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Our verdict

nobody gets our endorsement

Election Day is November 3. Early in-person voting in Ohio runs October 6 through November 1. This is the whole race — the platforms, the records, the worst claims against each man, and what the sources actually show. LiberalMind endorses neither of them. Read the research, and decide which flaw you can live with.

How Ohio got here

This is a special election, and the reason is sitting in the vice president's office. JD Vance won this seat in 2022 and resigned it in January 2025 to become the 50th vice president. Under Ohio law, Gov. Mike DeWine appointed a replacement — his lieutenant governor, Jon Husted, on January 17, 2025 — who serves until a special election can be held alongside the next statewide vote. That vote is this one: the first U.S. Senate special election in Ohio since 1954.

Understand what is actually being decided, because it is less than it looks. The winner does not get six years. The winner serves the remaining two years of Vance's term, through January 2029, and this seat is up again in 2028. Ohio is choosing a senator on the shortest leash in America — and spending more money on the choice than on any other Senate race in the country. By mid-October, campaigns and outside groups had spent more than $450 million on advertising in this race, per AdImpact's count in the Columbus Dispatch; MarketWatch put ad reservations at $422.6 million, ahead of Texas for the most expensive general-election contest of the year.

The primaries, on May 5, were coronations. Husted ran unopposed for the Republican nomination. Sherrod Brown — who held Ohio's other Senate seat for eighteen years before losing it in 2024 — took 89.4% of the Democratic primary. Cook, Sabato's Crystal Ball, and Inside Elections all rate the race a Toss Up. The polling averages have Brown ahead by about four points. Through September 30, Brown had raised $61.7 million to Husted's $19.2 million — though Husted, with outside groups spending $246 million on his side, is not the one being outspent where it counts.

Two Ohio archetypes, then: the appointed insider who has spent twenty-five years inside state government, and the most durable labor Democrat in America, running one more time. Six years ago Brown was a fixture. Two years ago Ohio fired him. November decides whether that was a verdict or a mood.

Jon Husted (Republican)

His platform: Husted runs on the Trump agenda, in his campaign's words: in the Senate he has worked to pass an "America First agenda — securing our border and adding more agents, delivering the largest tax cut in American history for middle class families, eliminating taxes on tips and overtime, empowering parents so they can keep their children safe online." He voted for the One Big Beautiful Bill. He is a "staunch supporter" of the SAVE America Act — proof of citizenship and photo ID to vote — and says he has voted for it six times. He co-sponsors the Digital Asset Market Clarity Act, the crypto industry's market-structure bill, promising "clear rules for digital assets." His state record, per his own ad: as House speaker he "delivered a conservative, balanced budget with the largest tax cut in Ohio history," and as lieutenant governor "led efforts to attract the biggest economic projects in state history." On character, his campaign leads with biography: "born into foster care and then being adopted."

The worst claims — and the record:

Claim: He stood "at the center" of the FirstEnergy bribery scandal — a billion-dollar bailout bought with bribes. The Democratic ads leave an impression FactCheck.org states plainly is wrong: "Husted hasn't been charged with or accused of any wrongdoing in the scandal." The scandal itself was real and enormous: House Bill 6 (2019) was a bailout of two FirstEnergy nuclear plants worth more than $1 billion over seven years, charged to every Ohio electric customer; former House Speaker Larry Householder is serving twenty years in federal prison for the racketeering scheme behind it, and FirstEnergy paid $230 million in penalties. Husted's name is in the file because of what the documents actually show — and they show proximity, not a quid pro quo. He supported HB 6 and pushed for its passage. Text messages released in court show FirstEnergy executives saying Husted would press for a longer, more lucrative bailout, and that he and DeWine did "battlefield triage" to install the utility's preferred regulator. FirstEnergy money totaling $3.5 million benefited Husted's campaigns through dark-money groups — spending FactCheck.org notes is legal and practiced by both parties. A lobbyist for the scheme called Husted FirstEnergy's "golden boy," which is where Brown's ads get the phrase. A Case Western law professor who reviewed the exchanges told reporters there is no "smoking gun" for Husted: "It certainly has the appearance of it, but there's no smoking gun in this type of a case yet." And in March 2026, Husted testified — for the defense — in the state trial of the two FirstEnergy executives accused of bribing the regulator, saying he did not recall what was discussed at a 2018 dinner with them. The trial ended in a hung jury. His campaign's answer: he "was focused on diversifying our energy base and saving Ohio's nuclear power plants to keep costs low," and "offered testimony to ensure justice is served."

