Biography

Sherrod Campbell Brown (born November 9, 1952) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Ohio, a seat which he has held since 2007. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the U.S. representative for Ohio's 13th congressional district from 1993 to 2007 and the 47th secretary of state of Ohio from 1983 to 1991. He started his political career in 1975 as an Ohio state representative. Brown defeated two-term Republican incumbent Mike DeWine in the 2006 U.S. Senate election and was reelected in 2012, defeating state treasurer Josh Mandel, and in 2018, defeating U.S. representative Jim Renacci. In the Senate, he was chair of the Agriculture Subcommittee on Hunger, Nutrition and Family Farms and the Banking Subcommittee on Economic Policy, and is also a member of the Committee on Finance, the Committee on Veterans' Affairs, and Select Committee on Ethics. At the start of the 114th Congress in January 2015, Brown became the ranking Democratic member on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. In January 2021, Brown became chair of the committee and initiated an inquiry into the implosion of Archegos Capital Management, an investment firm that was accused of fraud and insider trading and lost billions of dollars. Brown became the state's senior U.S. senator after the retirement of George Voinovich in 2011. Since then, Brown has been the only Democratic statewide elected official in Ohio, with the exception of some Democratic-affiliated Ohio Supreme Court justices elected in nonpartisan races. He is widely considered a liberal, progressive and populist Democrat.