I'm sorry.
Here, all this time, I thought Sherrod Brown, the former Ohio senator now fighting to regain that lost seat against the man appointed to fill the J.D. Vance vacancy...
Ohioans will decide this November whether to affirm or reject Governor Mike DeWine’s appointment of Republican Jon Husted to the United States Senate. While serving as DeWine’s lieutenant governor, Husted was tapped to fill the vacancy left by JD Vance following his inauguration as Vice President. The winner of this special election will serve the remaining two years of Vance’s original six-year term.
In a unique turn of events, the challenger enters the race with significantly more Senate experience than the incumbent. Democrat Sherrod Brown served three terms in Ohio’s other Senate seat before being unseated in 2024 by Republican Bernie Moreno. Brown’s 2018 victory remains the most recent statewide win by any Democrat in Ohio.
The contest is widely rated a toss-up, a rather striking classification for a state Donald Trump carried by more than 11 points in 2024. According to the RealClearPolling Ohio Senate Polling Average, Brown holds a 3.8-point advantage (47.5% to 43.7%) based on September surveys. The individual polls included in the average show a competitive field. A recent Marist survey put Brown ahead by 8 points (51% to 43%), while an earlier Quantus Insights poll showed a virtual dead heat with Brown up by a single point (48% to 47%). Other September polling from Rasmussen Reports, Trafalgar Group, and Bowling Green/YouGov shows Brown consistently maintaining narrow 3-point leads.
For Democrats nationally, who need to gain four seats to capture the Senate majority, Ohio would represent a fairly unexpected pickup. For Republicans, it is a seat they had hoped to win without a lengthy fight. To lose Vance’s original seat to a democrat would be a blow to republicans in a state they have had repeated success in over the past several election cycles.
...was just another run-of-the-mill, befuddled-professor-looking Lefty, like Bernie Sanders.
You know the type - a non-stop gesticulating, mouthy hot mess.
He graduated from high school in 1970, from Yale in 1974 (where he worked on the McGovern campaign), and then went straight into local campaigning, having been recruited to run for the Ohio statehouse while still at school. He won that representative's race, and like the risible Bernie Sanders, who has never drawn a paycheck not connected to the government dole, Sherrod Brown has been in politics ever since, for over fifty years.
He has been such a hardcore progressive his entire career that his Wiki page is actually a part of something called 'A series on Progressivism in the United States.'
As with most progressive big thinkers, they love to run their mouths and write letters, and Brown, even in his ardent youth, was no different. A 2015 BuzzFeed article discusses Brown's correspondence with his local Mansfield News-Journal and, in the light of reflection, calls those then forty-five-year-old missives 'pretty interesting lefty letters.'
In the 1970s, now-Ohio Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown was Yale-bound senior at Mansfield High School and president of his high school student council.
Active in politics, Brown campaigned for George McGovern while at Yale. Brown also maintained a sporadic correspondence with the Mansfield News-Journal, writing an array of left-of-center opinions to the editor on McGovern and Vietnam.
Brown takes aim at what he calls "inordinate and overzealous nationalism" on the part of the United States. Brown describes the "general atmosphere of America" as "one of paranoia, intolerance, and injustice."
The letters written by an eighteen-year-old Brown could easily be spoken by him today.
I mean, check this snippet of one out.
...We overtax the poor and middle class and undertax the rich - corporations, oil men, executives. Because we undertax the rich and misallocate tax money, police salaries and expenditures to combat poverty and pollution and to aid education, farmers and mass transit, and the cities are much too low....
He's using that same anti-capitalist, anti-billionaire rhetoric in his campaign ads right now. He's the same-same guy.
That is what makes those letters to the editor relevant now. That this zebra hasn't changed his stripes on iota.
The fellows from the Ruthless Podcast dug through them the other day and found something so horrifying that I personally, even if I weren't a veteran, think it's disqualifying.
Sherrod Brown wrote, suggesting that the North Vietnamese should hang onto those American prisoners of war, because how then would there be anything to stop the U.S. from bombing Hanoi and Haiphong?
The "Ruthless Podcast" hosts surfaced a striking letter to the editor from Ohio Democratic Senate nominee Sherrod Brown arguing against releasing the American prisoners of war (POWs) during the Vietnam War.
"When you think of this disease that’s infected the Democratic Party, you think about [Michigan Democratic Senate Nominee Abdul] El Sayed," podcast co-host Michael Duncan said. "You think of [New York Democratic congressional nominee Darializa Avila] Chevalier, who said she's basically against Western civilization. But Sherrod Brown's been on this his entire career."
