Ohio Senate 2026, Brown vs. Husted

This profile reflects information available as of July 27, 2026. Candidates, polling, endorsements, and campaign positions change quickly. Check current sources before relying on any detail here.

Why This Race Is on Our List

This is a special election, not a regular one, and the winner serves only two years before running again in 2028. It pits an appointed senator who has never won a competitive statewide race against a three-term senator trying to reclaim the seat he lost eighteen months earlier. Ohio has not held a Senate special election since 1954. Analysts expect at least $500 million in ad spending, which would break the record set by Ohio’s own 2024 Senate race. Control of the chamber may run through it.

The State

Ohio has moved steadily rightward. Donald Trump carried it three consecutive times with growing margins, winning by roughly 11 points in 2024. Republicans hold every statewide executive office, both legislative chambers, both Senate seats, and 10 of 15 House seats. The state has had a Republican trifecta for 27 of the last 34 years.

The counterweight is Sherrod Brown’s own history. He won in 2006, 2012, and 2018, the last of those by nearly seven points in a state Trump had carried two years earlier. He then lost to Bernie Moreno in 2024, 50.1 percent to 46.5 percent, by about 200,000 votes, while Trump won the state by 11. That gap of roughly seven points between Brown’s performance and his party’s presidential result is the entire premise of his comeback.

Everything is up at once this year. The governorship is open, with Vivek Ramaswamy facing Amy Acton, and the same AARP poll that showed Brown ahead showed Acton ahead too. Ohio’s midterm electorate is the open question in both races.

The Candidates

Jon Husted (R) has held office in Ohio almost continuously since 2001: state representative and House speaker, state senator, secretary of state from 2011 to 2019, and lieutenant governor from 2019 to 2025. Gov. Mike DeWine appointed him to the Senate on January 17, 2025, after JD Vance became vice president. He was born into foster care and adopted, and his campaign leads with that story alongside his father’s layoff from a machine tool factory. He ran unopposed in the May 5 primary, drawing 720,959 votes. Trump endorsed him early. Campaign site: jonhustedforsenate.com.

Sherrod Brown (D) served in the Ohio House starting in 1975, as Ohio secretary of state, in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2007, and in the Senate from 2007 to 2025. He is 73. He announced in August 2025 after declining to run for governor, and won the May 5 primary with 89.7 percent against Ron Kincaid, a political newcomer. His long-running themes are labor, trade, and the dignity of work. Campaign site: sherrodbrown.com.

Cook Political Report’s Jessica Taylor observed that “Brown functions more as the incumbent in this race”, since Husted’s two statewide wins came in the strong Republican years of 2010 and 2014 and he remains less known than a typical sitting senator.

Also on the ballot. Libertarian Bill Redpath, a retired business valuation analyst from Perrysburg and a former Libertarian National Committee chair, won his party’s primary with 4,829 votes. He is running on spending cuts, repealing all tariffs rather than just Trump’s, open immigration, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. One June poll put him at 4 percent, below the threshold at which we give a candidate full treatment. That threshold is about coverage, not consequence: in a race decided by two or three points, a Libertarian drawing 4 percent could matter to the outcome. Independent Gregory Levy is also on the ballot, and Stephen Faris is a certified write-in.

Top Issues

Health coverage. This is the sharpest and best-documented contrast. Ohio’s ACA marketplace enrollment fell 32.4 percent between February 2025 and February 2026, a loss of 161,385 people and the steepest percentage decline of any state, after Congress let enhanced subsidies expire on December 31, 2025. Brown has made it central. Husted’s office says he introduced the Accountability for Better Care Act to extend the subsidies two years and that Senate Democrats blocked it.

Trade and agriculture. Soybeans are Ohio’s largest cash crop, contributing more than $7 billion. China normally buys 25 to 30 percent of the U.S. crop. Brown campaigns hard in farm counties that voted overwhelmingly for Trump. Husted has defended the tariffs and points to expensing provisions in the 2025 tax law that let farmers immediately write off equipment purchases.

Manufacturing and Intel. Husted was the public face of the Intel semiconductor project when he was lieutenant governor. It has been repeatedly delayed. He now points to a possible manufacturing partner as a path to acceleration.

Cost of living. Both campaigns claim it. Husted emphasizes tax cuts, no tax on tips and overtime, and border security. Brown emphasizes prescription drug costs, tariff-driven prices, and corporate power.

Where framing and voter priorities diverge. An Emerson College survey found 44 percent of Ohio voters named the economy their top concern, with threats to democracy second at 15 percent, affordable housing at 10, and health care at 8. Health care ranks lower in that poll than the volume of health care messaging in this race would suggest, though the coverage losses landed after it was taken. Husted’s emphasis on online child safety and border security likewise does not surface near the top of Ohio issue polling. Brown has also run on banning congressional stock trading, which polls well nationally but is not a leading Ohio priority.

Evidence Check

Brown: Republicans are “kicking 490,000 hardworking Ohioans off their coverage.” The number traces to a projection, not a count. Policy Matters Ohio, a progressive research group, estimated that 319,000 to 493,000 Ohioans would be at risk of losing Medicaid expansion coverage as of 2034, depending on how the state implements federal work requirements. Brown’s ad uses the top of that range, drops the 2034 horizon, and converts “at risk” into completed action. Separately, the Urban Institute projected up to 356,000 Ohioans could lose coverage from work requirements. The documented, already-happened figure is different and smaller: 161,385 people off ACA marketplace plans between February 2025 and February 2026, per CMS data.

