republicans spent $10 million telling ohio sherrod brown wants surgery on kids. his reply ad opens with "they're a complete lie" and ends on epstein. a democrat who hits back. i need to sit down.

Photo: US Congress, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

via Metro Weekly, LGBTQ Nation and Erin in the Morning

"Seen these ads? They're a complete lie."

That is the first line of the TV spot Sherrod Brown put on the air in Ohio on Thursday, and it is a sentence Democrats running in red-ish states have spent two years trying very hard not to say. We listened to the 30-second ad ourselves, from the copy posted by the ad-tracking account Medium Buying; the words below match what Metro Weekly and LGBTQ Nation printed.

the ad brown is answering

We wrote about the attack last week: the Senate Leadership Fund is spending heavily against Brown, who is trying to take the seat Jon Husted was appointed to, with an ad starring detransitioner Soren Aldaco. "Sherrod Brown supports sex changes for minors, irreversible surgery on kids like me," she says in it, as both outlets quote it.

The problem, as Cleveland's WEWS found in a fact-check that Metro Weekly and LGBTQ Nation both cite: Aldaco had her double mastectomy at 19, an adult, in Texas. Ohio has banned gender-affirming surgery, hormones and puberty blockers for minors since lawmakers overrode Gov. Mike DeWine's veto in January 2024.

what sherrod brown's ad says

Brown's reply does not tiptoe. "Records show not only is this woman actually from Texas, she didn't have any surgery as a minor," the narrator says. Then it pivots, hard: "But, Jon Husted? He protected men who abused young girls by voting in the Senate to block the release of the Epstein files. Maybe that's because Husted took over $116,000 from associates of Jeffrey Epstein, 10 times more than any other senator. Jon Husted should be ashamed."

That last part is campaign argument, and it should be read as one. The vote is real: on Sept. 10, 2025, Husted joined 51 Republican senators in blocking a measure to release the files, per Metro Weekly and LGBTQ Nation. The money is the $116,892 that, according to the Ohio Democratic Party, Husted has taken over the years from billionaire Les Wexner, who the party calls an Epstein co-conspirator; Metro Weekly notes Wexner's attorney disputes that label. "Protected men who abused young girls" is the Brown campaign's characterization of the vote, not a finding. We could not find a source that checks the "10 times" figure, and we did not find a Husted campaign response to this ad.

why the gays are watching ohio

The standard Democratic playbook for a trans attack ad is to agree with half of it and change the subject. Erin in the Morning has been tracking how Brown's campaign handles these, and this spot is the version advocates have been asking for: say it is false, say why, then make the other guy explain himself. A campaign that has already lost a political director to an SS photo now gets to spend October talking about Les Wexner.

Whether it works is up to Ohio. Whether it was satisfying to watch is not up for debate.