Ohio U.S. Senate- Race of the Day
45 Days Until Election Day
Yesterday, I wrote a whole lot about the race for Governor in the Buckeye State. The contest for U.S. Senate is very much a companion type election. With polarization as strong as it is these days, it seems hard to imagine that the two parties can split these two races. The same one will likely pull through in both by about the same margin. However, if there are ticket splitters, this may be the one that might work out better for Democrats, despite it being a federal race in a red state, despite it being an incumbent on the ballot instead of a first time candidate in the state for Republicans, and despite the Republican nominee being a less polarizing person. Go figure.
Indeed, the two nominees for Senate are far more familiar to Ohio voters and far more along the lines of traditional politicians. This is a special election and the seat will be contested again in 2028. That leaves not much time for the winner to relax but I think it is unlikely that the person who loses this race will be nominated by their party in 2028. JD Vance was only a Senator for two years before being tapped by Donald Trump to run for Vice President. Now, he presides over the Senate and will swear in the winner of this race early next year. In 2022, Vance came from behind to win a contested Republican primary, after receiving Trump's endorsement and the one time harsh Trump critic tuned acolyte won by seven points in November over former Congressman Tim Ryan. Ohio, once an ultimate bellwether had move substantially towards the Republicans.
With the vacancy approaching, Republican Governor Mike DeWine had the responsibility to pick the Republican to serve in the body he once did himself. Some wanted him to look at Matt Dolan, a former State Senator who in both 2022 and 2024 lost Republican Senate primaries, while running as the closest thing to a non-Trump Republican, similar to DeWine himself. Others in the party wanted him to pick MAGA favorite Vivek Ramaswamy, a tech entrepreneur who had run for President in 2024. Ultimately though, DeWine picked his own Lt. Governor Jon Husted, a fairly safe establishment pick.
This was not the first time DeWine selected Husted but this move allowed the incoming Senator to basically have a new job on Capitol Hill and not have to face the sort of primary challenge he was looking at if he had done what he had been intending to do, in running for Governor in 2028. This would eventually leave Ramaswamy as the Gubernatorial nominee, with Trump's support, after others in the party declined to challenge him.
Husted has held office in the state since winning a race for State Representative in 2000. He eventually became Speaker of the House and then was elected to the first of two terms as Secretary of State in 2010. In 2018, he ran for Governor, but facing a three way primary against two other statewide elected officials, he joined up with then Attorney General DeWine to run for Lt. Governor. He seemed to be preparing to try again for Governor and if not for a Senate vacancy likely would have done so, but with the appointment to the Senate, he shifted gears and was unopposed in the May primary.
Democrat Sherrod Brown has an even longer history in the state's politics. He was elected to the Ohio House in the year of 1974, just as he was turning 22 years old. In 1982, as he was turning 30 he was elected Secretary of State, yet another job Husted would one day hold. Brown served in that post for two terms but then suffered a setback when he was defeated for reelection in 1990. Not wanting to stay out of the political game long, Brown ran for an open U.S. House seat in 1992 and won easily. In Congress, he made a name for himself as a pro-union, anti-trade, often disheveled populist, emblematic of the kind of Rust Belt Democrats who dominated parts of Ohio at the time. In 2006, the House veteran took on Senator Mike DeWine, who was seeking a third term, and in a strongly Democrat year and won by double digits. Back then, Ohio had a political quirk where anybody who elected Governor or U.S. Senate was someone who had once lost a statewide race first. Brown continued his populist ways in the Senate, even as he started combing his hair a bit more after getting married to a prominent newspaper columnist from Cleveland. Even as Ohio started to turn more red, he won reelection in a competitive 2012 race and then again 2018, as the last Democrat to have won a statewide non-judicial race.
Running for a fourth term in 2024 though, the political environment of Ohio finally caught up with him. Polls showed he had a decent chance of winning for most of the cycle, but on the day that Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris by 11 points, Brown lost to Republican Bernie Moreno 50-46. The race between the two had been quite bitter at times, but the incumbent conceded late on Election Night.
