Just a year ago, former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown was moving out of his Senate office and helping his former staff members find jobs. One month earlier, when Donald Trump was running on the ballot, the longtime Democratic senator lost his re-election bid to newly elected U.S. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH).
On his last night in the Senate chamber, Brown cast a vote for a bill he had sponsored, the Social Security Fairness Act. It eliminated the Government Pension Offset and the Windfall Elimination Provision, which had been decreasing the retirement funds of retired public employees since the 1980s.
Brown said that the vote made a huge difference to 150,000 public retirees who were unable to receive their full benefits, including a retired public school bus driver in Lawrence County.
"She was getting $300 a month in Social Security even though she had the hours, the quarters, for eligibility for full benefits,” Brown said in an interview. “Now she gets $1,900 a month. She's not getting rich, but her whole life has changed."
Brown said when he left the Senate last winter, he thought about doing something different. Maybe he'd run for governor. In March, he set up a non-profit, non-profit think tank he called the Dignity of Work Institute, which he said would focus on issues for working Ohioans.
At the same time, Lt. Gov. Jon Husted was appointed to the U.S. Senate seat vacated by J.D. Vance as he became vice president. Brown said after watching actions by the Trump administration, he said he could "no longer sit on the sidelines" and announced a run against Husted in August.
Why Brown said he changed his mind
“I didn’t expect to do this," Brown said in an interview with the Statehouse News Bureau. But he said GOP lawmakers' votes for tax and health care policies are hurting everyday Ohioans.
Brown met with U.S. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) in the summer. And while Brown won't give specifics about that conversation, he said he was urged to run for the U.S. Senate in 2026. He said his first order of business, if elected, would be to do one thing: “I will fight to undo all of those terrible decisions made in the last year."
Brown said Husted's support of "a billionaires' tax cut" and other policies has made Ohioans' lives harder. But Husted is clearly positioning himself as the candidate for Ohioans.
"I'm an Ohio guy, not a D.C. guy," Husted said in an interview, adding that Brown is "hiding from his own record. Every problem in the health care system is something that Sherrod Brown created over the last 32 years."
“My job for years was to take on what I think is a rigged system," Brown said. "Far too many special interests – the drug companies, the oil companies, Wall Street, the railroads in Eastern Ohio, have far too much power in Congress, far too much power in Columbus.”
Brown hasn't formally filed paperwork yet, but he's been traveling and meeting with people in jeopardy of losing health care benefits, with small business leaders who are finding it difficult to operate, and with farmers who said they're been hurt by Trump's tariffs.
Brown said he's going to draw a stark contrast between his position and those that have been taken by Republicans who now control the presidency and Congress.
Whoever wins in 2026 would have to run for reelection in 2028 for a six-year term.
