Bernie Moreno

ZANESVILLE, Ohio -- Ohio, an increasingly red state, has been on an antiestablishment streak as it's purged its Democratic officials. In recent years, Ohio voters have taken a chance on political outsiders who vow to shake up the system -- from President Donald Trump to political neophyte and ex-car dealership owner Bernie Moreno, who beat Democratic former Sen. Sherrod Brown in 2024. And Democrats around the country are also hungry for change and fed up with the party's leaders.

Earlier this month, Brown worked a crowd of about 100 supporters into a frenzy in the back of a brewery in this small eastern Ohio city.

"You want to take this country back!" Brown said as the crowd roared.

But the disheveled populist quickly qualified his statement, as the crowd grew quiet again. "Not back to exactly what we had," he said. "The system's been rigged against workers, against the middle class, against poor people for a long time. But it's gotten a lot worse in the last year."

Brown walks a tightrope this election cycle. He is trying to persuade Ohioans to send him back to Washington just two years after they booted him out, and to represent "change" after decades of serving in Washington.

Senate Democrats can't accomplish their uphill battle to control the chamber again without at least three Democrats carrying red states that voted for Trump by double-digit margins two years ago.

"It's very much tilted in Republicans' favor," said Christopher Devine, a professor of political science at the University of Dayton. "You have to assume he's at a disadvantage here."

But the ex-senator, 73, who was a top recruit by Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., also has two assets he lacked last time around. He faces a low-key and fairly unknown-to-voters political opponent, Sen. Jon Husted, R-Ohio, whom some political insiders see as an easier foe than Moreno. And the political environment has shifted considerably in Brown's favor, as high gas prices and other economic factors have pushed Trump's approval down in the state.

"Normally you'd say Sherrod Brown's done. He's been around a long time, and people aren't for politicians spending their whole life in public office," said Tim Ryan, the former Democratic congressman who lost a 2022 Senate bid to JD Vance, then a newcomer to politics. "But given the circumstances and Husted's ties to Trump, it absolutely puts the race in play."

Husted, the 58-year-old former lieutenant governor, was appointed by Republican Gov. Mike DeWine to fill Vance's seat. The November special election will be to serve out the remaining two years of Vance's Senate term, and its winner will face another election in 2028.

Brown has started his campaign with two blisteringly negative ads. They raise questions about the political donations Husted has received from Les Wexner, an Ohio billionaire with close ties to deceased sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. (Wexner, who employed Epstein as his financial adviser for decades, has said he had no knowledge of Epstein's crimes.)

"Of all 535 members of Congress, who's taken the most money from associates of Jeffrey Epstein?" a narrator asks. "Jon Husted, that's who."

Husted's team rejects the attacks and says it donated $34,300 of the funds to an antitrafficking charity. The campaign blasts Brown for taking funds from others who associated with Epstein, including former Harvard professor Larry Summers in 2025.