At 73, Sherrod Brown is mounting a comeback bid in Ohio. He is one of the Democrats his party is counting on to retake control of the Senate.
At 73, Sherrod Brown is mounting a comeback bid in Ohio. He is one of the Democrats his party is counting on to retake control of the Senate.
Credit…Aaron Blum for The New York Times
Reporting from Steubenville, New Philadelphia and North Canton, Ohio
This week in New Philadelphia, Ohio, at a coffee shop called the Daily Grind, Sherrod Brown told a crowd of 100 or so people about the last big thing he did as a United States senator.
“How many of you benefit from the Social Security Fairness Act?” he asked, referring to bipartisan legislation he co-wrote to get full retirement pay for millions of public workers.
Some hands went up. “Thank you!” a retired teacher named Becky Bender called out.
“Well, the best way to say thank you is to get all your friends to vote for me,” he replied. “It’s going to be a really important year.”
In this really important year, Mr. Brown is a really important Democrat — one of the most important running for office.
He is trying to pull off a difficult political comeback — a quick return to the Senate, where he served three terms before losing his seat in 2024, amid shifting partisan preferences in his state and a tsunami of spending by the cryptocurrency industry to oust him.
This time, he is hoping the environment will prove more favorable. When he lost two years ago, President Trump was on the ballot and Republican enthusiasm was strong. Now Mr. Trump is broadly unpopular, and Mr. Brown is running against Senator Jon Husted, who was appointed to the Senate to fill the seat of JD Vance when he left to become vice president.
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