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.

Yet in the final stretch of the midterms, the candidates are calibrating how much they lean into the issue as they court voters in cities, suburban towns and rural areas across the state.

“My first priority is how to bring prices down,” Brown told CNN when asked how high the Epstein issue would rank for the former senator if he were to return to Washington. “That means ending this war; that means ending these tariffs.”

He spoke to CNN at a “Farmers for Brown” event in Ashville, south of Columbus, shortly after meeting with a group of Epstein survivors who were in town. Brown declined to share details about the private gathering.

Brown’s campaign has run ads accusing Husted of receiving money from billionaire donor and Ohio native Les Wexner , who was identified in government documents as one of Epstein’s co-conspirators. Husted, in turn, has accused Brown of accepting money from Epstein “associates” — though the list of donors includes those with tenuous connections to Epstein or whose connection predates Epstein’s mid-2000s arrest.

How the Epstein issue might affect the midterms was anyone’s guess, Brown said, before once again emphasizing that the economy is the single concern he is hearing about most from his former constituents: “Everywhere, people are talking about prices.”

Democratic candidate Sherrod Brown has said his opponent received money from a billionaire identified in government documents as one of Epstein's co-conspirators. Jeff Dean/Getty Images Republican Sen. Jon Husted has also tried to link Brown to Epstein "associates.". Francis Chung/Politico/AP Ahead of Husted’s meeting with a group of doorknockers on the same day in October, CNN asked the senator whether he believes Wexner had enabled Epstein — an allegation that some Epstein survivors have made.

Without addressing Wexner’s potential complicity, Husted told CNN that he donated any campaign contributions he received “from anyone that was in those files” to charity and that he was also working on legislation to stop human trafficking.

“I’ve always been supportive of releasing the Epstein files. What’s out there is because of what I made to make it happen,” he said when asked whether Congress should push the Justice Department to release the rest of the Epstein files.

Epstein was Wexner’s longtime money manager. Wexner has not been accused of criminal wrongdoing and in a voluntary interview earlier this year with the House Oversight Committee, he denied any knowledge of Epstein’s criminal activity.

A recent CNN analysis found that candidates and outside groups have aired more than 160 unique Epstein-related ads in the 2026 midterms, backed by more than $35 million in airtime. Epstein has been invoked overwhelmingly by Democrats — and occasionally by Republicans — to attack opponents or promote themselves.

Printed documents available on the Department of Justice Epstein Library are seen in this illustration photo taken in Krakow, Poland, on February 17. Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto/Getty Images In Ohio, more than $6 million has been spent on Epstein ads, in races up and down the ballot.

In the closely watched House race for Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, the longtime incumbent Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur, who won in 2024 by just more than 2,300 votes, has issued ads this cycle saying she is not working for “the Epstein class.”  She also hosted a roundtable in Toledo with Epstein survivors last weekend.

“There’s a little bit more Epstein juice in the air in Ohio than there might be in an average state” in no small part because Wexner is a household name there, said David Niven, an associate professor of American politics at the University of Cincinnati.

US Representative Thomas Massie lifts a piece of paper on a board displaying an FBI document, revealing an image of businessman Les Wexner during a House Judiciary Committee in February. Wexner is a household name in Ohio. Kent Nishimura/Reuters The Wexner donations mentioned in the Brown attack ads “fit exactly the story that Sherrod Brown wants to tell about Jon Husted: that he’s on their side,” Niven added. “He means billionaires, and he means Epstein, and he means the electric company … the data center folks.”

On the first day of early voting in Ohio this month, many of the people CNN spoke with outside of a polling station in blue-leaning Franklin County said they were sympathetic to Epstein survivors and believed the Epstein issue represented so much of what is wrong with Washington.

Still, most of them said, the Epstein files were not their top electoral concern.

“The war, the economy, the corruption that’s going on within the government. Everything,” Columbus resident Ann Yurick, a 77-year-old independent who leans Democratic, said when asked to describe what is driving her vote.

Democrat Nancy Snyder said she’s planning on voting straight down the ballot for a few reasons: “Food, gas, housing, medical care, that’s it.”She said about Epstein: “You don’t hear a lot about it, but they’re also just screwing us and taking all the money they can.”

Another Democratic voter, retired air traffic controller Robert Ende, said he was not concerned about Wexner’s donations to Husted as he pointed out that the billionaire is also a generous donor to good causes throughout the state, including the Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus. The hospital has a research wing dedicated to Abigail Wexner, Wexner’s wife.

Anouska De Georgiou, center, embraces Danielle Bensky, left, as Marina Lacerda looks on during a news conference about the victims of disgraced financier and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein in September 2025. Some survivors have now become public figures. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images North America/Getty Images The Epstein survivors who met with Brown earlier this month were in Ohio to help promote the “Epstein Reading Room,” a traveling installation of printed copies of the files released by the DOJ.

Funded by a non-profit, the exhibit has been going from one swing state to the next, trying to encourage people to vote for more accountability and transparency. Officially named “The Donald J Trump and Jeffrey Epstein Memorial Reading Room,” it features a large photo of Epstein and Trump together, as well as “Trump Collection” books that contain files in which Trump’s name appears. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing related to Epstein.

Many of the survivors had lived privately prior to a press conference on Capitol Hill in September 2025 that called on the DOJ to release the Epstein files. One year later, some have transformed into full-time public advocates, pressing for accountability around a political controversy that has consumed Washington.

If Democrats were to take control of Congress after the midterms, the Epstein issue could become more inflamed still, as some Democrats have already vowed to explore Trump’s connections to Epstein and investigate what they see as important leads contained in the Epstein files.

Sharlene Rochard, an Epstein survivor who has been traveling with the Reading Room as it has made stops in states from Texas to Pennsylvania, told CNN that she believes they are, in fact, having an impact on voters.

“There’s 17,000 pounds of books in here. It’s unbelievable to realize that this is a crime and that’s evidence of a crime in those books and people are really receptive. I think we’re changing hearts and minds along the way,” Rochard said, standing in the middle of rows of bookshelves containing over three million pages of documents.

For Wendy Pesante, another Epstein survivor who now lives in Ohio, the installation hit close to home.

Wendy Pesante looks at the volumes of Epstein files in the Epstein Reading Room exhibit in Columbus, Ohio. She said she met Epstein when she was a teenager. Nicky Robertson/CNN Pesante was around 15 when she first met Epstein in West Palm Beach — a meeting that she describes as the beginning of a dark downward spiral into abuse and exploitation. She wiped away tears as she stared at the year that she was abused on a large timeline of Epstein’s crimes.

“I should’ve been found back then. There’s so many girls that still should’ve been found from then,” Pesante said. She is ultimately glad that the exhibition is there andsaid: “People should know.”

Pesante said that until last year — when she shared her story of abuse — she had paid little attention to politics and barely understood the distinction between a Republican and Democrat. Now, with a critical midterm election ongoing, she says she is getting ready to vote for the first time. She plans to support Democrats.

Asked whether that is because of the Epstein issue, Pesante replied: “It’s 100% because of that.”