Claim: He "voted to kick 490,000 Ohioans off their healthcare." PolitiFact rated Brown's version Half True. Husted did vote for the 2025 law, with its Medicaid work requirements and the expiration of enhanced Obamacare subsidies. The 490,000 figure is a ten-year Congressional Budget Office-based estimate — KFF's range runs 350,000 to 580,000 Ohioans — not a count of people who have lost anything yet.

Claim: He "took more money from Jeffrey Epstein's co-conspirators than anyone else in Washington, and then voted to keep the Epstein files secret." FactCheck.org opened the books on both campaigns and found two half-told stories. The money is $116,892 spread over 2001–2025, all of it from Les Wexner — who appeared as a "secondary co-conspirator" in a 2019 FBI email that also noted "limited evidence regarding his involvement," who has never been charged, and who says he never witnessed Epstein's crimes. Husted's campaign donated $34,300 of the available Wexner money to an anti-trafficking nonprofit. On the files: Husted did both things — he voted in September 2025 to table an amendment forcing release of the documents, then supported the standalone Epstein Files Transparency Act when it passed by unanimous consent in November. Brown's side cites only September. Husted's side cites only November. And Brown took more than $100,000 from Epstein associates of his own, per the same FactCheck.org review — donors with ties ranging from real to tenuous, none charged with any Epstein-related crime.

Claim: His data-center bill would make tech companies "pay their own way." Husted championed data centers as lieutenant governor — "Ohio was becoming the tech capital of the Midwest" — and now sponsors a Ratepayer Protection Act as Ohioans' electric bills climb. PolitiFact: the bill would propose and encourage, not require, that data centers cover their grid costs. "The provisions were entirely optional."

The flaw, plainly: Husted's ideology is not the problem — his votes in the Senate have been the conservative votes. His flaw is that he is the Columbus insider in a race about insiders: appointed to the seat rather than elected to it, wrapped for two decades in the utility politics that produced the largest corruption scandal in Ohio history, close enough to it that the executives' own texts brag about him — and when those executives stood trial, the senator from Ohio testified for their side. No charge, no smoking gun. Also no distance. The Cornyn question applies with the names changed: when the room and the voters want different things, Husted has spent a career in the room.

Sherrod Brown (Democratic)

His platform: Brown's campaign is one sentence long: "With all the craziness coming out of Washington, including giving massive tax breaks to corporations and billionaires at the expense of hardworking Ohioans, Sherrod knows he has the ability to do something about it, and that's why he's running for Senate." His stated program: "cutting taxes for working families, not billionaires and corporations"; revive the expired Obamacare subsidies; data centers should "foot the bill for their electricity," with no "out-of-control tax giveaways"; oppose Trump's tariffs, which he calls "reckless tariffs and economic chaos." His voter-guide positions are the full labor program: raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy, a $17 minimum wage, easier union organizing, abortion legal statewide, strengthen the border while opposing ICE "targeting of innocent families." His record pitch is his whole career: the pensions of more than 100,000 Ohioans restored, insulin costs capped, burn-pit care for veterans, two million public workers' full Social Security benefits restored.

His record: Brown served eighteen years in the Senate, chaired the Banking Committee, and built the "dignity of work" brand into the closest thing Ohio Democrats have to a state religion. In 2024, Ohio voters retired him: he lost to Bernie Moreno, 50.1% to 46.5%, on a ballot Donald Trump carried by eleven points. He did not plan to run again — "I didn't plan to run for office again, but when I see what's going on, I know I can do something about it for Ohio" — and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer flew to Ohio twice to talk him into it. He is running for Vance's seat, not his old one.

