Former Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is running for U.S. Senate in 2026 against Sen. Jon Husted (R-OH), has spent decades casting himself as a blue-collar populist, but donor data reviewed by Breitbart News shows he has taken at least $4,887,980 from donors affiliated with Wall Street, big banking institutions, investment firms, and billionaires throughout his political career.
Brown has accused his opponent of taking money from “Wall Street” and “billionaires,” declared “Workers > Wall Street,” said “Wall Street does not believe in the dignity of work,” and claimed, “We continue to see the power Wall Street has over the political system.” He has also said that “making all Ohioans’ lives easier” is what he is “fighting for,” while saying his opponent is “fighting for billionaires” and arguing that Ohioans deserve a senator who fights for them, “not billionaires and special interests.”
A campaign donor list reviewed by Breitbart News includes liberal billionaires such as JB Pritzker, Tom Steyer, George Soros, Alex Soros, Steven Spielberg, James and Kathryn Murdoch, and George Lucas.
The list also includes wealthy donors from finance, investment, and broader business circles, including Henry Laufer, Marsha Laufer, Seth Klarman, Katharine Rayner, Stewart Resnick, Jonathan Tisch, Donald Sussman, and Penny Pritzker.
Republican National Committee spokesman Hunter Lovell told Breitbart News, “Shady Sherrod Brown has built his political brand attacking Wall Street and billionaire donors while quietly pocketing millions from the very interests he claims to oppose. Ohio voters are tired of politicians who say one thing on the campaign trail and do another behind closed doors, and Sherrod Brown’s long record of taking money from Wall Street while railing against it is hypocrisy in its purest form.”
The donor list adds to prior scrutiny of Brown’s populist image. Breitbart News previously reported that Brown received nearly $400,000 over his career from lobbyists and corporate PACs connected to some of the nation’s largest health insurance companies, including Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Cigna, Centene, Aetna, and UnitedHealth, while arguing that many politicians are “in the pockets of big corporations.”
Those donations included $112,171.96 from UnitedHealth lobbyists, $107,514.05 from Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield lobbyists, $47,650 from Aetna and CVS lobbyists, $22,170.18 from Cigna lobbyists, and additional donations from corporate PACs and lobbyists connected to Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, CVS, Cigna, Centene, Molina, and Kaiser Permanente.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee released an ad earlier this year blasting Brown’s 52 years in public office, saying he first ran for office in 1974 and accusing him of backing the Biden-Harris agenda, tax hikes on the middle class, reckless spending, men in women’s sports, and open borders.
Brown’s immigration record also complicates his effort to project a moderate image. He voted to terminate President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration for construction of the border wall, saying the only emergency was “in Donald Trump’s head,” and voted to convict Trump in both impeachment trials. In January, Brown called on the administration to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitian migrants, arguing they did not have “a safe place to return to” and that Ohio communities depended on them economically.
That same day, Signal Ohio reporter Andrew Tobias reported that Brown said ICE “needs to be ‘radically redone,’” called for DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to be fired, and said, “Bringing ICE in means that these communities are less safe.” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who defeated Brown in 2024 despite the Democrat’s $194 million campaign, responded that voters were “sick of liberal Democrats like you selling out American workers for cheap migrant labor every time,” adding that TPS was always temporary and it was “time to go home.”