In the Mailbox: How Black Voters Are Being Courted, and Deceived, in Ohio's Senate Race

Every election season, the mailbox becomes a quiet archive. Glossy cards stack up on kitchen counters, get skimmed, and are thrown out within days. Historians, though, have long treated campaign ephemera as evidence. Broadsides, handbills and church bulletins tell us who organizers thought they needed to reach, what arguments they believed would move people, and what obstacles stood between those voters and the ballot box. The mail that reached one Black household in Columbus, Ohio, this October does exactly that for the 2026 U.S. Senate race between Democrat Sherrod Brown and Republican incumbent Jon Husted.

The NAACP's Scorecard: Wages and Health Care

The most detailed piece comes from NAACP Empowerment Programs, the civil rights organization's nonpartisan voter-education arm. Its front, branded "We the People," is a U.S. Senate voter guide. It tells readers to vote on or before November 3, to bring a valid photo ID when voting in person, and to call 1-866-OUR-VOTE for help.

The back is where the argument lives. "In a moment when the cost of living is increasing but access to healthcare and opportunities is plummeting," it reads, "we will not wait for more harmful policies to impact our communities." It then names the issues it says matter most to its readers: "the economy, fair wages, affordable healthcare, and quality education."

A two-column chart, "Before You Vote, See Where the Candidates Stand," lays out the records side by side. On wages, it says Brown supports raising the federal minimum wage, now $7.25 an hour, to $17, and that he sponsored legislation in 2021 to raise it gradually to $15 by 2025, saying "today's workers cannot survive on a minimum wage salary." Husted, it says, voted against a 2025 proposal to raise the wage to $17 by 2030.

On health care, the guide quotes Brown promising to "keep fighting to make healthcare more affordable and accessible," and credits him with supporting the Affordable Care Act, voting to let Medicare negotiate lower drug prices, and sponsoring a bill to cap insulin costs at $35 a month. Husted, it says, voted to cut Medicaid and against extending Affordable Care Act tax credits, calling the law "dysfunctional."

Because the NAACP's voter-education arm is nonpartisan, the guide endorses no one; it points readers to full citations at naacp.org/voterguides. But the choice of issues is itself a statement. Wages and health care are the two places where the racial wealth gap is felt most directly. Black workers are overrepresented in low-wage service jobs, and Black Ohioans rely heavily on Medicaid. The guide frames the Senate race not as a contest of personalities but as a question about paychecks and prescriptions.

Black PAC and the Health Care Pitch

A second card, from Black PAC, makes the same case with fewer words and a clear endorsement. "Sherrod Brown has always stood up for our healthcare," it says, beside a photo of the candidate in a work jacket. Its call to action is about power: "Use your power to protect our future." Along the bottom it gives the two dates every Ohio voter needed: early in-person voting began October 6, and Election Day is November 3.

The contrast with the NAACP piece is instructive. One is education, the other persuasion. Together they show a familiar division of labor in Black political organizing, reaching back to the voter-education schools of the 1950s and 1960s: one group explains the stakes and the rules, another asks for the vote.

"Party at the Polls"

The third piece, from When We All Vote, takes yet another approach. Its bright yellow card invites readers to "Grab your friends, family, and neighbors" and join a "Party at the Polls" in their community. Smiling volunteers in "When We All Vote" T-shirts fill one side; a QR code and the web address weall.vote/party fill the other.

The idea is old, even if the branding is new. Black communities have long turned voting into a collective event, from Sunday "souls to the polls" caravans after church to students marching together to early-voting sites, as Greensboro's HBCU students did earlier this month. Turning the trip to the polls into a gathering makes voting social, visible and harder to skip.

The Mail That Wasn't What It Seemed

Not every card in the stack was what it appeared to be. Two glossy flyers urged readers to "Say Yes to the Revolution" and "Join the Resistance" by voting for Greg Levy, an independent socialist candidate who is Black. They promised to "End the War on Black America," "Prosecute Police Violence" and win "Reparations for Black Americans." Two more attacked Brown directly: one drew him as a bobblehead in Donald Trump's hand under the line "Sherrod Brown Always Says 'Yes,'" and another called him "The Face of Oppression," citing his vote for the 1994 crime bill.

The small print tells a different story. The flyers were paid for by Enough Promises Ohio, a group that, according to a campaign finance filing reported by CNN on October 22, received its only reported donation for October 1–14, $2.5 million, from Conservative Americans PAC, a Republican super PAC. The Associated Press had already traced the group's mailers to a vendor tied to Trump's MAGA Inc. CNN reported the group had spent at least $2 million boosting Levy while targeting Brown's standing with Black voters.

Levy himself has rejected the effort. His campaign said it "has no ties" to Enough Promises Ohio, condemned the "attempted deception of voters," and, according to The Washington Post, likened the flyers to "digital blackface." Husted's campaign told CNN it "had no involvement." Ohio Democrats, WOSU reported, have played a version of the same game, funding a mailer that promotes the Libertarian candidate to draw votes from Husted.

The tactic is not new. Splitting the Black vote with spoiler candidates and borrowed radical language has a long history in American politics. What is new is the polish: the flyers borrow Levy's own fonts and colors and real grievances, from mass incarceration to police violence, and turn them into tools to depress support for the candidate those grievances would most likely favor. For readers, the lesson is simple: before trusting a mailer, read who paid for it.

The Rules on Every Card

One message runs through almost every piece: bring a photo ID. Ohio's 2023 election law made it one of the strictest photo-ID states in the country, ending the use of utility bills and bank statements as proof of identity for in-person voters. It also shortened the window for returning mail ballots and cut early voting on the Monday before Election Day. Civil rights groups warned at the time that the changes would fall hardest on older, poorer and Black voters, who are less likely to hold a current driver's license.

That is why a hotline number and an ID reminder sit in such prominent places. The mail is doing the work that, before the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County v. Holder decision gutted federal preclearance, the Voting Rights Act partly did by requiring states with histories of discrimination to justify new rules in advance. Today, organizers try to inform voters around the rules after they are written.

What the Mailbox Tells Us

Taken together, these cards sketch the ground war for Black votes in one of 2026's closely watched Senate races. Organizers are betting that economic issues, not slogans, will move voters; that trusted Black institutions carry more weight than candidate ads; that turnout is built through community, not just persuasion; and that the biggest danger may be a voter turned away at the polling place for lack of the right ID.

The mail will be gone from most kitchen counters by Thanksgiving. Its lesson for anyone who wants to understand how Black voters are organized, courted and sometimes deceived or obstructed will last longer.

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