“The system is rigged”: Democrat Sherrod Brown places data center danger at the heart of his populist Senate bid | Ohio

SHerrod Brown, the former Democratic senator from Ohio who hopes to return to power in November’s midterm elections, has spent the last year traveling around his home state telling voters all the ways the “system is rigged” against them. Recently, he told people about a trip he took through rural northwest Ohio.

“You drive through what looks like really good farmland, you drive past fields, you drive past barns, you drive past milking parlors, and you see, all of a sudden, you see these huge cranes and you see these trucks coming,” Brown told a crowd of dozens at a cafe in the city of Lima earlier this month.

The construction site was for a data center, Brown said, a component of the AI ​​boom in which Ohio is a national leader. Brown believes that massive installations that appear without warning do little good for the people around them.

“Nobody knows they’re here,” Brown, in shirtsleeves and without notes, said in his deep voice as the crowd murmured agreement. “They’re eating up our land. They’re gobbling up our water…and then once they’re built, our electricity prices go up.”

It’s the latest iteration of an argument Brown has made throughout his political career: that the most powerful people in the United States don’t have the best interests of Ohioans at heart. That message helped him win seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives and then three in the Senate, even as Ohio became increasingly dominated by Republicans and the working-class voters Democrats once relied on deserted the party.

In 2024, Brown lost his bid for a fourth term in an election where Ohio voters supported Trump by a margin of 11 percentage points. “This is not, I promise you, the last time you will hear from me,” he said in his final Senate speech, and months later announced a new Senate run.

Now 73, Brown has made resistance to data center developers a centerpiece of his campaign, calling his Republican opponent, Sen. Jon Husted, the “face of data centers.” A report from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce finds the state provided $2.5 billion in tax breaks for facilities from 2017 to 2024, the period Husted was lieutenant governor.

“John Husted, I mean, he’s the one who – he talks like he doesn’t do it now – but he’s the one who’s the reason these data centers are here – 200 of them,” Brown said.

Whether the former senator’s message reaches voters is central to Democrats’ hopes of taking back the Senate and blunting Trump’s ability to pass bills and confirm judges for the final two years of his presidency. Democrats need to win at least four Senate seats to return to the majority, most of which will come from states that voted for Trump by double digits in 2024 — like Ohio.

“The Anchor Hanging Around Husted’s Neck”

Brown incorporated his concerns about the impact of data centers into the overall affordability message that many congressional Democrats are campaigning on nationally. He peppers his speeches with references to the war in Iran, tariffs, Medicaid cuts approved by the Republican Congress and the rising prices of Affordable Care Act plans caused by their inaction. When asked in Lima to propose an idea to cut costs if he won, Brown proposed a new expansion of the child tax credit, which reduced the child poverty rate in its single year of passage under Joe Biden.

As the election draws closer, Brown has stepped up his efforts to tie data centers to Husted, whom Republican Gov. Mike DeWine appointed in 2025 to the seat vacated by JD Vance when he became vice president. Whoever wins will serve out the remainder of their term, which expires at the end of 2028.

This week, Brown’s campaign announced a slew of billboards reading “Did you see this data center? Jon Husted did that” and a website criticizing the senator for offering voters maps of state facilities.

Amy Natoce, Husted’s campaign spokeswoman, accused Brown of lying, saying that while he was lieutenant governor under DeWine from 2019 to 2025, Husted “did not have the authority to issue tax breaks.” She also highlighted her defense of the Ratepayer Protection Act in the Senate, which would have required electric utilities to consider standards that would require data centers to pay for their impact on the grid. Even though it was passed by the House with a wide, With bipartisan support, Senate Democrats called the proposal ineffective and last month blocked its advancement.

“Sherrod Brown and his friends like to talk about affordability, but when the issue comes up, they’d rather play politics than actually lower Ohioans’ energy bills. It’s disgusting,” Natoce said.

There is evidence that Brown’s attacks could be effective. Last week, the New York Times and the University of Siena released a poll that found voters thought Brown would do a better job than Husted managing data center development, by a margin of 11 percentage points. Furthermore, the race remains close, with the Democrat ahead of the outgoing president by three percentage points, within the survey’s margin of error.

In August, a memo emerged from the GOP’s Senate campaign arm, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, warning that the issue could sink Husted.

“More than anything else in this race, data centers are the anchor hanging around Husted’s neck,” the memo reads. “If he loses and data centers are blamed, politicians across the country will take notice – and they won’t go near the next one. »

DeWine and his predecessor sought to encourage the development of data centers. But the political winds changed quickly on the issue: Nearly 140 communities across the state placed moratoriums on new construction, according to the Ohio Capital Journal, and in May, DeWine announced a pause on tax exemptions for buildings.

Last year, Democrats campaigned against data centers for power in elections in Virginia, New Jersey and elsewhere, and this year they are combining their perceived impacts on electricity prices with the Iran war’s upward pressure on gas prices to argue that Republicans have failed to deliver on Trump’s promise to fight inflation.

“Husted was involved in data centers before this election year, and … he’s just more exposed,” said Dan Birdsong, a political science lecturer at the University of Dayton.

It also gives Brown a way to appeal to rural voters who don’t typically vote for Democrats but are sensitive to the possibility of building data centers nearby.

“He has a bipartisan voter base that he can appeal to with this issue that is different from other issues in the state,” Birdson said of Brown.

Powerful enemies

An Ohio native with a bachelor’s degree from Yale University, Brown served in office almost continuously from 1975 until his 2024 defeat by Republican Bernie Moreno. By the end of his term in the House, he was something of an exception — the last Democrat to hold statewide elected office in Ohio and still portraying himself as a champion of workers, even amid ample evidence of their bitterness toward his party.

Brown says he has the accomplishments to back up his track record. As a member of the House, he voted against implementing the North American Free Trade Agreement, concerned about its impact on Ohio manufacturers, and one of his final votes in the Senate was to pass legislation increasing Social Security payments to public employees. Brown has been in politics so long that when Bowling Green State University polled last month about the Senate race, a quarter of respondents incorrectly thought Brown was the incumbent.

He has long courted the alliance of unions, many of whom supported his bid for a comeback this year, although some of those who supported him in 2024 are now behind Husted. His positions have also earned him big enemies: as chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, he was an opponent of cryptocurrency, and this year Fairshake, a Super Pac linked to that industry, plans to spend $30 million against him, after helping Moreno to victory in 2024.

“We will definitely be overwhelmed,” Brown acknowledged to reporters in Lima, echoing a reality of many Democratic campaigns in a year when Republicans are generally seen as having the fundraising advantage.

His campaign against data centers also clashes with their own union-building benefits, for which they have provided significant employment opportunities.

Lee Daher, senior sales representative for Northwest Ohio Carpenters Local 351, said data centers are “a very good source of employment for us.”

“This represents a lot of work for our members, not only today, tomorrow, but for years to come,” he said.

His local is supporting Brown this year, as it did in 2024, and Daher said his comments about data centers haven’t dampened that support.

“They’re coming one way or another, and is regulation necessary? I think so, but I think big tech is hearing what’s being asked of them,” he said.

Asked to ease that tension, Brown insisted it was the focus on costs that will convince some of the same workers who turned their backs on him two years ago to give him another chance.

“These unions support me in large part because their members don’t like higher electric bills. Their members don’t like not having a say in whether these data centers come to their cities,” Brown said.

“I don’t think a lot of union members want the state to give these huge tax breaks to foreign billionaires who are building these data centers.”