In the summer of 1971, Brown wrote a letter to the editor published in the News-Journal. The longtime politician, who first ran for office more than 50 years ago, asked if the North Vietnamese "released our POWs, what would stop the U.S. from bombing Hanoi and Haiphong?"
Even as an 18-year-old, the lack of humanity toward his fellow Americans, some of whom were drafted and nearly your age, is simply stunning.
Watch: @RuthlessPodcast on @SherrodBrown arguing AGAINST releasing American POWs in the Vietnam War. "Just in case you were wondering how long [Sherrod Brown's] been in politics, the subject of the oped was the Vietnam War...Brown argued against North Vietnam releasing POWs..." https://t.co/dBVSGUwqsL
— Senate Leadership Fund (@Senate_Fund) October 14, 2026
It must have been so sweet for Brown to enjoy that deferment for his big, fat brain, huh? Didn't have to worry about this sort of thing. No muddy boots, no punji sticks.
No Hanoi Hilton.
I first heard about this from a friend of mine, a dual-service Marine grunt who got his degree and then became a Naval aviator, and it made me so angry.
And sick.
I'm beside myself. I just found out that in 1971 Ohio Democratic Senate Candidate Sherrod Brown wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper arguing that the North Vietnamese should NOT release our POWs until we completely withdrew. Do not give me he was "only 18" when he wrote that letter. Though I did not serve in country, at 18 I was pounding ground as a Marine (0351). We both made decisions as adults. He decided to support North Vietnam instead of our country and troops. I decided to support our country and troops instead of North Vietnam. I later met and spoke at length with two of our POWs - one held for over 6 years, the other for over 5. Not only did they suffer unbelievable torture, but when they returned, they did so to shattered lives they had to put back together. The life and families they once had no longer existed. When Brown wrote his love letter to Giap the suffering of our POWs was already well known. For example, Floyd “Jim” Thompson (U.S. Army, Special Forces), served 3,278 days as a POW - 10 short of 9 years. At the time Brown wrote his letter, Thompson would have already been a POW for 7 years. Countless others had been living that hell for years when Brown treated them as pawns to advance his political agenda. Brown made that bed as an adult. Now he owns it. Brown should not be allowed anywhere near D.C., and certainly not on the Senate floor. Video at the link: https://t.co/fcvWHO55oJ
— Not Simo Häyhä (@h2av8tor) October 14, 2026
...Do not give me he was "only 18" when he wrote that letter. Though I did not serve in country, at 18 I was pounding ground as a Marine (0351).
We both made decisions as adults. He decided to support North Vietnam instead of our country and troops. I decided to support our country and troops instead of North Vietnam.
I later met and spoke at length with two of our POWs - one held for over 6 years, the other for over 5. Not only did they suffer unbelievable torture, but when they returned, they did so to shattered lives they had to put back together. The life and families they once had no longer existed.
When Brown wrote his love letter to Giap the suffering of our POWs was already well known. For example, Floyd “Jim” Thompson (U.S. Army, Special Forces), served 3,278 days as a POW - 10 short of 9 years. At the time Brown wrote his letter, Thompson would have already been a POW for 7 years. Countless others had been living that hell for years when Brown treated them as pawns to advance his political agenda.
Brown made that bed as an adult. Now he owns it.
Brown should not be allowed anywhere near D.C., and certainly not on the Senate floor.
You know, I honestly do not know how parents of young contemporaries of Brown's who were in country at the time didn't show up on his parents' doorstep with pitchforks.
How dare that little puke suggest we leave American boys as hostages to continue suffering the horrors they were facing every single day, so Sherrod Brown could have warm fuzzies?
Oh, this is...God.
At least Tim Walz put a uniform on.
That's all I can say.
Has anyone ever confronted Brown on this?
I can't see where they have.
The issue is that Sherrod Brown is still that smug 18-year-old to this day. There is no daylight between the former and the latter Brown.
...While critics may dismiss the discovery of these op-eds as being outdated or another example of political rhetoric during campaign season, podcast co-host John Ashbrook noted how it suggests where Brown’s sympathies lie.
"If you live in the state of Ohio, or you're a political junkie like us, you've heard it said over and over again, ‘Oh, Sherrod Brown is a crazy lefty,’" Cincinnati native John Ashbrook said. "It's sort of dismissed. He's a lefty, and nobody ever fills in the gaps. Well, I think this piece that he wrote in the 70s sort of explains why a lot of people were like maybe he is sort of sympathetic to the communists."
Sherrod Brown would just as soon today leave your volunteer son or daughter trapped behind lines to be burned alive in a cage by ISIS or tortured in Hamas terror tunnels to salve his twisted progressive sensibilities than be an American.
I don't doubt it in the least.
Please don't do this, Ohio.
