Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown defeated Republican Sen. Jon Husted in Ohio on Tuesday, flipping the Senate seat once held by Vice President JD Vance, the Associated Press reported.
Brown led 48.6% to 46.5% with 89% of ballots counted, according to AP figures cited by the Daily Caller. Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Husted, then lieutenant governor, to replace Vance in January 2025.
Because the race was a special election, Brown will serve the final two years of Vance’s term and face voters again in 2028, the AP reported.
Brown, 73, lost Ohio’s other Senate seat to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024. He will now serve alongside Moreno, the first time former opponents from opposing parties have represented the same state since 2020.
“I do not work for the utility companies. I do not work for data centers. I do not work for Wall Street. I work for you, I work for Ohio,” Brown told supporters in Columbus.
In his concession speech, Husted urged optimism. “America is a great nation. You should love it, and you should fight for our founding ideals,” he said.
Data Centers Became a Weapon
Brown hammered Husted over his support for artificial intelligence data centers, his ties to a statehouse bribery scandal, and donations from billionaire Les Wexner, the AP reported.
Husted was never accused of a crime in the $60 million FirstEnergy bribery case, though he was called to testify at a trial. He gave remaining Wexner money in his accounts to an anti-trafficking charity.
An August memo from the National Republican Senatorial Committee warned AI companies that data centers “are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,” the Daily Caller reported.
Brown called Husted the “face of data centers” in October, although Brown praised an early Ohio data center as “great news” in 2015. Husted sponsored a bill to shield ratepayers from data center power costs that Senate Democrats blocked.
Republicans cast Brown as a relic of five decades in politics. One Husted ad noted he was a 7-year-old playing peewee football when Brown first entered the Ohio legislature.
Spending from both sides and their allies topped $500 million. Trump made several Ohio visits for Husted, but tariffs, a trade war with Canada and the Iran war gave Brown an opening with working-class voters.
The Hill ranked it the second-most expensive Senate race of 2026, behind only Texas, and the third most expensive ever, the Daily Caller reported. Late in the race, Trump promoted Husted, a former college football player, as the better-looking candidate.
About half of Ohio Senate voters viewed Brown favorably, compared with about 4 in 10 for Husted, according to the AP Voter Poll. Most voters saw Husted as “too supportive” of Trump.
Brown also won about 7 in 10 voters under 30, up from about half of that group in 2024, and roughly two-thirds of moderates, the poll found.
The last time a seat vacated by a member of a winning presidential ticket flipped in the next midterm was 2010, when Republican Mark Kirk won Barack Obama’s former Illinois seat.
Content created by Conservative Daily News and some content syndicated through CDN is available for re-publication without charge under the Creative Commons license. Visit our syndication page for details and requirements.
