Sherrod Brown wants Ohio's farmers to believe he has their backs. His campaign Instagram shows him shaking hands at roundtables, captioning videos with promises to fight for anyone who works "on a farm or in a factory." But during his final Senate term, the 73-year-old Democrat co-sponsored legislation that explicitly excluded white farmers from its benefits, in a state where white farmers operate 97 percent of all farms.
The disconnect sits at the center of Brown's 2026 comeback bid for the Senate seat he lost in 2024. And as the Daily Mail reported, Brown's campaign declined to explain the contradiction when asked for comment.
The bill in question is the Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act of 2021, which Brown co-sponsored during his last term. The standalone legislation never passed. But Brown successfully pushed its provisions into the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the sweeping Biden-era COVID relief package, ensuring the race-based farm aid became law without a separate vote or a standalone debate.
When the American Rescue Plan passed in March 2021, Brown led the Senate banking committee. His committee issued a press release celebrating the legislation. That release made no mention of the farming provisions or of Ohio's agricultural industry at all.
For a senator representing a state with more than 136,000 farmers, the fourth-highest total in the country, the omission is hard to explain as an oversight. Leonard Hubert, a black farmer and former USDA Farm Service Agency State Executive Director during the first Trump administration, offered a blunter reading when he spoke to the Daily Mail.
"Maybe [Brown] didn't want everybody to know."
Hubert pointed out the obvious arithmetic. Ohio is not among the top ten states for black farmers. USDA data shows only about 200 black farmers in the entire state. The legislation Brown championed was tailored to a constituency that barely exists in his own backyard, while the vast majority of Ohio farmers, the white operators of 97 percent of the state's farms, were written out of eligibility.
Fast-forward to 2026, and Brown's campaign tells a different story. A March 24th Instagram post from his campaign account carried the headline "Sherrod Brown hears Ohio Farmers' concerns on rising costs," overlaid on an image of Brown seemingly holding a roundtable with white farmers. A recent campaign video shows Brown shaking hands with farmers, telling them to "keep on farming."
The visual message is unmistakable: Brown positions himself as a champion of Ohio agriculture. The legislative record says he backed a bill that carved most Ohio farmers out of federal relief based on their skin color. Both things cannot be true at the same time.
This is not the first time Brown's public positioning has collided with his record. His rhetoric on border security, for instance, has clashed sharply with a 30-year voting history that tells a very different story.
Hubert, who has direct experience inside the USDA bureaucracy, questioned Brown's approach on deeper grounds. He challenged the premise that layering new race-based programs onto an already troubled agency would fix anything.
"If USDA or any particular agency is a problem, why don't you find a real solution to fix the problem, as opposed to adding something else to it, which, from my perspective, creates another problem."
And Hubert pressed a broader point about Brown's decades in Washington, 32 years total, including fourteen in the House and eighteen in the Senate, dating back to 1992.
"When you've been part of the institution for so long, and you've been in a position where you can affect change, then why don't you do that."
Brown is running to unseat Republican Jon Husted, who was appointed to the seat after JD Vance vacated it for the vice presidency. The Cook Political Report ranks the Ohio contest a "Toss-Up," alongside the Maine seat held by Senator Susan Collins. Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the Senate, making every competitive race a potential shift in the balance of power on Capitol Hill.
A Fox News Poll released this week found Brown leading Husted 53 percent to 45 percent. Prediction markets paint a similar picture: Kalshi gives Brown a 56 percent chance to win, while Polymarket puts the Democratic candidate's odds at 55 percent.
Brown's financial operation is formidable. Federal Election Commission records show his campaign has raised nearly $26 million in the 2026 cycle and holds over $17 million cash on hand. That war chest reflects the national stakes Democrats have attached to this race, and the resources they are willing to pour into flipping a seat in a state Donald Trump carried for a third consecutive time in 2024.
The broader Democratic Senate picture is far from unified. Internal revolts over Chuck Schumer's 2026 strategy have exposed deep fractures in the party's approach to competitive races nationwide.
Brown's 2024 loss to Bernie Moreno came in a cycle where Trump's coattails proved too strong for even a three-term incumbent to survive. Whether the political environment has shifted enough for Brown to reclaim the seat is an open question. But the race-based farming legislation adds a specific, documented liability that no amount of Instagram content can easily erase.
What makes the farming bill particularly damaging is the contrast Brown himself created. He did not simply cast a quiet vote on an omnibus package. He co-sponsored the standalone bill. He pushed its provisions into the American Rescue Plan. And then his own committee's press release omitted any reference to those provisions, in a state where agriculture is a defining industry.
Then, years later, his campaign built an entire visual brand around standing with Ohio farmers. The same farmers his legislation excluded.
That kind of gap between the campaign trail and the legislative record is not unique to Brown. Progressive Democrats have faced similar scrutiny when their personal conduct diverges from their public principles. But in a toss-up Senate race in a state Trump has won three times, the contradiction carries real electoral weight.
Hubert's assessment cuts to the core of the problem. Brown spent more than three decades in Washington. He chaired a powerful committee. He had every tool available to address the real challenges facing Ohio agriculture. Instead, he backed a bill that sorted farmers by race, and then apparently hoped nobody would notice.
The Brown campaign's silence when asked about the legislation speaks for itself. In competitive races, Democratic candidates have shown a growing willingness to distance themselves from inconvenient party positions. Brown appears to have chosen a different tactic: say nothing and keep posting farmer photos.
Ohio voters will decide whether that's good enough. But the record is the record. And no campaign video can un-co-sponsor a bill.