Brown: “American farmers sold $12 billion of soybeans in calendar year 2024” and sold none the next year because of tariffs. The zero applies to Chinese purchases of one harvest, not to all U.S. soybean sales. In October 2025 the Ohio Soybean Association’s executive director said China had not bought a single bushel of that year’s crop. By November, reporting indicated China had agreed to buy roughly half a normal year’s volume. Sales to other buyers continued throughout. The underlying damage is well documented: USDA estimated Ohio soybean farmers faced a net operating loss of about $100 per acre that year. The direction is right; “sold zero” is imprecise as stated.

Brown: the Wexner and Epstein files ad. Brown’s first television ads tie Husted to donations from Ohio billionaire Les Wexner and to a fall 2025 vote against releasing the Epstein files. The vote and the contribution both happened. The ad omits that roughly two months later Husted voted with the full Senate to release the files, and that his campaign says it donated all available Wexner funds to an anti-trafficking charity. Wexner was Epstein’s principal financial backer and has not been implicated in his crimes.

Husted: Ohio still has more ACA enrollees than before the pandemic. His office says Ohio has nearly 135,000 more people on ACA plans than before the temporary subsidies existed. That comparison is likely accurate on its own terms, but it swaps the baseline. Measuring against 2019 rather than 2025 does not address the year-over-year loss, and both things can be true at once.

Husted: the subsidy expiration caused only a small share of premium increases. His office attributed a figure of 3.3 percent to KFF. We could not locate or verify that specific KFF estimate and are reporting the claim as his office made it rather than as established. Independent coverage of the enrollment drop attributes it substantially to premium increases following the expiration, with KFF having projected before the fact that average costs for subsidized enrollees would more than double.

Husted: he led efforts to attract the biggest economic projects in state history. He did lead the recruitment of Intel’s New Albany campus, originally announced as a $20 billion investment promising 7,000 construction jobs and 3,000 permanent ones. Production was initially slated for late 2025. Intel pushed it to 2027-2028, then in February 2025 to 2030-2031 for the first fab and 2032 for the second. Intel has spent roughly $5.26 billion at the site and received $600 million in state grants plus $1.5 billion in federal CHIPS money. Husted said this month that Intel has told him a prospective partner could speed the build-out, adding that “You can’t build something until you have demand.” The recruitment is real; the jobs are not yet.

Supporter Voices

The available on-the-record voices in this race cluster heavily around tariffs and farming, and several come from people who are not Democrats. We are presenting them as issue voices rather than as balanced partisan samples.

Chris Gibbs, a Shelby County farmer, said tariff losses have put Ohio growers in a “hell of a mess.”

A Darke County farmer named Brehm told the Dayton Daily News he doubts prices will return to prior levels and worries that any bailout money would simply be absorbed by seed and fertilizer suppliers raising their own prices.

Kirk Merritt, executive director of the Ohio Soybean Association, described farmers across the state waiting anxiously for conditions to change, and separately voiced disappointment at the timing of federal aid to Argentina.

The clearest organized split is in labor. The Ohio AFL-CIO, IBEW, and Actors’ Equity endorsed Brown. The Boilermakers, Operating Engineers Locals 18 and 66, and the Northwest Ohio Building and Construction Trades Council endorsed Husted, along with the National Border Patrol Council and the Ohio Cattlemen’s Association. Ohio’s building trades and its industrial unions are not moving together.

How This Race Is Being Framed

As a comeback or a rerun. Brown’s campaign presents 2024 as a presidential-year loss reversible in a midterm. Republicans present him as a defeated candidate whose politics Ohio has already rejected once. Husted’s ads have run with the “you’re fired” theme.

As a referendum on tariffs. This is the frame Brown most wants. It targets rural counties that voted heavily Republican in 2024 and are now absorbing real losses, and it lets a Democrat run against a policy rather than against a person.

As appointed versus elected. Husted has never faced Ohio voters for this office. Brown’s side notes he was chosen by one man. Husted’s side notes he has won statewide twice and served in state government for a quarter century.

As a money story. Brown outraised Husted for four straight quarters, taking in $17.1 million across affiliated committees in the second quarter to Husted’s $7.7 million, with 135,200 reported donors including 70,000 first-timers. Husted’s donor base is narrower and more PAC-weighted. That gap is expected to be erased by outside spending: the Senate Leadership Fund announced plans to spend roughly $79 million on Husted’s behalf, making Ohio its top national priority. AdImpact projects $749 million across all Ohio races this year.

Where the polling stands, and it does not agree with itself. A Fox News poll conducted by Beacon Research and Shaw and Company from May 28 to June 1 had Brown up 53 to 45. A Tulchin Research poll in early June had Brown up 46 to 42 with Redpath at 4. A New York Times and Siena poll in late June had Husted up 50 to 47. As of late July, RealClearPolitics showed Brown ahead by 0.6 points while another aggregator showed Husted ahead by 2.8, a five-point spread between averages of overlapping polls. Cook rates the race a toss-up. Sabato’s Crystal Ball moved it from Leans Republican to toss-up on June 11. Inside Elections still has it Tilt Republican.

Discussion Questions

Should a governor be able to appoint a senator, or should vacancies always be filled by election?
Does losing an election make someone a weaker candidate the next time, or a better one?
Have tariffs affected anything you buy or sell? How did you notice?
When a candidate cites a projection as if it already happened, does that change how you weigh the claim?
Ohio’s building trades and industrial unions split between the two candidates. Why might that be?
Intel received billions in public money and pushed its opening back by five years. Who should be held responsible?
Is it fair to run an ad about a vote a candidate later reversed?
Two polling averages disagreed by five points in the same week. How much should anyone trust polls?
Should there be a limit on outside spending in a Senate race?
Imagine you are a soybean farmer in northwest Ohio who voted Republican in 2024. What would you want to hear from each candidate?