Now in his 70s, many wondered if Brown was done with politics or if he would amount the same kind of quick comeback he succeeded in after his loss back in 1990. Very few Senators in American history who have lost reelection have won a return engagement. The last to do so was a Republican from Washington who won in 1988 after having been unseated in 1986. This year though, Brown is attempting to do the same thing (as is a New Hampshire Republican who lost 18 years ago.) The now former Senator sought to win his old job back instead of mounting a race for the open Governorship which some felt might have been a better political option at the time. As mentioned, if victorious, he will have to run again in the Presidential year of 2028 (when Vance might be leading the Republican ticket), if he is not thinking of merely having a two year redemption stint before entering retirement.
In announcing for Senate, Brown kept other prominent Democrats in the state, including 2022 nominee Tim Ryan out of the contest. Some other little known candidates also dropped out. One candidate, an IT professional, stayed in the race, and ran a bit to Brown's left, which is perhaps not easy to do. The more well-known candidate won 89-11. That was clearly a blowout, but some in the party probably were thinking that Sherrod Brown had been around long enough.
Brown lost as an incumbent two years ago and is now challenging an incumbent. Conventional wisdom would suggest this would make this race even more difficult. While Husted has not been elected to the Senate in his own right, he has won statewide office and in theory should have little to worry about in present-day Ohio. This is expected to be a very tough cycle for Republicans though and any voter remorse that exists from those who voted in 2024 for Trump and may now regret it, have an outlet in voting to return the Senator who was rejected the same year. Some of the early polls from last year had Husted ahead by a modest margin, but as 2026 has progressed, the polls now seem to show Brown ahead narrowly.
This will be an expensive race focused on national political narratives. Brown has clearly managed to win the votes of a lot of Ohioans who voted for Trump, including in his 2018 and 2024 Senate elections. Obviously there were not enough of those ticket splitters in 2024 to save his job as voters were in the mood for change after a fairly unpopular term of Joe Biden and the political drama going on from his time in the White House. There is no shortage of drama these days with Trump though and concerns about inflation and the economy persist. Then of course there is Iran and all the rest that might be on the mind of voters. Brown is in a somewhat awkward position once again, as in 2024, he ran ads trying to portray himself as a sometime legislative ally of Trump. Now this year, he is having to walk a line between his former strong support of protectionist tariffs and his claim that Trump's tariffs are "reckless" and bad for Ohio farmers and consumers.
Husted would have once been considered a standard mainstream Republican, similar to so many others who have won statewide in Ohio. This year though, he has to defend Trump's record and find a way to downplay the President's rhetoric. Recently, the issue of AI and data centers have flared up as a major issue with voters expressing extreme concern. Donald Trump has called it all a "hoax" and taken a very pro-AI and pro-data center stance. Husted is trying to put distance between himself and the White House on something like that during an election year.
The airwaves will be popular with all sorts of attack ads and SuperPAC spending. Democrats will try to put the focus on Husted's ethics including a bribery scandal from the time he was Lt. Governor. Republicans will run ads focusing on decades of Brown's votes as a fairly liberal Democrat on Capitol Hill and will try to tie him to far left or socialist politicians running in other states or those who are vocal nationally They will push heavily on cultural issues such as transgender athletes in youth sports and "sex change operations" for children. It will be interesting to see if Brown retains his own political brand among the voters who have almost exclusively chosen Republicans in Ohio for years now.
Like the Governorship, this race looks like it could go either way, and both could be won by someone with less than 50 percent of the vote. Turnout will matter and both sides will try to get their bases motivated to vote. It is believed that Democrats have a significant edge in enthusiasm though. All things considered at the moment, Brown looks like he might be in a slightly better position to benefit from a disapproving midterm electorate and he while he would technically hold a different seat, he could find himself literally back in his old office.
posted by Corey @ Saturday, September 19, 2026
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