WASHINGTON — Sen. Jon Husted rents a separate apartment in a Washington, D.C., multifamily house owned by David Lugar, a lobbyist whose firm’s clients include Meta Platforms, Politico reported Friday. Neither Husted nor Lugar would tell Politico how much rent Husted pays.
A Husted spokesperson told Politico the arrangement is “strictly a landlord and tenant relationship” and that Husted pays fair market rent. Lugar told Politico he charges fair market rent and that he has never lobbied Husted or anyone on Husted’s staff about any issue.
Politico reported that no Senate rule prohibits a senator from renting from a lobbyist at market rates, and that a below-market rent could raise questions under Senate gift rules — which is why the undisclosed amount is central to the arrangement.
Sen. Todd Young of Indiana also rents an apartment in the same building, Politico reported. Lugar told Politico he lobbied Young’s office on behalf of a client while Young has been a tenant there. Lugar is the son of the late Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, and Young once worked for the elder Lugar, according to Politico.
What the federal lobbying records show
J News Network reviewed the lobbying disclosure reports Lugar’s firms have filed with the U.S. Senate. Meta Platforms has paid Lugar’s firm, 535 Group, $30,000 every quarter for seven consecutive quarters — the first quarter of 2025 through the third quarter of 2026 — a total of $210,000, according to the filings in the Senate lobbying disclosure database. Lugar is the only lobbyist named on each of the Meta filings, and each is signed by him.
The filings list the Meta work as online advertising, content and platform transparency, and competition legislation, lobbied in both the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, along with encryption and privacy policy and repeal of Section 230 in the Senate.
The quarterly report for the first three months of 2026 was posted April 20, 2026, and is digitally signed by David Lugar. Readers can read the full filing here (PDF).
Through his own firm, The Lugar Group, Lugar also lobbies for Boeing, which paid $50,000 a quarter over the same period, the filings show. Through 535 Group, he is also named on filings for Visa, Leidos and Wells Fargo. In all, 535 Group reported $1.74 million in lobbying income from 19 clients in 2025, according to the filings compiled by OpenSecrets.
No filing by either of Lugar’s firms reports lobbying on data centers, and the Meta filings do not list energy or tax issues.
What the campaign finance records show
A review of Federal Election Commission records found no contributions from David Lugar to Husted’s Senate campaign committee or its joint fundraising committee, and no contributions from Meta’s corporate political action committee to Husted’s committees. Lugar’s federal contributions in the current election cycle went to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and to the campaign of Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, according to FEC records.
Outside groups are spending heavily in the race. Defend American Jobs, a super PAC funded by cryptocurrency interests, has reported tens of millions of dollars in October spending supporting Husted and opposing former Sen. Sherrod Brown, according to its FEC filings. Meta is not among the groups reporting spending in the race.
The Ohio context
In September 2023, the Ohio Department of Development announced in the names of Gov. Mike DeWine and then-Lt. Gov. Jon Husted that the Ohio Tax Credit Authority had approved a 75%, 15-year sales-tax exemption for Aligned Data Centers’ project in Perkins Township, Erie County — a $202 million investment expected to create 18 full-time jobs, according to the Ohio Department of Development.
The exemption has since become a fiscal issue in Columbus. The Ohio Department of Taxation estimates the data-center exemption cost the state $555 million in forgone sales-tax revenue in calendar year 2024 and $1.57 billion in 2025, according to a Legislative Service Commission fiscal note published in June 2026 — against the department’s own earlier forecast of $135.8 million for fiscal year 2025. The forecast and the later estimates use different year bases.
In May 2026, DeWine directed the Tax Credit Authority to pause consideration of new data-center exemption requests while a legislative committee studies the industry’s growth, according to the governor’s office.
In the Senate, Husted introduced the Ratepayer Protection Act, S. 5028, in July 2026. The bill would require state regulators to consider standards under which large electricity users, rather than households and small businesses, pay the full incremental cost of the infrastructure built to serve them. The bill remains in committee. A House companion measure passed the House 417–3 in September, but the Senate failed to advance it on Sept. 30, when a procedural vote fell three votes short of the 60 required.
Meta, Lugar’s client, is building Prometheus, which the company describes as a gigawatt-scale artificial intelligence data center in New Albany, Ohio. In January 2026, Meta announced 20-year agreements to buy power from Vistra, including the full output of the Perry and Davis-Besse nuclear plants in Ohio.
Husted, a Republican appointed to the Senate in January 2025, faces Brown, a Democrat, in the Nov. 3 general election. The Ohio Democratic Party, which is supporting Brown, said Saturday that the amount of rent Husted pays should be disclosed.
This story is based on reporting by Politico and on lobbying and campaign finance records filed with the U.S. Senate and the Federal Election Commission and reviewed by J News Network.
