Standing in front of red and green tractors on an unseasonably warm October afternoon, Sherrod Brown made his pitch for returning to the Senate: Inflation, diesel prices and the cost of healthcare were out of control, the former Ohio senator said, while his Republican opponent, Sen. Jon Husted, was a “special interest guy in Washington.” One name never came up: Jeffrey Epstein.
Brown’s in-person message as early voting was getting underway in Ohio was a far cry from some of the ads that had earlier this year flooded this battleground state, where the Senate race could help decide control of Congress. Epstein, a convicted sex offender whose name has become political shorthand for dark suspicions about the wealthy and powerful, has been used by candidates this election cycle to cast their opponents as morally compromised.
