Days before Ohio's primary election, former Sen. Sherrod Brown is telling voters he wants to close the border and deport criminals. Republicans say three decades of roll-call votes prove the opposite, and they have the receipts.
Brown, who lost his Senate seat to Republican Bernie Moreno in 2024, is now running again, this time seeking the seat held by Sen. Jon Husted. In an interview last month, Brown offered a striking new pitch to Ohio voters.
"I support closing the border to people so they just can't cross the border at will, but I also say we, of course, should be deporting people that have committed a crime, surely," Brown said, as Fox News Digital reported.
That remark landed like a grenade in a race already drawing national attention and money. The Cook Political Report lists Ohio as one of just three toss-up Senate contests. And Brown's opponents wasted no time pointing out that his words don't match his votes.
Fox News Digital reviewed Brown's voting record spanning more than 30 years in the House and Senate. The pattern it described is difficult to square with Brown's new border-hawk posture.
In 2001, Brown voted to stop funding for the deportation of criminal aliens, a House roll-call vote still on file with the Clerk of the House. Twenty years later, in 2021, he voted to cancel border wall projects. In 2023, he voted against restarting border wall construction.
He also voted against $300 million for U.S. Customs and Border Protection earmarked specifically for opioid and narcotic detection at the southern border. He voted against ensuring ICE had sufficient resources to detain and deport illegal immigrants convicted of crimes. He voted against funding to stop criminal aliens from securing amnesty.
And in 2019, Brown co-sponsored the End Mass Deportation Act, a bill that sought to rescind an executive order prioritizing the deportation of criminal illegal immigrants and withholding funds from sanctuary cities.
From 2001 through 2024, the review found Brown voted at least 10 times to protect federal funding for sanctuary cities. That is not the record of a man who supports "closing the border."
Sen. Husted, who was appointed to Vice President JD Vance's former seat at the start of the second Trump administration, is running unopposed in the Republican primary. His campaign has already launched what Signal Cleveland reported as a $1 million ad campaign this week, a sign the general election fight is well underway.
Drew Thompson, Husted's campaign manager, framed the race as a clean contrast. "This November, Ohioans will have a clear choice between the past and the future," Thompson said.
But Thompson saved his sharpest words for Brown's immigration pivot, telling Fox News Digital:
"After shocking Ohioans in 2024 by claiming he only hears about illegal immigration from the far Right, Sherrod Brown is now desperate to return to Washington and continue the same Biden-era open border policies he supported for 32 years."
Thompson added that Husted "is working to clean up Sherrod Brown's mess by funding border security, supporting border agents, and standing for the rule of law."
Brown's 2024 comment, that he "only hears about illegal immigration from the far Right", became a flashpoint in that cycle's race. Now, just months later, Brown is speaking a very different language. The question is whether Ohio voters will notice the shift.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee didn't hold back either. Nick Puglia, the NRSC's regional press secretary, issued a blunt statement.
"Sherrod Brown's lies aren't going to trick Ohioans. They know Brown has fought for over half a century alongside liberals like Kamala Harris to open our borders and protect dangerous criminal illegals from deportation."
Fox News Digital reached out to Brown's campaign for comment. The campaign did not immediately respond.
That silence is itself telling. When a candidate's own words from last month contradict a career's worth of recorded votes, the usual playbook is to avoid the question and hope the news cycle moves on. Brown appears to be running that play.
The Ohio Senate race matters far beyond the Buckeye State. Control of the Senate remains tight, and recent Cook Political Report ratings have shifted several races, though Republicans still hold an overall edge. Ohio, Maine, where Sen. Susan Collins faces re-election, and Michigan, where Sen. Gary Peters is retiring, are all rated toss-ups.
Close contests in Alaska, Georgia, North Carolina, and New Hampshire are also drawing heavy attention and campaign dollars. In that environment, every Senate seat is a prize, and Democrats need candidates who can survive scrutiny on the issues voters care about most.
Immigration ranks near the top of that list. And Brown's problem is not just that he voted the wrong way, it's that he voted the wrong way repeatedly, over decades, on the specific issue he now claims to champion.
Brown's repositioning fits a broader pattern among Democrats who sense their party's brand on border security has become toxic in competitive states. Some, like Sen. John Fetterman, have openly rebuked their own party's leftward drift. Others have quietly tried to put distance between themselves and the progressive base without changing a single vote.
Brown's approach falls squarely in the second category. He hasn't pointed to a single vote he regrets. He hasn't identified a bill he would now support. He simply told an interviewer he favors "closing the border", as though saying it erases 30 years of doing the opposite.
The broader Democratic landscape makes Brown's gambit even harder to pull off. Across the country, Democratic Senate candidates have struggled to articulate basic positions on party leadership, often dodging questions about whether they'd support Chuck Schumer. That evasiveness signals a caucus that knows its leadership is a liability but lacks the nerve to say so publicly.
In Illinois, one Democrat has gone the other direction entirely, pledging to block every Trump nominee and reject Schumer as leader. The party's internal fractures run deep, and Brown is trying to straddle a widening gap between what Democratic primary voters want and what Ohio general-election voters will accept.
The Husted campaign clearly intends to make that gap the centerpiece of the race. A million-dollar ad buy before the primary is even over tells you everything about the confidence level on the Republican side, and the vulnerability they see in Brown.
Meanwhile, the question of border security and immigration enforcement has only grown sharper as a political dividing line. Votes on ICE funding, border wall construction, sanctuary city protections, and deportation resources are no longer abstract legislative maneuvers. They are the scoreboard. And Brown's scorecard, stretching back to 2001, reads like a catalog of opposition to every major enforcement measure that came before him.
Even the specific votes tell a story of consistency, the wrong kind, for a candidate now claiming he wants the border closed. Voting against opioid detection funding at the southern border. Co-sponsoring a bill to end mass deportation. Opposing resources for ICE to detain convicted criminals. Protecting sanctuary city funding at least 10 times across two decades.
Some Democrats have at least tried to break with their party on enforcement-related votes when the political moment demanded it. Brown never did, not once, based on the record Fox News Digital described.
Sherrod Brown is betting that Ohio voters have short memories. He is betting that a single interview clip can overwrite a legislative record spanning three decades. He is betting that saying "I support closing the border" will matter more than the dozens of times he voted to keep it open, defund its enforcement, and shield those who crossed it illegally.
Ohio voters sent Brown home in 2024. He is asking them to let him back in. The least they deserve is an honest account of where he actually stands, not where he says he stands when the cameras are rolling.
In politics, words are cheap. Votes are permanent. And Brown's are all on the record.