We crossed the street to the exhibit, but well-meaning supporters started following us, chanting, “Sher-rod! Sher-rod!” Immediately, Sherrod asked them to stop. Silently, we walked alone among the many boots, sometimes kneeling, sometimes holding hands as we read the names of the dead.
By the time we entered the hotel lobby, the place was packed. Hundreds of supporters gathered around Sherrod, shaking his hand, pulling on his sleeve, wishing him well before the debate. Finally, Joanna came up and whisked us off to a private corner in a banquet room. She knew it was our practice to pray before each debate.
Sherrod and I sat facing each other, our knees touching as we held hands.
“Will you start?” Sherrod said.
“Sure.” I took a deep breath and squeezed his hands. “Dear God, thank you for giving Sherrod the strength and the wisdom…”
That was as far as I got. Sherrod had started to cry.
“Sherrod?”
He put his face in his hands.
“Sherrod? What is it?” I had never seen him like this, certainly not right before a debate, and it scared me.
“Sherrod, what’s wrong?”
“What if I let them down?” he said.
“Who?”
“All those people out there. Did you hear the things they were saying? They said they had hope again, they were thanking me for giving them hope. I don’t want to let them down. Think what it took for them to come through for us after what happened in 2004.”
Now I got it. This was the Sherrod I knew—and an exhausted Sherrod, too—never wanting to fail anyone who believed in him.
“Sherrod, there is no way that anyone will ever doubt that you did everything you could to win this race,” I said. “And you did it by taking the high road.”
He nodded, but he still looked troubled—and this was not the mood we needed right before he took the stage for the final debate, which would start in just a few minutes. Time for desperate measures.
“Sherrod?”
He looked up, his blue eyes focused on mine.
“You know I love you.”
He nodded.
“Well, I’m going to have to say something I never thought I’d have to say to my husband.”
His face grew alarmed. “What?”
I took another deep breath. “If you don’t stop crying, you’re going to smear your makeup.”
We were sitting with our foreheads pressed together, laughing like crazy, when Dennis Eckart walked into the room.
“Are you two just going to goof around or are you ready to go win a debate?”
Sherrod stood up and shot him the biggest of grins.
“I’m ready to win.”
THE FINAL SENATE DEBATE OF 2006 WILL FOREVER BE KNOWN IN our house by John Kleshinski’s description of DeWine’s lowest moment.
It came right after DeWine raised, yet again, the phantom of Sherrod’s unnamed employee from more than twenty years ago and then insisted, before an astonished crowd, that the employee had laced a banana with marijuana.
A banana. He meant a brownie, but he never corrected himself, and in fact insisted “I’m not making this up.” Even the tables with DeWine supporters started laughing and shaking their heads.
John Kleshinski immediately dubbed it the “Bananajuana Scandal”—and we knew the race was over.
After Sherrod opened the debate with his plan for the future, DeWine launched a litany of personal attacks. Sherrod’s response to these attacks was quoted in newspapers across the state: “You have just watched a two-term incumbent senator morph into a desperate candidate.”
By the time it was over, even many Republicans I recognized in the audience were clapping for Sherrod.
That evening, we had five more events, and Sherrod was so tired that he started to doze off during a radio interview from the car. I called John Ryan and told him we had to shave the schedule again, and he readily agreed. Then I checked my voice mail and found this message from my sister Toni:
“Hey, Con, just wanted you to know: We put Sherrod’s sign in Dad’s front yard today. He’d want it that way, you know?”
Sherrod was in the backseat with me, and, even in the dark, he could tell something was up.
“What is it?” he said.
“Nothing, really,” I said, and then told him what Toni said.
“Oh, baby,” he said. He grabbed my hand, and held it tight for the rest of the drive home.
THREE DAYS AFTER THE CLEVELAND DEBATE, WE WERE IN A PACKED auditorium at The Ohio State University with Michael J. Fox for a rally in support of stem cell research.
Michael suffers from Parkinson’s, and he was campaigning for candidates who supported the research that could save countless lives. Michael had taped a campaign ad for Missouri Senate candidate Claire McCaskill, and after the ad hit the airwaves, Rush Limbaugh raised a firestorm of criticism by imitating Michael’s involuntary jerking movements and accusing him of faking.
