'Missing' signs at DNC call out Democrat in key Senate race who skipped convention with disputed excuse

CHICAGO — "Missing person" posters are popping up around the Democratic National Convention in Chicago this week mocking incumbent Sen. Sherrod Brown, who is one of three Democrats in the Senate to skip the convention in what critics are calling a political move.

"With all of his friends in Chicago this weekend, we were worried that he hadn’t made it to the United Center," the Ohio Republican Party posted on X this week. "So we sent a rescue team to post some ‘Missing’ posters, just in case anyone has seen him!"

Social media users have been posting photos of the signs, which say "radical Sherrod Brown" is "missing" and was "last seen: cutting your retirement benefits, hiding from Kamala Harris’ radical record, opening the southern border, destroying Ohio manufacturing jobs."

"Warning," the poster says, "Sherrod has a tendency to play make believe. Despite voting with Kamala Harris 99% of the time, he thinks skipping a convention will make him a moderate."

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Brown, who skipped the convention along with Sens. Jon Tester of Montana, Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, and Jacky Rosen of Nevada, told CNN, "I often skip conventions."

"I’ll go to conventions maybe a day sometimes. I don’t plan to go."

But multiple media outlets have reported that Brown has not missed a DNC since first being elected to Congress in 1994.

Brown’s critics have slammed him over his rationale for not being present at the United Center in Chicago this week. 

"Sherrod Brown votes with the Biden-Harris administration nearly 100% of the time," Reagan McCarthy, spokesperson for Brown's GOP challenger Bernie Moreno, told Fox News Digital. "Even while he skips the convention, he can't hide from the most radical presidential ticket in history."

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"Sherrod Brown can lie and try to hide from his voters, but he can’t hide his record of voting for the toxic Harris-Biden agenda almost 100% of the time, throwing the southern border wide open and sending inflation skyrocketing," National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Philip Letsou told Fox News Digital. "Brown is a career politician who has spent 50 years in politics pushing the Democrat agenda, he’s not fooling anyone." 

American Frontier Strategies CEO and Ohio political consultant Mehek Cooke told Fox News Digital that Brown is a "coward."

"Sherrod Brown has been in Washington the same amount of years as Joe Biden," Cooke said. "If he’s too chicken to show his face to the American people at the DNC, that should tell you he’s running from something – his record."

"Sherrod is meeting with Ohioans across the state this week to discuss his record fighting for Ohio and Bernie Moreno’s record looking out for himself – from refusing to pay his employees the overtime they’d earned and shredding the evidence to get out of it to opposing the strongest bipartisan border security deal in decades," a Brown campaign spokesperson said in a statement to Fox News Digital.

The Brown campaign noted the senator was busy this week with a campaign event in Cleveland with Haircare Professionals for Sherrod as well as a campaign event in Niles, Ohio, with labor union members.

The Ohio GOP told Fox News Digital there are about 50 posters around the United Center.

"Sherrod still hasn’t made his way to the United Center, so we wanted to help his liberal friends find him," the Ohio GOP told Fox News Digital in a statement. "We’re sure Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, and Joe Biden are very concerned that he isn’t there to celebrate their accomplishments together."

"After all, the crushing inflation, historic illegal immigration crisis, and rising crime have only been made possible with Sherrod’s support. Sherrod may be missing from the Democratic National Convention, but their dangerously liberal platform certainly isn’t missing in him."

The Ohio Senate race between Brown and Moreno will be one of the most closely watched in the country and the Cook Political Report ranks the race as a "toss up."