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The former three-term senator is said to be running to get his old job back, delivering a recruitment coup for Democrats facing an uphill battle to win a Senate majority next year.
Aug. 12, 2025, 1:17 p.m. ET
Former Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio plans to try to return to the Senate in 2026, giving the Democratic Party a strong recruit in its effort to take back control of the chamber next year, according to three people with knowledge of his decision.
Mr. Brown, who served in the Senate for three terms until his defeat in 2024, immediately becomes the Democratic front-runner to face Senator Jon Husted, a freshman Republican whom Gov. Mike DeWine appointed to file the vacancy created by JD Vance’s elevation to the vice presidency.
The people spoke on decision of anonymity to discuss a decision that is not yet public. Cleveland.com first reported on Mr. Brown’s decision.
Mr. Brown, 72, was a mainstay of Ohio politics for decades, dating to 1974, when he was the youngest person ever elected to the Ohio Statehouse. He later served as the Ohio secretary of state for eight years, as a congressman for more than a decade and as a senator for 18 years.
He lost a re-election bid in 2024 as Ohio continued to turn increasingly Republican. Senator Bernie Moreno, a Republican, won 50 percent of the vote to Mr. Brown’s 46.5 percent. That race was the most expensive Senate contest in the nation last year, with more than $451 million spent by candidates and outside groups, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.
After leaving office, Mr. Brown formed a nonprofit organization, the Dignity of Work Institute, making it his mission to find a way for the Democratic Party to appeal more to working-class voters. In an essay this year, he called that goal an “electoral and a moral imperative.”
