Democrat Ex-Sen Sherrod Brown Returns After Two-Year Absence By Flipping JD Vance’s Former Seat Blue

Two years after losing reelection to a Republican, former Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown will return to the upper congressional chamber and take the seat once occupied by Vice President JD Vance.

Brown defeated incumbent Republican Ohio Sen. Jon Husted on Tuesday by a margin of two percentage points winning 48.6% of the vote to the incumbent’s 46.5% with 89% of ballots counted, according to the Associated Press. Outgoing Republican Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine appointed Husted, who was then the state’s lieutenant governor, to the Senate in January 2025 to replace Vance, who resigned to assume the vice presidency.

The returning Democrat represented Ohio’s other Senate seat from 2007 to 2025, having lost reelection to a fourth consecutive term to Republican Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno in 2024.

Ironically, Brown had initially unseated DeWine, then a two-term senator, in 2006 to win his first election to the upper chamber. His earlier victory also occurred during a midterm cycle influenced by widespread backlash to an unpopular Middle Eastern war waged under a Republican presidential administration. Prior to beating DeWine, Brown served continuously in elected office for all but two years since 1975. He served in the Ohio House from 1975 to 1981, as Ohio’s secretary of state from 1983 to 1991, and in the U.S. House from 1993 to 2007.

President Donald Trump won the Buckeye State — which had previously been a hotly contested swing state — in 2016, 2020, and 2024.

Since Ohio’s 2026 contest was a special election to fill the remainder of what would have been Vance’s term, Brown will be up for reelection in 2028.

The seat was widely viewed as crucial to the ambitions of Democrats, who had been relegated to being the chamber’s minority party for two years, in taking back the Senate. Brown was notably ahead of his opponent by 2.5 percentage points, within most surveys’ margin of error, according to RealClearPolling’s polling average, which aggregated survey results between Sept. 23 and Oct. 22.

The race was both the second-most expensive Senate race of the 2026 cycle — behind only Texas — and the third of all time, according to The Hill. Brown and Husted spent a combined $500 million in ads alone, the outlet reported Friday.

During the campaign, artificial intelligence (AI) data centers notably emerged as a hotly contested issue. Brown sought to use their unpopularity in the state to attack Husted. Ohio had 154 operational data centers, plus 27 under construction and 57 planned, according to US Data Center Map, relying on October tracking information. Four polls conducted from August to September indicated between 65% and 75% of Ohioans would oppose building one in their local community.