Sherrod Brown Takes Google Money While Attacking Google Data Centers in Ohio

There’s something almost comical about watching a politician bite the hand that feeds him, especially when that hand belongs to one of the biggest corporate donors in American politics. Sherrod Brown, Ohio’s former Democratic senator now trying to reclaim his seat, just released an attack ad going after Republican Senator Jon Husted over data centers. The twist? The facility featured in his ad is owned by Google, a company whose political action committee and lobbyists have funneled thousands of dollars into Brown’s campaign coffers over the years.

You know what makes this particularly rich? Brown’s September 4th ad showcases a Lancaster, Ohio data center while an Ohioan blames Husted for bringing these facilities to the state and supposedly driving up electric bills. But campaign finance records tell a different story about Brown’s relationship with the very company operating that facility. Google’s corporate PAC has contributed twenty thousand dollars to Brown throughout his political career. That’s not pocket change, and it’s certainly not the kind of money you take from someone you consider an enemy of the people.

The hypocrisy gets deeper when you look at the individual contributions. Brown took thirty five hundred dollars in March from Lisa Kountoupes, a Google lobbyist whose firm was hired specifically to work on permitting reform for Google’s data center needs. Then there’s Michael D. Smith, another Google lobbyist who’s donated over ten thousand dollars to Brown since 2017. Smith’s firm lobbies on grid reliability and energy affordability issues related to, you guessed it, data centers.

Mehek Cooke, a GOP strategist in Ohio, nailed it when she said Google is apparently terrible enough for a campaign attack ad but perfectly acceptable when the political contributions roll in. That’s the contradiction Brown needs to explain to Ohio voters. If these data centers are such a menace to communities, why has Brown been perfectly happy to cash checks from the people building and lobbying for them?

The thing about modern politics is that voters aren’t stupid. They can smell this kind of double dealing from a mile away. Brown’s campaign spokeswoman tried to deflect by focusing on Husted’s record, claiming he led the charge on Ohio’s data center expansion. She didn’t say a single word about the Google money. That silence speaks volumes.

Here’s where the story gets interesting from a bigger picture standpoint. Data centers have become ground zero in America’s artificial intelligence race with China. Vice President JD Vance, an Ohio native himself, has been vocal about the strategic importance of these facilities for maintaining American technological dominance. These aren’t just warehouses for cat videos and spam emails. They’re critical infrastructure for the AI systems that will define economic and military power for the next generation.

But local communities do have legitimate concerns about energy consumption and grid strain. Ohio’s energy infrastructure wasn’t built to handle the massive power demands these facilities create. Electric bills are a real issue for working families, and when politicians promise economic development that comes with hidden costs, people have every right to be skeptical. The problem is that Brown wants to have it both ways. He wants to attack the development while taking money from the developers.

Campaign finance records show Brown received a combined six thousand dollars over the past decade from three additional Google lobbyists beyond the ones already mentioned. That’s a pattern, not a coincidence. These contributions went to Friends of Sherrod Brown, his principal campaign committee, which means this money directly funded his political operations.

Cooke called it Jekyll and Hyde politics, and that’s about as accurate a description as you’ll find. Brown acts like his cozy Washington relationship with Google doesn’t exist while running ads attacking the fruits of that relationship back home in Ohio. It’s the kind of insider game that makes regular Americans disgusted with politics in the first place.

Ohio has 226 data centers now, and Husted has certainly championed their expansion. But that expansion happened in a broader context where both parties recognized the strategic importance of maintaining America’s tech infrastructure. The question isn’t whether data centers matter. They do. The question is whether politicians should be able to profit from an industry while publicly attacking it for political gain.

Brown’s campaign insists that Ohioans should get to decide if data centers are built in their communities, not Jon Husted and his billionaire friends. Fair enough. But shouldn’t Ohioans also get to know when their senator is bankrolled by the very billionaires building those data centers? Transparency cuts both ways, or at least it should.

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