Outgoing Sen. Sherrod Brown‘s (D-OH) political career may not be over despite losing his reelection bid last week to represent Ohio in the Senate to Republican Sen.-elect Bernie Moreno.
Brown, who was first elected to the Senate in 2006, will be out of elected office in January for the first time since he was elected to the House of Representatives in 1992. In an interview with Politico, he did not dismiss running for Senate in 2026, when a special election for the remainder of the term for Vice President-elect J.D. Vance’s seat will be held.
“I’m not ruling anything out,” Brown said.
Brown lost to Moreno in last week’s Senate election, 50.2%-46.4%. The flip helped Republicans secure a 53-47 majority in the Senate for next year’s Congress.
The Ohio Democrat said his future in the party would be showing them the importance of connecting to the working class.
“That’s my future in this party, is to focus on helping the Democratic Party and my colleagues understand how important that is, that we talk to workers and we make decisions with workers at the table,” Brown said.
He suggested that President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans were successful in last week’s elections because Democrats failed to focus on middle-class workers, saying he has “seen that support erode” in recent years.
Trump and Republicans were successful in various Midwestern states with significant working-class bases, including in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Alongside flipping Brown’s seat, the GOP flipped Sen. Bob Casey’s (D-PA) seat in Pennsylvania. Trump also won Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as part of his sweep of the swing states.
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Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH) has yet to announce who he will appoint to Vance’s seat, which will be vacant in January. Reports suggest the Ohio governor is considering Republican state Sen. Matt Dolan, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, and former Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Timken.
Whoever DeWine selects would only have the seat until a special election in 2026 for the remaining two years of the term, and then another election would be held for the seat in 2028 for the full term.
