Sherrod Brown has spent nearly $1.5 million on television ads in Ohio, and the only two spots he has aired this year both go after the same thing: Epstein. That is according to AdImpact, the ad-tracking firm.
Brown, the Democrat running in the Ohio Senate race, is tying Republican Sen. Jon Husted to Jeffrey Epstein through Leslie Wexner, Epstein’s primary financial client. Husted once took campaign donations from Wexner. The ads say so.
Husted’s campaign spokesperson, Amy Natoce, hit back. She said the campaign gave all the money it received from Wexner to a charity that fights human exploitation. Husted’s team also pointed out that Brown has himself taken donations from Wexner’s wife, and that Wexner has said publicly that Epstein conned him.
Maine and Georgia pick up the phrase
The Ohio spots are one piece of a wider Democratic push built around the phrase “Epstein class.” In Maine, Democratic nominee Graham Platner launched a six-figure ad buy accusing Republican Sen. Susan Collins of selling out voters to “the president and to the Epstein class.” Archival footage of Donald Trump and Epstein flashes across the screen. In Georgia, Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff has used the same language in speeches about the administration.
The ads play on public frustration over the Trump administration’s reluctance to release federal records on Epstein. Strategists are using the issue to argue that the Republican establishment protects corrupt, powerful insiders at the expense of ordinary taxpayers. Party platforms, meanwhile, still lead with high prices, health care access and the war with Iran.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who led the bipartisan push to unseal the files, said the ads prove him right. Insiders underestimated how much the public cared, he said, because the scandal goes to voters’ anger at a rigged system in which the rich play by different rules.
Kiersten Pels, a Republican National Committee spokesperson, called the strategy cynical political theater meant to distract from policy failures. She accused Democrats of hypocrisy, claiming the party had spent decades cashing Epstein-linked checks.
