1. LEADING OFF

Good morning. Six days to go.

In 2006, Democrats needed to flip six Republican Senate seats to win the majority, and they flipped exactly six. One of them was Ohio, where Sherrod Brown, a congressman at the time, defeated the Republican incumbent, Mike DeWine (who is now Ohio's Governor).

Twenty years later, Brown is running for Senate again. But this time, Democrats only need to flip four seats to win a majority. Our latest Senate rankings have seven Toss Ups, and six of them are for seats currently held by Republicans. 

As our Kim Lyons writes, Brown's 2026 campaign is largely about opposing an unpopular war of choice waged by a Republican president. To anyone who remembers 2006, that ought to sound mighty familiar.

Below, you'll find what Brown told reporters about data centers, the Texas polls that still weren't enough to move our Senate Rankings, and a hint about why Democrats with an eye on the 2028 campaign are spending more time in Mississippi.

— Elias Isquith

2. CAN THE 2006 SHERROD BROWN WIN IN 2026?

Former Senator Brown Seeks a Return to Washington

By Kim Lyons

During the red wave of 2024, longtime Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown lost his seat to Trump-endorsed Republican Bernie Moreno. The 18-year incumbent raised more money than the former car salesman, and Moreno made some serious gaffes on the campaign trail, but still beat Brown by four points.

But in a weird twist of politics, Brown is running for Senate again two years later. He's challenging Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to fill the Senate seat JD Vance vacated to become vice president. It puts Brown in a unique position: he's an experienced politician with serious progressive bona fides hoping the political tide has turned enough in the past two years that Ohio voters want a change and will send him back to Washington.

"This system is more rigged than it's ever been," Brown told an audience of Black community leaders and lawmakers at an October campaign event in Garfield Heights, near Cleveland. "You can't have a functioning economy when the rich are making 300 times more. And all the people creating the wealth are making their wealth possible."

Brown finds himself in a situation that was almost unthinkable after 2024: Ohio is the sleeper swing state this election cycle, and his race might help Democrats take control of the Senate.

The 2026 campaign echoes Brown's first run for Senate in 2006, when he ran on a populist platform in the key swing state against unpopular then-GOP Sen. Mike DeWine. This year he's running against now Governor DeWine's former lieutenant governor in Husted, but the issues are eerily similar to 2006: The cost of healthcare, a system "rigged" against the middle class, opposition to an unpopular Middle East war waged by a Republican president, and support for the LGBT community.

And it seems Brown's style of economic populism is cool again; it's easy to see that borne out in the 2026 campaigns of other progressives running for Senate like Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan and Angie Nixon in Florida.

"Sherrod is not somebody pretending to look out for working folks. He has always been there for you," former President Barack Obama said at a rally in Cleveland last weekend. "Even when he knows folks are going to spend millions of dollars against him, he's always taking on the status quo, always taking on the system."

Obama, who won Ohio in 2008 and 2012, has not campaigned in the state for nearly a decade. So showing up in the Buckeye State in the final stretch of the midterm campaign signals that the Democratic Party thinks it's worth using the former president's considerable political capital to support Brown's campaign.

The campaign has also been one of the more expensive of the 2026 midterm cycle. According to campaign finance reports, Brown's campaign raised nearly five times as much as Husted between July and September. As of mid-October, outside groups had spent $350 million on Ohio's Senate race.

But Brown's 2024 contest with Moreno was the most expensive non-presidential race ever. That likely explains why he's focused more on drumming up support from the factions within the Democratic Party that back him not for his fundraising abilities, but his track record.

"The reason that we support Sherrod, every time I've seen him he's talking about — he has it in his heart, in his soul — the idea that all of us deserve to experience the American dream, to talk about what working people need, about the freedoms that we deserve in this country, and believing that all of us deserve it, and all of us had the opportunity to experience it," Sen. Angela Alsobrooks of Maryland told the Garfield Heights audience. "And so we need Sherrod Brown back in the Senate of the United States because we know that people who have that agenda are the ones who are going to move us forward."

And as Obama noted in his Cleveland speech, Brown's campaign has made Husted the "face of data centers" in Ohio. A series of attack ads focuses on Husted's support of the facilities that have come to represent many Americans' fears about AI and Big Tech's overreach.

