Democrat Sherrod Brown will return to the US Senate, as Ohio’s voters rejected the incumbent Jon Husted in a significant defeat for Republicans.
Brown’s bid for a comeback after being ousted from the seat he held for 18 years in 2024 became one of the marquee contests of this year’s midterm elections, and a key test of whether Democrats can regain support among the working class and rural voters who have deserted them in recent years.
Brown’s victory brings the Democrats closer to regaining control of the Senate. To regain a majority in Congress’s upper chamber, Democrats need to win the seats they currently hold in Georgia, New Hampshire and Minnesota, and win at least four other seats.
“My pledge to all Ohioans, whether you voted for me or you didn’t, is that I will always be on your side – always,” Brown said Tuesday evening at the Ohio Democrats election watch party. “I do not work for the utility companies. I do not work for datacenters. I do not work for Wall Street. I work for you, I work for Ohio.”
“This is your victory,” he said. “Corporations and billionaires tried to buy this election but it turns out there’s a whole lot more of us than them.”
Brown promised the crowd that the first thing he will aim to do as senator is ban members of Congress from trading stocks.
“Starting today, Ohioans have a senator who puts working people first,” he pledged.
The contest in Ohio was unique, because Husted and Brown were standing off in a special election to determine who would serve the final two years of the term JD Vance won in 2022. Ohio’s Republican governor appointed Husted, then the state’s lieutenant governor, to the Senate in 2025 after Vance became vice-president, and Brown will have to decide whether to seek re-election when the term ends after 2028.
In the two years he has spent in the Senate, Husted adhered closely to Trump’s policies, rarely breaking with him even as the president’s approval ratings cratered amid voter dissatisfaction with the war with Iran, rising prices and Trum’s aggressive immigration policies.
Brown made lowering the cost of living for the working class a cornerstone of his campaign, and railed against Trump’s war with Iran, the administration’s tariff regime and the construction of datacenters.
Data centers have been particularly contentious in races across the country, with many Democrats alleging that their Republican foes are in the pocket of an industry that has seen significant growth amid the development of artificial intelligence but has driven up consumers’ utility bills and harmed their communities.
Husted welcomed the new developments while serving as Ohio lieutenant governor, leading Brown to call him “the face of datacenters” on the campaign trail.
Weeks before the election, Husted sought Senate passage of the Ratepayer Protection Act, which would have required utilities to consider rules to make datacenters pick up costs related to their impact on the electric grid. Though the measure had passed the House of Representatives with near-unanimous support, Senate Democrats blocked it, with minority leader Chuck Schumer calling it “toothless”, a criticism that Brown echoed.
In his concession speech, Husted said he remains optimistic about the future of Ohio and the US.
“America is a great nation. You should love it, and you should fight for our founding ideals that our rights belong fundamentally to us, not to government,” Husted said. “And it’s on all of us to make this country a better place.”
Fabiola Cineas contributed reporting
