For more on CNN’s interview with Sherrod Brown, tune in to CNN’s “Inside Politics Sunday with Manu Raju,” airing this Sunday at 8 a.m. ET and 11 a.m. ET.
CNN
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The loss of Sherrod Brown’s Senate seat boils down to a chilling of Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s attacks.
And the ticket cap didn’t help him much either.
While the veteran Ohio Democrat reflects on his defeat in the top race, he also has a blunt message for the party: win back working-class voters or lose more elections. There is.
Asked why Trump won over the same blue-collar workers the Democratic senator has proudly courted throughout his more than 30-year career in Congress, Brown said, “We’re fighting for them. I don’t think it looks like there is,” he said. “Workers have left the Democratic Party.”
In a wide-ranging interview with CNN, Brown openly criticized the party for not addressing voters’ concerns about rising consumer costs and worsening economic conditions. And he accused Republicans, including his opponent in the Senate race, Trump-supporting businessman Bernie Moreno, of distorting his record while battling headwinds at the top.
Brown flatly refused to say whether he would run for the seat vacated by Vice President-elect J.D. Vance in 2026.
Brown, 72, similarly left the door open when asked if he would run for governor, saying, “I’m not ruling anything out at this point.”
Mr. Brown held one of the four Senate seats flipped when Republicans took control of the chamber. Over the next two years, they will have a 53-47 majority.
But Mr. Brown, along with Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, faced the toughest challenge of any Democrat. His plan was to run in red states while distancing himself from fellow party candidate Kamala Harris, who is trying to court Trump supporters. Both men lost the seats they had held since 2007.
Brown, who lost to Moreno by four points, said, “Even though I lost, I earned a ticket to the national team.” “Even if it’s a close race at the end, if the leader of your ticket is up by 12 points, it’s almost impossible to overcome.”
Asked if he thought Trump was the deciding factor in the race, Brown took a sharp shot at Moreno.
“A lot of things have changed, and I think it’s money and Trump. Month after month, you see that kind of money and the nasty negative ads,” Brown said. “I think that’s how you win races. You lie, you spend a lot of money, and as my opponent, you hope that your candidate, in this case Trump, wins by a wide margin. .”
Moreno’s camp also fought back.
Moreno’s publicist, Phil Rezzo, said: “Sherrod Brown has found a decent job for the first time in his life and is slamming his career for having to work for a paycheck like everyone else.” He’s a politician.”
AdImpact data shows Moreno’s campaign and Republican allies outspend Brown and his allies on air, with total Democratic spending on the campaign totaling $232.7 million compared to $232.7 million for Republicans. Total sales amounted to $251.9 million.
But Democratic spending surged in the final month of the campaign, with Mr. Brown and his allies outspending Republicans with $83.3 million in broadcast spending, compared to $77.4 million for Republicans.
In an interview, Brown said he believed he would win the race by Election Day.
“I thought I would win because I go out a lot and I talk to workers. I talk to people all year round…I saw the enthusiasm in the crowd,” Brown said. . “What I didn’t see was the last ad where President Trump said a vote for Sherrod Brown was a vote against me.”
In a Moreno campaign ad, President Trump called Brown a “radical left-wing politician” and said he “must actively support Bernie Moreno.”
And an ad from the Senate Leadership Fund, a top Republican super PAC, told viewers in Ohio, “A vote for Sherrod Brown is a vote against Donald Trump.”
Mr. Moreno’s attack on Mr. Brown’s record is especially galling to the defeated senator.
Asked if he thought Moreno ran a clean campaign, Brown said: “You’re the judge of that. I think if you run an ad and it’s proven false by a fact checker, you can connect the dots.”
Republicans heavily targeted Brown over transgender issues during the campaign. It was a series of attacks that Republicans have rolled out across the country and that Mr. Trump has used against Ms. Harris.
After the primary and leading up to Election Day in the Ohio race, Republican advertisers spent a whopping $33.8 million on TV ads that talked about LGBTQ rights, transgender people’s bathroom access, sports participation, and more. I cast it.
In one Republican ad, a narrator’s voice says: “Six more years of Sherrod Brown? He’s not yours, he’s theirs.”
“They cut an ad that showed they were lying,” Brown said, and an ad that claimed Brown voted to “allow biologically transgender men to participate in women’s sports.” It pointed out that the fact-finding included content that it assessed as false.
“But that’s what they’re doing,” Brown said. “They spend money and they lie. They take an issue that they know polls well and lie about it.”
“They weren’t talking about how to make Ohio a better state,” he says.
Brown cut two ads worth about $3.3 million in which he defended himself on the issue, including one in which the narrator called the ad “a complete lie.”
Moreno’s press secretary, Letso, defended the campaign’s attack.
Citing the senator’s record during the Biden administration on issues such as transgender involvement in athletics, border security and “endless wars,” the spokesperson said, “The truth is that Sherrod Brown “He lost because he chose to repeatedly lie to him.”
Asked if Democrats weren’t addressing cultural issues and whether they should have done more to counter Republican attacks, Brown countered:
“I’m not indifferent to those issues,” he said. “I go home. I hear people’s voices all the time. I know how they focus on groups and lie. I mean, why contact them when they’re lying about their issues?” Are you saying you can’t get it?”
Mr. Brown, who served in the House of Representatives for 14 years before being elected to the Senate in 2006, has long cultivated a populist brand aimed at winning over blue-collar voters, an appeal that has continued throughout his political career. It was successful about half the time. A century ago, in a Rust Belt state.
But he says his party has been significantly out of step with working-class voters since the 1994 enactment of NAFTA and subsequent policy decisions. And the problem also stems from a failure of communication, he said.
“Republicans are relying entirely on increased government spending for inflation. That’s not what caused the inflation,” he said. “Corporate profits are up. The stock market is up. Wages are flat. We need to fight the interest groups that cause that.
President Joe Biden sought to reassure Americans early in his administration by insisting that the rise in prices would be temporary, with some administration officials describing the problem as “temporary.” . The president has since turned his back on that message, but high consumer costs continued to plague Democrats into November.
“That’s a mistake we made,” Brown said in response to a question about “temporary” messages.
According to CNN exit poll data, Trump led Harris among voters without a college degree by 14 points (56% to 42%). Four years ago, he won that group by just two points over Biden.
Brown says Democrats are constantly missing out on clear opportunities to appeal to these voters.
A federal judge in Texas recently struck down a Biden administration rule that expanded overtime eligibility for about 4 million workers. Brown said this is an issue where Democrats should bash Republicans, especially since the judge was nominated by Trump.
“I’m pretty upset about this,” Brown said. “You see, one judge denied overtime to 4 million workers in this country. We should be talking about it. … And I know very few Democrats have talked about it. And Trump and his crowd, his corporate crowd, are always looking out for their rich friends and want this incident to go away and to be ignored.
“But I’m not going to ignore it.”
CNN’s David Wright and Sheden Tesfaldet contributed to this report.