It is heartbreaking to watch this gracious, talented actor and father of four struggle to perform the simplest of tasks—like sitting still, for example, or completing a sentence. He has made it clear, time and again, that he does not expect to live long enough to benefit from the research he is championing—and yet there he was, sitting onstage with Sherrod along with a number of other people afflicted with diseases that stem cell research might cure.
I got a healthy dose of humility from Michael Fox that day. Sherrod and I sat on either side of Michael, watching as a sixth-grade boy with Type 1 diabetes gave a speech. He was going on a bit, and I smiled nervously at Sherrod. I was worried that all this waiting would tire Michael.
Michael leaned over and whispered in my ear, “You know, it is going to make him feel so good to get his whole story out.” He smiled at me, and I was appropriately reprimanded. When it was Michael’s turn at the microphone, he turned to the boy and said, “At any age, you feel the need to tell your story, and I consider you an inspiration.”
The standing-room-only crowd cheered, and I spotted my son, Andy, who had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes just two years earlier. Nearby, there was John Kleshinski, who’d been injecting himself with insulin since he was thirteen. They watched Michael, their faces brimming with hope, and once again I was struck by what a blessing this campaign had been for Sherrod and our entire family.
All of our kids were working hard for the campaign. Sherrod’s older daughter, Emily, made the greatest sacrifice. She took a leave of absence in July from her union organizing job to help run, as a volunteer, the coordinated campaign in Ohio. Her husband, Mike Stanley, a community organizer, took an unpaid leave of absence to join Emily in Ohio, but as it turned out they were constantly separated in those last weeks. Mike organized outreach to faith-based groups and coordinated get-out-the-vote efforts. He also helped Wendy Leatherberry compile a list of more than fifty political, religious, and civic activists in Ohio who were committed to vouching publicly for Sherrod’s character if he needed their support. They were part of our planned response if DeWine stooped to using the divorce allegations against Sherrod.
Andy and Stina regularly volunteered in our Columbus headquarters and canvassed numerous neighborhoods—all around full-time jobs. One of their more sobering accounts from the trail was finding entire blocks of houses where no one was registered to vote.
Elizabeth, a gifted orator, gave speeches for her dad throughout the summer. In the fall, she flew home on weekends from Columbia University to speak in more than thirty counties. We often say that if another Brown family member runs for office, it will be Elizabeth. Liz also helped to organize more than forty Columbia students who came to Ohio in the last days to volunteer for the campaign.
Caitlin, who was attending college in Ohio, had registered voters on campus and was now always armed with a roll of Sherrod stickers, pasting them on anyone who crossed her path. She was our youngest and least experienced politically, but she got into the campaign spirit. She wore makeshift “Sherrod e
arrings”—hoops plastered with stickers—and hosted an entire table of classmates (most of them Republicans) at the City Club debate. All of them later declared their support for Sherrod.
On so many days, Sherrod and I would hear yet another story about one of our children on the campaign trail, and it was so humbling to know these were our kids, sacrificing so much of their daily lives for a common cause. We never browbeat them into helping, never told them that they, too, should put the rest of their lives on hold. But all of them, including Michael and Stina, stepped up in ways that Sherrod and I only now fully comprehend. What a difference they made in the campaign—and in these parents’ lives.
Sherrod’s entire family was involved, too, and he never tired of supporters telling him about an event where they met his mother or one of his brothers. Throughout the campaign Bob represented Sherrod, giving speeches at dozens of events. Charlie organized the seven counties around their hometown of Mansfield. Charlie’s wife, Anne Swanson, came from Maryland to Ohio, too, passing out Sherrod Brown emery boards bundled with helium balloons to dozens of hair salons. Anne also raised significant money for the campaign.
The only thing distracting us from all the mounting excitement was our fear that DeWine might still go up with an ad recycling the old divorce allegations against Sherrod. We had our own ad, of course, with Sherrod’s ex-wife, Larke, our daughters, and me, but we were still hoping we wouldn’t have to use it. After the City Club debate, one of DeWine’s staffers told the Toledo Blade, “The divorce is on the table.” After that, John Ryan, Joanna, and Dennis had called every television station in the state, and nearly all of them agreed that we could switch to our divorce ad if DeWine went up with his.
It was only on the Friday evening before the election that John Ryan could put our fears to rest. The deadline had passed, he said. Mike DeWine had run out of time. There would be no divorce ad.
That weekend, I finally lost my temper with a TV reporter and cameraman who chased us out of a church service in Columbus to ask Sherrod about the unnamed employee from his secretary of state days. We had discussed how Sherrod should answer this, and decided that he should take the offensive and ask, “Who is this employee? Why isn’t DeWine naming this person?”
