Cleveland-the former Senator Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, launched a return campaign on Monday, preparing the stage for a special choice of 2026 that could decide the partisan control of the Senate.
Brown will challenge Senator Jon Husted, the Republican to whom Ohio Mike Dewine designated this year to fill the vacancy created by the election of JD Vance as vice president.
“We had no intention, really, to run again,” Brown said, speaking of himself and his wife, journalist Connie Schultz, in an interview with NBC News. “We simply listen to more and more people and saw how much worse it was becoming. I spent my career, as they know, assuming interest groups and assuming this manipulated system. And the system has been manipulated during all the time I remember, but it has clearly worsened.”
In a video that accompanies its launch of its campaign, Brown presents three important principles for him: “Defend workers, treat everyone with dignity and respect, working as hard as possible.”
“I did not plan to run again for a position, but when I see what is happening, I know I can do something about it for Ohio,” says Brown in the video. “That’s why I apply for the Senate.”
Brown, 72, lost his career for a fourth term last year against Republican Bernie Moreno in approximately 3.5 percentage points when President Donald Trump took Ohio for 11 points. The news of his decision to run for the Senate, and not for the governor, like many Ohio Democrats had waited, left last week, first reported by Cleveland.com and confirmed by NBC News.
The clash of next year will determine who is the remaining two years in the term Vance won in 2022. Brown was not commitment when asked if he would look for a complete period of six years in 2028 if he beat Husted.
“I don’t know,” Brown said. “Really, legitimately, I don’t know.”
The leader of the Senate minority, Chuck Schumer, Dn.y., had aggressively pressed Brown to choose an offer from the Senate for a race by governor and traveled twice to Ohio to persuade him that he faced Husted. Brown and former governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina are two precious recruits in the battle of the Democrats to recover the Senate in the middle of the period of next year. With the Republicans defending a majority of 53-47 in the camera, the Democrats would need to obtain four seats.
After losing their re -election campaign last year, Brown and Schultz moved from Cleveland to Bexley, Ohio, the suburb of Columbus that houses the governor’s mansion. The movement, which placed Brown and Schultz closer to their grandchildren and Schultz’s teaching work at Denison University, fed the talk that was bowing more towards a career for the governor. Meanwhile, Brown launched the Dignity of Work Institute, a non -profit organization focused on workers’ problems.
Brown said it wasn’t just Schumer pushing him in one direction or another. He and Schultz heard of people everywhere, from the grocery store to their local parade on July 4.
“The decision was mine and Connie’s, and it was a difficult decision, because I think I could do a good job anywhere,” Brown said. “But ultimately, because Ohio does not have anyone in the Senate to defend Ohio’s workers, I realized that decision. I mean, they are difficult times for this state, they are difficult times for people. It could have gone in any way in that case, but I think I can have more impact on the Senate.”
Brown pointed out Husted’s vote for the “great and beautiful bill” backed by Trump, a Megabill that has been criticized for his cuts to Medicaid and other federal programs of security networks. Brown said he is specifically concerned that Ohio to Ohio loses the health insurance coverage in a state where, more than a decade ago, a Republican governor promoted the expansion of Medicaid.
“The worst has been the big one, as they call it: big ticket, ugly, great and beautiful bill,” Brown said. “To any extent, this is the worst vote he has cast in the Senate, but he is a continuous career for special interests all his career.”
Husted, 57, like Brown, has spent much of his adult life in public positions. He served as the speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives in the 2000s and as Secretary of State, a work that Brown celebrated in the 1980s, in the 2010. More recently, Husted served as Lieutenant Governor of Dewine. As Brown’s intention to run for the Senate became clearer last week, a spokesman for Husted marked Brown as a “selected” Schumer candidate.
“He has never faced a candidate like Jon Husted,” added spokesman Tyson Shepard. “Brown’s slogans will sound to Hollow while his coalition moves away, tired of the radical policies that he is forced to support to appease his coastal bosses in California and New York.”
