Former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown once celebrated Amazon's data center expansion in Ohio as "great news" for jobs and families, but now he's running for Senate again on a platform that treats those same facilities as villains driving up electricity costs.
Brown, who represented Ohio in the Senate from 2007 until his 2024 defeat, issued a press release in 2015 applauding the construction of a third Amazon data center in the New Albany area east of Columbus. He called the project a signal that central Ohio was "not only a great place to do business, but a place where people want to live and raise a family." He pledged to help the region's "burgeoning logistics hub" keep growing.
Now, mounting a comeback bid for the seat held by Republican Sen. Jon Husted, Brown has reversed course. In a recent campaign video, he cast data centers as predatory giants that manipulate Ohio's electric grid and stick residents with the bill. His office did not respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment on the contradiction.
The 2015 press release from Brown's Senate office left no room for ambiguity. He praised Amazon by name and tied data center growth directly to economic opportunity:
"This new data center is great news for New Albany and central Ohio. Amazon's growth in central Ohio signals that this region is not only a great place to do business, but a place where people want to live and raise a family."
Brown added that the centers had already created new job opportunities and said he looked forward to ensuring the region's growth continued, "creating good jobs for Ohioans and helping businesses prosper."
Fast-forward to his current campaign, and the tone has flipped entirely. In a recent video, Brown framed the same industry as a threat to working families:
"[They're] gobbling up energy to feed their data centers no matter how much it raises our prices. It's the latest way they've rigged the system."
He also pledged to push legislation requiring data centers to "pay the full cost of their own electricity, not you." The shift from cheerleader to crusader tracks with a broader Democratic strategy heading into the 2026 midterms: tie data centers to the cost-of-living squeeze that voters feel every month when they open their utility bills.
Ohio passed a law in 2013, Ohio Revised Code Section 122.175, that gave tax breaks on the purchase, storage, and use of data center equipment. The law empowered the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to approve exemptions for companies investing more than $100 million over three consecutive years. Not every facility qualifies automatically; some receive only a partial break.
By 2025, those exemptions had cost the state $1.6 billion in forgone revenue, according to the Ohio 2026, 2027 Tax Expenditure Report published by the Ohio Office of Budget and Management. Companies like Amazon and Google have sought those incentives as they expand their footprints across the state. Brown's campaign now characterizes Ohio as home to 226 data centers, though the source of that figure appears to be Brown's own campaign materials.
The $1.6 billion number gives Brown a real talking point. But it also raises an obvious question: Brown served in the Senate from 2007 through 2024. The tax exemption law passed in 2013, and data center construction accelerated on his watch. His 2015 press release didn't mention electricity costs or taxpayer subsidies. It mentioned jobs and growth. The concerns he now voices were available to him a decade ago, he chose to celebrate instead.
That pattern, embracing a policy when it serves one political moment, then attacking it when the political winds shift, is familiar enough in Washington. But voters deserve to know which version of Brown they'd be sending back to the Senate.
Brown officially launched his 2026 campaign after watching the Senate pass a major tax and spending package he characterized as rigged against working Americans. AP News reported that Brown said he "just couldn't stay on the sideline" and declared that "nobody in the Senate is speaking out for Ohio workers." His entry caused friction within his own party, some Ohio labor leaders had preferred he run for governor instead of Senate.
The race itself is competitive but far from certain for Brown. One June 2026 poll showed him leading Husted 48% to 45% among likely voters, Just The News reported. But an earlier Emerson College survey told a different story: Husted led Brown 50% to 44%, with commanding advantages among men, voters without college degrees, and voters over 40, the very working-class constituencies Brown claims to champion.
Ohio has not backed a Democrat for president since 2012, and Trump carried the state by roughly 11 points in 2024, as the Washington Free Beacon noted. Brown lost his own re-election bid that year to Republican Bernie Moreno. Winning back a Senate seat in that environment requires more than populist rhetoric, it requires credibility.
Husted, appointed by Gov. Mike DeWine to fill the seat vacated when JD Vance became vice president, has not yet won a full term. The Nov. 3 general election will be his first test before Ohio voters in a Senate race. Brown, first elected to the Senate in 2006, is betting that his name recognition and blue-collar brand still carry weight in a state that has moved steadily rightward.
Democrats across the country are flooding 2026 Senate races with cash, hoping to flip enough seats to reclaim the majority. Ohio is one of their top targets, and Brown is their marquee recruit. But his credibility gap on data centers is not his only vulnerability.
Brown's reversal on data centers fits a broader pattern that his opponents will exploit. The New York Post reported earlier this year that Brown's campaign attacked Husted for accepting donations linked to Jeffrey Epstein, while Brown himself had received more than $124,000 in contributions from Epstein-connected individuals. Disgraced former Harvard president Larry Summers contributed $10,300 to Brown's comeback effort, including two maxed-out donations in 2025.
Attacking your opponent for conduct you've engaged in yourself is a risky strategy. Doing it while simultaneously reversing your own public record on a major economic issue compounds the problem. Ohio voters who remember Brown's 2015 enthusiasm for data centers have every reason to ask whether his 2026 opposition is principled, or just convenient.
Donor controversies are not unique to Brown, of course. Other Democratic Senate nominees have faced scrutiny over their funding sources this cycle. But Brown's particular combination of flip-flops and glass-house attacks gives Republican operatives a clean narrative: the populist fighter is really just another politician who says whatever the moment demands.
Meanwhile, both parties continue to wrestle with internal divisions over loyalty and consistency. Senate Republicans have faced their own intra-party pressure in Ohio, where Brown's 2024 conqueror, Moreno, has been at the center of separate political disputes. The state's political landscape remains volatile, and both sides know it.
Concerns about election integrity and voter confidence add another layer to an already charged environment. Brown will need every advantage he can find in a state where the electorate has grown skeptical of Democratic promises.
None of this means data center costs are a fake issue. The $1.6 billion in forgone state revenue is real. Rising electricity demand from massive server farms is a legitimate concern for ratepayers. Communities hosting these facilities deserve honest answers about who bears the costs and who reaps the benefits.
But Brown is not the messenger to deliver that argument with a straight face. He spent years in the Senate while data center tax breaks drained state coffers. He issued a press release celebrating the very industry he now calls a rigged system. He offered no public objection to the 2013 tax exemption law during the years he held power to influence federal policy on the issue.
His campaign's refusal to address the contradiction, his office did not respond to Fox News Digital, only deepens the credibility gap. If Brown believes data centers are harming Ohio families, voters have a right to know when he reached that conclusion and why he said the opposite a decade ago.
When a politician's convictions shift to match the polls, voters aren't getting a champion, they're getting a weathervane.