The strategy appears to be working: The GOP's Senate campaign arm lamented in a leaked memo that Brown had turned the unpopular data centers into the "anchor hanging around Husted's neck."

The other issue with particular resonance for Ohio is corruption; Brown has tied Husted to his role in the FirstEnergy bribery scandal. Husted was never accused in the FirstEnergy scheme, but testified earlier this year in the trials of two executives accused in the case, which forced Ohio ratepayers to support FirstEnergy's power plants.

Some have raised concerns that Brown's criticism of data centers put him at odds with his staunch support of, and by, labor unions, who are largely in favor of the potential jobs data centers promise. But Brown said after the Garfield Heights event that data centers were widely unpopular for reasons that union members also care about.

"Union members, just like everyone else, don't want to get stuck with higher electricity prices," he said in response to a question from The Caucus at the event. "They don't want to see their tax dollars go to these out-of-state billionaires, and they think local communities should have some control over what's happening. And that's a universal thing."

After running neck-and-neck with Husted much of the summer, the latest Marist University poll has Brown leading Husted by four points among Ohio likely voters. The poll also found Brown holds a 15-point lead over Husted among independent voters.

Over the next week, Brown will likely continue to hammer home the talking points on the issues he's most passionate about, which made him a powerhouse in the Democratic Party.

"National media is never going to write off Ohio ever again," Brown said, to raucous approval from the audience at the Cleveland rally. "I feel that enthusiasm in cities, in suburbs, in small towns, in farm country. We see people showing up today like never before. They're angry. They're frustrated. They demand change, and we're fighting for it."

3. WHY WE'RE NOT MOVING TEXAS

We changed one rating in this week's Senate Rankings: Kansas, which went from R Advantage, our rating for competitive races that lean Republican, to Toss Up. 

That makes six Republican seats we rate a Toss Up. Ohio also passed Maine for third on the list.

We didn't move Texas. Five polls came out there in six days, and Democrat James Talarico led or tied Republican Ken Paxton in all five. No Democrat has won a Senate race in Texas since Lloyd Bentsen in 1988.

To find out why those polls didn't move Texas out of Toss Up, and why both parties have pulled their money out of two Democratic seats, read the full rankings at The Caucus.

4. 2028 WATCH

Mississippi is not what you'd call a swing state. It hasn't voted for a Democrat for president since Jimmy Carter in 1976, and Trump won it by nearly 23 points in 2024.

Yet four Democrats who might run for president in 2028 have made time to visit the state this month: 

• New Jersey Senator Cory Booker helped Democratic senate candidate Scott Colom kick off his canvassing push in Gulfport.

• Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock campaigned with Colom in mid-October.

• Former Vice President Kamala Harris rallied with Colom in Columbus last Thursday.

• Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's schedule had him at a rally with Colom in Biloxi yesterday.

In every case they're there, at least primarily, to support Colom, a district attorney challenging incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith.

But any Democrat thinking of running for president in 2028 has another compelling reason to visit the Deep South: The party's presidential primary calendar for 2028 opens in South Carolina, where Black voters cast 56 percent of the ballots in the state's competitive 2020 Democratic presidential primary.

The dynamic is even more intense in Mississippi. In the presidential primary of 2020, Black voters made up about 66 percent of Democratic votes. If Colom wins, he'll be Mississippi's first Black senator since Reconstruction.

For any Democrat who wants to be president, then, campaigning for Colom is a good way to introduce themselves to Black voters and, if they're lucky, take their share of credit for what would be a historic victory.

5. IN THE NEWS

• The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) is spending more than $15 million on TV ads in 49 House districts this final week, including first-time buys in four Trump carried by double digits: Florida's 7th, Nevada's 2nd, Virginia's 5th and Tennessee's 5th (DCCC).

• Alaska election officials asked a federal judge Monday to dismiss the lawsuit President Trump says he ordered, which seeks to block certification of the state's Senate race if Republican Senator Dan Sullivan loses (Anchorage Daily News).

• Political ad spending and reservations for this election cycle have reached a record $11.21 billion, more than was spent in the entire 2024 presidential cycle, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact (NBC News).