive facilities.
He leaned in, though, lambasting Husted for pro-data center policies that Husted helped implement while he served as lieutenant governor from 2019 until DeWine appointed him to the Senate.
The attacks appeared to work. The National Republican Senatorial Committee – the official campaign arm of Senate Republican leadership – issued a memo urgently asking data center interests to help improve the facilities’ public image. A Husted loss, the memo warned, would mean open season on data centers in future elections.
“If Husted loses because of data centers, the industry will be blamed, and elected officials or other parties will learn a cautionary lesson,” the memo says.
Brown’s political revenge extends to Big Tech
Brown’s victory also represents a win against Big Tech. The cryptocurrency industry spent $40 million on ads attacking him late in his losing campaign two years ago. The extra attack ads, which didn’t mention their cryptocurrency backing, have led some prominent Republicans to brag that the issue cost Brown the race.
The same cryptocurrency groups said they were upping their spending against Brown this year. Trump’s MAGA Inc. political action committee – which is backed by Big Tech figures – also spent big in Ohio, as did the America PAC backed by mega-billionaire Elon Musk.
Brown didn’t spend much time talking about cryptocurrency. But he described the huge spending against him as an example of corruption.
During an Oct. 24 rally in Cleveland that featured former President Barack Obama, Brown ticked off what he said were corrupt billionaires who spent millions to defeat him.
“Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and Donald Trump,” he said.
The Iran war weighs on Husted
Brown highlighted an anti-war message, describing the war in Iran as unnecessary, destructive and expensive. Gas prices spiked after the war broke out and never went back down to their pre-war levels. The approach was a familiar one for Brown, who campaigned against the war in Iraq for years before he was elected to the Senate the first time in 2006.
Husted, in turn, spent the year saying he’d hoped the war would be “brief and successful.” It dragged on through the election.
In office, Democrats forced Republicans into votes on legislation intended to limit the president’s war powers absent approval from Congress. Husted regularly sided with Republicans and voted against restraining Trump.
Husted said on a radio show that “in the short term, this war with Iran will go away.”
Jake Zuckerman contributed to the reporting in this article.
This article originally appeared on signalohio.org.