The worst claims — and the record:

Claim: He "supports sex-change surgery for minors" — "forcing childhood sex-change surgery." The Senate Leadership Fund's ads feature a Texas woman who received hormones at 17 and a double mastectomy at 19 — a legal adult, in a different state, with no connection to any vote Brown cast. PolitiFact rated the "forcing" claim False: Ohio law already bars gender-affirming care for minors, and "no documentation exists showing Brown has ever endorsed minor transitions." Brown's actual stated position, from 2023: "A child's health care decisions are between them, their parents, their families, their doctors — not politicians." Readers can judge that position on its merits. The ad does not describe it.

Claim: He "opened our borders to dangerous illegals" and bears blame for a deadly April crash on an Ohio interstate. A family of three was killed in Delaware County on April 11; the driver, Modou Ngom, is charged with aggravated vehicular homicide. FactCheck.org found "no evidence of any tie between Brown's votes on immigration, as the ad suggests, and the suspect": Ngom entered the United States sometime in the 1990s, got an Ohio license around 2003, and was naturalized in 2015 — and most of the Brown votes the ad cites came after all of that, changed no law, or were votes against a bill that became law anyway in a package Brown supported.

Claim: He "gave them [people here illegally] your Social Security money and free healthcare and COVID checks." Husted said it at an October rally. PolitiFact: False. The votes behind it were a 2007 vote about Social Security credits for work performed by people who later gained legal status, a 2013 vote against an amendment to a law that already barred undocumented immigrants from Medicaid and Obamacare, and a stimulus law that required a valid Social Security number and barred nonresident aliens outright.

Claim (from Trump, same rally): "Ohio lost 300,000 manufacturing jobs during Brown's watch." PolitiFact: it lacks full context. Ohio shed a little over 100,000 manufacturing jobs during Brown's Senate tenure; reaching 300,000 requires counting from 1993, his House years, across a nationwide industrial decline that hit every state in the region.

And one honest number for Brown's side of the ledger: the crypto industry's Fairshake network has spent $46.6 million against him — after spending $41 million against him in 2024 — because as Banking chairman he was, in the Cointelegraph account, "one of the more outspoken voices challenging laws and policies favored by the crypto industry." Brown's response: "Jon Husted is their boy… They know he's their guy, they know I'm going to hold him accountable." Whatever else that money proves, it proves the industry's preference is Husted — a fact Ohioans are entitled to weigh in both directions.

The flaw, plainly: Brown's flaw is values, worn openly for fifty years. He is, by nearly all accounts including ours, a sincere man; his concern for Ohio workers is not an act. But sincerity is not agreement. His answer to every question since 1975 has been the same: a bigger federal government, higher taxes on the corporations and enterprises that employ Ohio, federal muscle behind union organizing, and abortion without legal limit. He is not a Manchin or a Fetterman — a Democrat who breaks with the program where the program breaks with the country. He is the program, in its most honest and durable form. Ohio weighed that program in 2024, in a favorable year for his party's opponents, and chose the other thing. Nothing in his platform has changed since.

Also on the ballot: Bill Redpath, the Libertarian — a former national party chairman running on cutting federal spending, repealing all tariffs, ending corporate welfare and farm subsidies, open immigration with criminal and security exceptions, and a non-interventionist foreign policy. And Gregory Levy, an independent affiliated with the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Neither is scored by the raters; a ballot is reported whole or not at all.

The verdict: nobody gets our endorsement

Two men. Two different flaws.

Husted's flaw is the insider's flaw: a career built inside the machine that produced HB 6, an appointment instead of an election, a defense witness's chair in the executives' trial. He votes right. The question is whose man he is when voting right gets expensive — and the documentary record, texts and all, does not let him answer it cleanly.

Brown's flaw is the program itself: half a century of big-government labor liberalism, sincerely held and clearly stated, which Ohio's voters examined two years ago and voted out. A comeback does not become a reconsideration just because the seat is different.

So we will not tell you this race has a good answer. It has a research answer, and one mercy the other races don't: the term is two years. Whoever wins faces you again in 2028. Vote early. Research your candidates. And vote for the flaw you can live with — the insider you'd have to watch, on the shortest leash in the Senate, or the true believer whose beliefs are the ones you voted against last time.

The most expensive seat in America is, for once, also the easiest to take back. Swallow it with your eyes open.

Sources

AI-assisted article — but the sources are human, and the facts are very real.

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