Will Brown run for Ohio governor? Doesn’t sound like he’s ready for rocking chair. |Opinion

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

The likely 2026 party slates for Ohio’s statewide elected offices are starting to fill out, with ex-U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat, hovering in the background.

Voters retired Brown in November, replacing him with Westlake Republican Bernie Moreno. But, Brown writing in the celebrated liberal magazine The New Republic, whose founders included the renowned journalist Walter Lippmann, said he’ll remain in the arena.

This, from The New Republic article’s sub-headline: “Reconnecting the Democratic Party to the working class is an electoral and a moral imperative, and it will be my mission for the rest of my life.”

That doesn’t sound like sipping iced tea in the rocking chair of a retirement home’s sun porch.

It sounds instead like a statewide 2026 campaign for a return to the Senate (by unseating appointed Republican Sen. Jon Husted of Upper Arlington) or running for governor of Ohio next year against whomever the GOP slates for that job.

Could dems pick between Amy Acton and Sherrod Brown?

If a Brown governorship were to emerge, that would create a potentially vexing dilemma for the Ohio Democratic organization, loyal to long-term officeholder Brown though it may be:

An Ohio Democrat is already running energetically for the party’s 2026 gubernatorial nomination: Bexley Democrat Dr. Amy Acton, a Youngstown native, who — during the COVID pandemic — bravely and energetically served as director of Ohio’s state Health Department in (Republican) Gov. Mike DeWine’s administration.

It’d be interesting to see if, or how, Brown’s in-party fans might attempt to slide fellow Democrat Acton – a highly qualified female candidate – out of her quest for the governorship.

Republicans who’ve announced they’re seeking for the GOP’s 2026 gubernatorial nomination are Ohio Attorney General David Yost, of Columbus; Upper Arlington tech zillionaire Vivek Ramaswamy; and Heather Brazell-Hill, of Morgan County’s Malta.

Besides Acton, other Ohio Democrats who’ve announced they’re seeking statewide executive office nominations in 2026 are a second physician, Bryan Hambley, of suburban Cincinnati’s Loveland, who’s running for Democrats’ nomination for secretary of state; and former state Rep. Elliot Forhan, now of Greater Cleveland’s Brooklyn Heights, a Yale Law School graduate who’s running for Democrats’ 2026 nomination for Ohio attorney general.

For many years, this had been a classic definition of Ohio politics, a definition formulated in 1960 by Thomas Flinn, a scholar then at Oberlin, later a member of Cleveland State’s faculty: “Ohio is now and has long been a competitive two-party state in which the Republicans enjoy the advantage. From the close of the Civil War to the election of 1896 the Republicans carried the state in every presidential contest (seven), but the outcome of these elections in Ohio was invariably close.”

Will Ohio stay red?

Not now, though, due to the GOP’s statewide successes and Ohio Democrats’ weaknesses. Ohio cast its presidential electoral votes in 2016, 2020 for 2024 for Donald Trump and his running mates — last year, for now-Vice President J.D. Vance, of Butler County’s Middletown.

Take a glance: Ohio Republicans control every statewide elected executive office. They’ve run the Ohio Senate since January 1985 – for 40 years, almost certainly an Ohio record – and controlled Ohio’s House for all except two years since January 1995 (that is, 28 years – contrast that with Democrat Vern Riffe’s 20-year Ohio House speakership, from 1975 through 1994).

Republicans hold both of Ohio’s federal Senate seats, with Westlake’s Moreno and Upper Arlington’s Jon Husted.

And in ironic mimicry of 1983, a year of the locusts for Ohio Republicans, Democrats now hold only one statewide elected office – the Ohio Supreme Court seat held by Justice Jennifer Brunner.

And then there’s what was once Ohio Democratic bedrock: Mahoning County (Youngstown), for decades an overwhelming bastion of Democratic power, cast 54% of its vote for Trump, 50.2% for Senate nominee Moreno, and 51.7 % for J.D. Vance (in 2022, for the Senate).

All that leaves Ohio Democrats out in the cold unless they field an appealing and potentially victorious 2026 statewide ticket— without alienating the party’s key constituencies, which happen to include those Democratic women backing Amy Acton for governor.

Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. tsuddes@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Will Sherrod Brown challenge Amy Acton for Ohio governor nod? |Opinion