It’s the last week before the election, and more than a million Ohioans have voted early. This week, the Statehouse News Bureau is diving into the race for U.S. Senate, focusing on important policy issues the candidates have talked about in interviews and at events—some of which they will likely have to directly face if they win.
One of the most notable ads this year was from Democrat Sherrod Brown, who’s fighting to return to the US Senate after losing re-election in 2024. In it, the voice over refers to Brown's Republican opponent, incumbent Republican Jon Husted, as "the face of data centers in Ohio."
Brown claims that Husted gave $2.5 billion in tax incentives to data centers. That's a total estimate from the Ohio Chamber of Commerce and comes from both state and local tax exemptions and incentives over seven years. But the National Republican Senatorial Committee said in a memo that data centers are the anchor around Husted’s neck.
Husted pushed back on Brown’s ad in Massillon in August, in a conversation with reporters recorded by C-SPAN.
"Sherrod Brown celebrated data centers come into Ohio when he was a US senator, and now like the chameleon he is. He just flips and pretends he's for something else," Husted said.
Husted sponsored a bill that would pressure state utility regulators to require data centers pay their own utility costs, but Democrats in the Senate blocked it, saying it was toothless. Congress can regulate energy policy and federal tax incentives, but strict data center rules or bans are state and local decisions.
The war in Iran is another major topic in the race.
“I don't know anybody that doesn't want the war to end," Husted told reporters in Columbus in September. "But we need to make sure that when it does, that Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz and doesn't have a nuclear weapon.”
That’s why Husted has said he voted against a Democrat-backed war powers resolution to force an end to US hostilities in Iran. Brown said Husted has voted 14 times against that resolution and other procedural efforts to stop resolutions from reaching the Senate floor, and told reporters in Chillicothe this month that Democrats must end the war first thing.
“I think that sentiment is growing and growing and growing, and maybe some of my Republican colleagues will have some more backbone, but we're going to keep going. We're going to keep trying to end this war," Brown said.
Immigration is another issue U.S. Senators will likely grapple with. Husted and Republicans point to Brown’s three terms in the Senate, the last one when President Biden was in office.
“What was going on there under Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown—Democrats gave us open borders and sanctuary cities and vote to give our tax dollars to illegal immigrants. That's what they did," Husted told the crowd at the Republican Midterm Convention in Dallas in September.
That last claim is false. It comes from Brown’s votes for the American Rescue Plan, which offered $1400 checks to qualified people, and that did not include undocumented immigrants.
Brown broke with fellow Democrats on immigration by supporting stricter border policies, and said in August he also didn’t support calls to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.
“You deport those who have committed those violent crimes, and then you adopt a immigration policy that works for our businesses, for our communities," Brown said in an interview in August.
But on ending temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants from various countries, Brown was clear talking to reporters in Dayton in September about thousands of Haitians who had that legal status.
“People that want to serve, that are contributing this country, you don't deport them. You deport people who have been dangerous criminals. It's pretty much as simple as that," Brown said in a conversation recorded by C-SPAN.
Husted has supported the Trump administration’s ending of TPS for Haitians in July, and has said the Springfield, where many worked before TPS ended, has new jobs coming. Husted said in July, not long after TPS ended, that around 30% of Haitians believe they have another pathway to stay and work in the US.
“So we facilitate those to the proper authorities to help them process those potential claims," Husted said. "What I've asked for is that let's just we have a law that's follow the rule of law, that's do it in a civil manner.”
The winner of this race will be serving out the rest of the term of the seat vacated by now-Vice President JD Vance, who was elected to it in 2022, so he would have to run again in 2028 to keep it.
