Former three-term Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) has told state labor leaders that he intends to run for the Senate, this time against incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted. 

Brown first won a Senate seat in 2006 by defeating then-incumbent senator and future two-term Gov. Mike DeWine. Brown remained popular even as the state slowly shifted to the right, and won reelection handily in 2012 and 2018. Democrats hope he can reverse the party’s dwindling fortunes in the Buckeye State.

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I’m skeptical. The state known politically as the “bellwether state” for a century has been anything but in recent cycles.

Brown’s victory in 2012 over then-Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel should be viewed through the lens of former President Barack Obama’s crushing defeat of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney that year. And the fact that Mandel, despite winning statewide office, was 34 years old and had relatively low name recognition. In 2018, Brown’s luck turned from good to great. Once again, Mandel was the favorite to win the Republican senatorial primary but was forced to drop out of the race. Former congressman Jim Renacci ended his gubernatorial bid in January 2018 to run for Brown’s senate seat, but it was too little, too late. Brown defeated Renacci by 7 points in a blue wave election that saw Democrats pick up 40 seats in the House of Representatives.

In 2024, Brown finally met Trump-endorsed car dealership owner Bernie Moreno (R-OH). Moreno defeated Brown by 3.5 points, but the narrow defeat fails to tell the whole story. Sen. Moreno severely underperformed President Donald Trump in 2024. Unlike former President George W. Bush and Obama, who won extremely narrow victories in the state, Trump defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, former President Joe Biden, and former Vice President Harris in Ohio by 7, 12, and 12 points, respectively.

Husted will be a tough nut for Brown to crack. He is a former Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives, a two-term secretary of state, and served as the wildly popular Mike DeWine’s lieutenant governor for six years. He was then appointed to fill Vice President JD Vance’s open Senate seat earlier this year. Husted is a favorite of the Ohio Republican Party, is more polished, and has a better grasp of the issues than Moreno, and is free of the personal issues that dogged Mandel. The DeWine/Husted ticket won reelection in 2022 by 25 points, which would have seemed preposterous a decade prior.

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Democrats have largely refused to learn any lessons from their losses last year and have redoubled on hardcore leftism on a variety of issues, from economics to crime. Brown will be forced to defend at least some of these wildly unpopular positions. He will also be in the unfamiliar position of being forced to do so without the inherent benefits of incumbency.

To be clear, Sherrod Brown is the best Ohio Democrats can do, probably by a long shot. This race will be closer than pundits outside of the state project, but Ohio is not the same state that Brown remembers in 2006.

Brady Leonard (@bradyleonard) is a musician, political strategist, and host of The No Gimmicks Podcast.