Candidate Spotlight: Sherrod Brown
Long before affordability powered Mikie Sherill, Abigail Spanberger and Zohran Momdani to election in November 2025, Sherrod Brown focused on working-class economic issues in the House and in the Senate.
He has been a strong supporter of organized labor, and Sherrod and his wife Connie proudly drive union-made Jeeps manufactured in Toledo, Ohio. After noting that his home zip code had the highest rate of housing foreclosures in the country, he said, “I want to devote the rest of my career to helping people have affordable, decent, clean, safe housing.”
Brown was elected to the U.S. House in 1992 in a district in northeast Ohio. He served in that seat until 2008, when he was first elected to the Senate. He was defeated in 2024, in a race in which crypto interests donated $40 million to his Republican challenger. Brown is again running for the Senate, in the seat vacated by Vice President Vance, a seat that has been filled by Sen. Jon Husted for the last year.
He voted for the Affordable Care Act in 2010, supported Medicare for All, sponsored legislation to make Medicare eligible to people at age 55, and was a leader in an effort to expand the child tax credit, an effort that temporarily cut the U.S. child poverty rate in half.
Brown supported the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have required certification of a labor union, without an election, if a majority of employees in the bargaining unit had signed authorization cards. He advocated for a higher minimum wage. In addition to this, he supported investing in infrastructure, supported small businesses and supported green energy initiatives.
When it comes to oppositions, he has opposed the outsourcing of American job by supporting tariffs and protectionist trade policies. He voted against ratification of the NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement, and successfully opposed ratification of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. During Trump’s first term, he supported renegotiation of NAFTA. However, Brown voted against ratification of its replacement because he felt that its worker protection provisions were insufficient.
He led an effort in 2008 to preempt future bank bailouts by breaking up “too-big- to-fail” banks by limiting the size of banks eligible for federal financial assistance. Brown fought against legislation that reduced the regulations on banks with more than $50 billion but less than $250 billion in assets, pointing out the Senate was engaged in “collective amnesia” by repealing rules designed to avoid future bank bailouts.
Brown supported legislation to more tightly regulate crypto, due to the lack of adequate consumer protections and the use of crypto by terrorist groups and international criminal interests. Fairshake, a pro-crypto industry PAC, spent more than $40 million in advertisements (which didn’t mention crypto) to defeat Brown in 2024.
Those same interests will probably spend similar amounts of money to elect Husted and to defeat Brown in 2026. Right now, Brown is ahead of Husted by 1% and is trailing Husted by 3% in two recent polls. Brown’s election chances will depend on whether Ohio voters’ opposition to Trump and their concerns about affordability are outweighed by out-of state interests’ spending to support Husted. In other words, Brown’s chances will be based on whether crypto spending – which has nothing to do with the issues that concern Ohioans – will control the election results.
Written By Barry Roseman, SU4W Board Member & Treasurer
