Sherrod Brown Hits Back at Anti-Trans Ads in Ohio Senate Race
In a new ad, the former Ohio senator mocks Republicans’ focus on transgender issues and shifts attention to health care and rising costs.
Former U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who lost his seat in the 2024 Republican wave despite outperforming Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris by nearly eight percentage points, is taking a different tack when it comes to responding to anti-transgender attack ads.
In his latest commercial, Brown, who is challenging incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Jon Husted — who was appointed to the seat previously held by Vice President JD Vance — is mocking Husted and Republicans — namely, an Elon Musk-backed political action committee shilling for the GOP — for an obsessive focus on transgender issues.
The 30-second ad, which Brown reportedly spent $200,000 on, according to The New York Times, opens with voters from the city of Johnstown, Ohio, and villages of Granville and Richwood, speaking to the camera.
“Here they go again, those same attacks against Sherrod Brown,” a voter named Warren, from Johnstown, says.
Mary, a voter from Granville, then says: “With everything going on, that’s what they’re talking about?”
Mike, from Richwood, then says: “In Ohio, it’s illegal to perform transgender surgeries on children,” as those very words are superimposed over a grainy image of an empty hospital hallway. As the camera returns to focus on Mike, he adds: “That’s right. It’s illegal.”
But the ad then shifts to a series of voters in different parts of the state denouncing Husted, accusing him of voting to kick hundreds of thousands of Ohioans off health care, writing a law allowing utility companies to “jack up our electric bills,” voting to increase the cost of groceries, and failing to address the cost of gas — the latter two of which refer to rising prices that have been attributed to Husted’s support of President Donald Trump’s tariff regime and the senator’s refusal to support war powers resolutions to curb Trump’s ability to wage U.S. military operations against Iran.
The ad ends with Beth, a voter from Johnstown, addressing the camera, saying: “Jon Husted, why don’t you start working for us?”
Brown, both in 2024 and in this cycle, is among a host of Democrats who have been attacked for failure to back a federal ban on transgender athletes in women’s sports or a similar ban prohibiting minors from accessing gender-affirming care.
But his most recent commercial marks a shift away from the strategy of accepting Republican framing of issues. In 2024, Brown ran a commercial “fact-checking” — in other words, directly addressing — claims made by now-Sen. Bernie Moreno. That ad noted that Ohio prohibits transgender girls and women from competing on female-designated sports teams, and sought to cast Brown’s position that decisions about transgender participation should be left up to individual sports leagues as identical to that of moderate Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
The 2024 ad also included a clip showing a reporter from Cleveland NBC affiliate WKYC verifying that Brown did not explicitly vote “to let transgender biological men participate in women’s sports.” While factually true, Brown’s lack of a vote was due to the fact that Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate — where bills typically need 60 votes to overcome a filibuster — chose not to force a vote on the ban that was approved by the U.S. House of Representatives in 2023.
Brown’s commercial was blasted by transgender advocates, who took issue with the wording of the news anchor’s fact-check, with trans activist and journalist Erin Reed writing, at the time, that the language used in the ad “reinforces the narrative that transgender women are ‘biological men'” or that their identity is not valid. In her article, Reed quoted an anonymous trans advocate who expressed concern that Brown’s decision to push back against anti-transgender ads would encourage other Democratic allies to follow suit, effectively ceding the issue to Republicans.
Instead, this cycle, Brown has chosen to go on the offensive against Husted and Republicans by blaming them for the country’s economic woes and voters’ sour mood when it comes to a lack of affordability. It remains to be seen whether such a messaging strategy will work.
Since 2024, Democrats have been plagued by uncertainty over how best to respond to anti-transgender attack ads that chastise them for being too accommodating of transgender rights. Republicans invested about $215 million into airing anti-transgender TV ads attacking Democrats over transgender athletes or support for taxpayer-funded gender-affirming surgeries for inmates. One ad in particular singled out 2024 Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ support for gender-affirming care for inmates by claiming: “Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you.”
But some transgender advocates have argued that the anti-transgender ads actually played a smaller role in Trump and Republicans’ victories than economic concerns like inflation, rising prices, and affordability. The Human Rights Campaign has noted that polls showed only 4% of 2024 presidential election voters listed transgender issues as among their primary concerns, downplaying the idea that anti-transgender ads were as galvanizing for voters as Republicans seem to believe they are.
Similarly, a post-election analysis by Data for Progress found that most voters wanted both parties to spend less time talking about transgender issues, thought there was too much legislation targeting transgender people, and actually trusted Democrats more to deal with transgender issues than Republicans.
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