For the first time in 22 years, early January didn’t mean going back to Capitol Hill for Sherrod Brown. He lost one of the most expensive US Senate races in history, and now is starting the year at home in Cleveland instead of Washington DC, as he has since 1993.
Brown lost in November to Northeast Ohio businessman Bernie Moreno, who won with the backing of President-elect Trump. Moreno won by just under 5 percentage points while Trump won Ohio by nearly 12 points. In an interview, Brown said he was proud of several accomplishments but there are things he wishes he would have been able to get done, and talked about his future.
Brown said his last vote was one of his biggest
Brown said his penultimate vote happened on his last night in the U.S. Senate, when bipartisan legislation he had sponsored for more than a decade to allow public employees to get all of their Social Security benefits was approved.
“It will provide full Social Security benefits to 250,000 Ohioans and three million people across the country that were not going to get those, that had been shortchanged on their earned benefits from social security,” Brown said. “So it was a huge victory.”
Brown said he’s also proud of legislation that restored pensions for workers and gave tax credits to two million Ohio families who got a tax cut or a refund. But Brown said that tax credit lasted only one year, though he said he tried to make it permanent.
Brown said he’s also proud of legislation and stands he has taken on behalf of workers, which he’s called fighting for the “dignity of work.” Brown opposed the North American Free Trade Act (NAFTA) 30 years ago though some Democrats embraced it. He said that policy has hurt too many Ohioans. Brown said that is what his party needs to focus on passing policies that help workers because the middle class is shrinking.
“Democrats really need to, to kind of push away this reputation we have as a party of being a bi-coastal party. We are too bi-coastal. We are too corporate,” Brown said. “Republicans are worse in terms of their slavishness, if you will, to corporate interests - but the Democrats should be about workers. It’s what I built my career on,” Brown said.
Unfinished business and the future
Brown said he left the Senate with some legislation Ohioans need hanging in the balance. In addition to making the child tax credit permanent, Brown said the Senate needs to pass the Recoup Act, legislation that would claw money back from bank executives who defrauded the banking system. And Brown said he would have liked to have passed a bipartisan railroad safety act that came forward after the derailment in East Palestine in 2023, but he said railroad lobbyists were successful in thwarting it.
Brown said he knows he lost fair and square. But he’s not giving up.
He said in his farewell address before leaving office last month that while it was his last speech on the Senate floor, “but it’s not, I promise you, the last time you’ll hear from me.”
“I’ve made no decision about what’s next,” Brown said in the interview. He said he’s spent the last couple of months closing down his office and helping his staff find other jobs.
“I’ll start thinking seriously about what’s next come mid-January or later,” Brown said.
The Ohio Public Media Statehouse News Bureau has contacted new Sen. Bernie Moreno's office to allow him to talk about his plans for the future in the Senate, but his office has not responded to those requests at this point.
To listen to the full interview with Brown, check out our podcast, "The Ohio Statehouse Scoop”, or watch it on our weekly television show “The State of Ohio”.
