Plain Dealer - Brown stumps for votes in GOP bastions

(Cleveland Plain Dealer)

Brown foraging for votes in GOP bastions

New Concord, Ohio -- Senate candidate Sherrod Brown takes a wrong turn or two as he twists through the hilly grounds of Muskingum College in search of his elusive quarry: Democrats in a Republican bastion.

The longtime congressman from Avon detours through a hamburger joint, introducing himself to a smattering of apolitical underclassmen.

Then, in a sunny lounge, he finds a half- dozen campus Democrats eating pizza from boxes stacked beside his campaign literature.

The gravel-voiced politico with curly flyaway hair is doing all he can to become the first Ohio Democrat to win a statewide nonjudicial office in more than a decade.

Instead of relying on Democratic strongholds such as Northeast Ohio for victory, Brown is already foraging for votes all over the state.

"I am writing off nowhere," he promises during a week in Ohio's hinterlands in late February to find volunteers, develop a field organization and raise money.

The nation is watching Brown's progress. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid believes low approval ratings for President Bush and Republicans could return the Senate to Democratic control in November. A Brown victory in Ohio is key to his plan.

Democrats say Brown can defeat GOP incumbent Mike DeWine because Brown is a strong fund-raiser who has statewide name recognition from serving two terms in the 1980s as Ohio secretary of state. They hope DeWine will be stung by voter backlash against Republicans even though he hasn't been personally linked to the GOP scandals roiling Washington and Columbus.

"If we can't win this year, I don't know when we are going to win," says Dale Butland, a political consultant who managed former Sen. John Glenn's 1992 re- election race, the last statewide campaign won by an Ohio Democrat. Butland briefly worked for a primary rival of Brown's who dropped out. "We have a perfect political storm here in Ohio."

Predictably, Republicans say the Senate seat will stay with DeWine, a moderate known for championing legislation to benefit children. DeWine had $4.3 million in the bank at the end of 2005, compared with Brown's $2.4 million.

Ohio Republican Party Chairman Bob Bennett doubts anyone as liberal as Brown could prevail in a "common-sense conservative" state like Ohio.

"Sherrod Brown is an extreme left-wing guy whose record in Congress is really short on substance," Bennett says. "He isn't even in the mainstream of his own party."

Americans for Democratic Action, a liberal group, recently gave Brown's voting record a 95 percent rating. Brown tied with Toledo's Marcy Kaptur for the Ohio congressional delegation's highest score. But for the most part, Brown is in the Democratic mainstream and enjoys support from national party leaders such as Reid.

Brown plays up Republican problems

In rustic Ohio, Brown downplays his liberal voting record while hyperkinetically preaching pocketbook populism and denouncing DeWine as a crony of Bush and Gov. Bob Taft.

New Concord, where Brown campaigned the week after Presidents Day, is John Glenn's hometown and Muskingum College is Glenn's alma mater. The school gymnasium, a museum and several New Concord public buildings are named after the hero astronaut and four-term Democratic senator.

Muskingum County is so heavily Republican that Glenn lost there in 1992, even though he won statewide. The Republican who beat Glenn on his home turf was none other than DeWine, who made it to the Senate in 1994 when Howard Metzenbaum retired.

"I don't foresee any Democrats winning this area in any way, shape or form," college Democratic Club member Chandra Graham says sadly after she met Brown and pledged to work for him. The senior from Yellow Springs says she appreciated Brown's willingness to visit the Republican-leaning school.

But Howard "Butch" Zwelling, the Democratic mayor of nearby Zanesville, believes Brown can win votes in the area this year because "people, including Republicans, are fed up with Republican leadership."

"Fifteen years ago, we had all Democrats in key offices in the state," he said before taking Brown on a Muskingum River tour. "Now we have Republicans and it couldn't be run any worse. I think the sentiment is that it is time for a change."

First elected to Congress in 1992, Brown has spent much of his Washington career jousting with drug companies over high prescription prices and opposing trade agreements that he says send jobs abroad without raising living standards in poor countries. A white hardhat on his desk in Washington, D.C., bears the message: "NAFTA + CAFTA = SHAFTA."

Many of his initiatives have stalled in the Republican-controlled House. Brown insists that would change in the Senate, where members of the minority party have greater power to shape legislation. He calls DeWine's votes on issues like tax cuts out of step with Ohio voters.

"When we elect a progressive Democratic senator in Ohio, it sends a message nationally that people want to change the direction of the United States government," he says. "On all the major issues, when George Bush needs something, Mike DeWine is there for him." Brown has always been popular with organized labor, which has been among his biggest campaign donors. John Ryan, who heads Cleveland's AFL-CIO office, is impressed enough with Brown that he will likely become his campaign manager.

Ryan says Brown is so hands- on that he stuffs envelopes at union events and once offered to personally drive senior citizens to Canada to purchase cheap prescription drugs when a bus problem nearly scuttled their trip.

Campaigning for the middle class

As he makes small talk at coffee houses, factories and senior citizens centers throughout the state, Brown wears a distinctive campaign symbol on his lapel: a pin showing a caged canary. He hands them to prospective volunteers, explaining that caged canaries were used to test for air toxins in coal mines before passage of workplace safety regulations. He accuses Republicans of trying to turn the clock back on improvements like workers rights, Social Security and Medicare.

Brown says Republicans who control state and federal government have harmed workers and consumers by writing legislation to benefit drug, financial services and energy companies that contribute to their campaigns, and by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans while refusing to raise the minimum wage. Brown insists that his strong campaign backing from labor shows he stands for middle-class interests.

Brown predicts that a ballot initiative to boost Ohio's minimum wage will bring Democratic voters to the polls and aid his cause, noting that the hourly minimum wage in Ohio would be $23.03 today if it had kept pace with CEO pay increases since 1990.

"John Kerry wasn't able to capture the public's imagination on economic issues the way I will," he vows. "I am going to talk about the minimum wage, I am going to talk about outsourcing of manufacturing jobs, I am going to talk about the failure of Bob Taft and Mike DeWine."

In a guest lecture to a Bowling Green State University political science class, Brown describes Republican legislative programs as "class warfare."

"Every day they go after the middle class and reward their wealthy friends in Washington," he fumes.