The reporter pushed, insisting that she was just reporting the news. When the camera turned off, I turned on her.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” I said. “This is not reporting, this is regurgitating unfounded, anonymous attacks from a desperate candidate.”
“I’m just doing my job,” she said.
“I’m a journalist, and I say you’re not doing your job,” I said.
“Okay,” she said, laughing, and then made quotation marks in the air with her fingers: “You’re a ‘journalist.’”
A Dayton Daily News reporter was standing with us, and she immediately reprimanded the TV reporter. “Actually, she really is a journalist, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist.”
The TV reporter blanched. “Look, this wasn’t my idea. It was another reporter and she couldn’t come so I had to come in her place…”
I felt a tug on my sleeve. It was poor John Kleshinski, trying to rescue me. “We gotta go, Connie.”
“In a minute.”
“No, now. We gotta go now.”
He all but dragged me to the car.
“Did you hear what she said?”
“Yup,” said John, as Sherrod chuckled in the front seat.
“That is so wrong!”
“Yup,” said John. “It really is.”
“I could have taken her, John.”
John smacked his forehead in mock horror. “Think of the headlines, Connie,” he said. “Think of the headlines.”
twenty
The Middle Class Wins
WHEN I WOKE UP EARLY ON ELECTION DAY, MY FIRST SURPRISE was that I had ever fallen asleep. The second surprise was finding that, after all we’d been through, I wasn’t so much nervous as just excited. Finally, the day we’d been working toward for more than thirteen months was here.
For most of the campaign, whenever I thought about Election Day my chest would tighten and—poof!—my appetite would disappear, and I’d look for the nearest chair. I imagined a day of excruciating length, full of horror stories about voter intimidation and malfunctioning voting machines. I saw myself sprouting gray hairs like sea oats and wringing my hands into putty as the results trickled in.
Sherrod and I had fielded hundreds—really, hundreds—of questions, not just in Ohio but across the country, about Secretary of State Ken Blackwell’s attempts, real and imagined, to suppress voter turnout. Blackwell had gained a national reputation for himself by 2006. Several times, he had changed the rules for casting a provisional ballot, which is used when a voter shows up at the wrong polling place, and then he fought efforts to count them. He also tried to stop independent groups, including the League of Women Voters, from registering people to vote.
Far too many Americans doubted that Ohio could have a fair election. It was impossible to dismiss their concerns out of hand, and not just because of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s troubling piece in Rolling Stone magazine in the summer of 2006 that detailed these and other problems in Ohio’s 2004 election. I’d seen firsthand Blackwell’s attempts to disenfranchise voters. In 2004 I had wanted to run a reprint of Ohio’s voter registration form with my column. The goal was to encourage voters of every political ilk in northeastern Ohio to register. Blackwell, though, clearly didn’t want more people registering in the most Democratic part of the state. He was a Republican, and also George W. Bush’s Ohio campaign chair—just like his political counterpart in Florida, Katherine Harris.
Blackwell had said he would not accept any completed voter registration forms on newsprint because the paper “wasn’t heavy enough.” I called all seven county boards of elections in our circulation area, and to a person they said they would defy Blackwell and accept the form. I’ll never forget what one of them said: “We just want to encourage as many people as possible to vote.”
Blackwell backed down in 2004 as soon as he counted heads and realized his own crowd was against him. Thousands of voters registered using the Plain Dealer form.
During the 2006 campaign, Sherrod always acknowledged concerns about election fraud, but then insisted that he and all the Democratic candidates on the state ticket would win by a large enough margin to thwart any attempt to taint the tally. That didn’t always assuage the fears of those who couldn’t help but wonder how secure any election could be when the guy overseeing it was also the Republican candidate for governor.
Now, two days before the election, John Ryan e-mailed his final words of encouragement to the campaign staff, which included this cautionary note:
Election Day—For those who have not been through the drill before, get ready to hear 1,000 rumors on Election Day. Normally none of these turn out to be true. Just take a breath before passing on something you hear as the truth. Make sure you report things to the person you are reporting to that day but keep focused on bringing people out to the polls.
Election Protection—This year we have an effective vehicle to pass along any potential voter problems. Have voters call 888-DEM-VOTE. We have a bank of lawyers in Columbus who will help follow through.
By Election Day, our own polls showed that Sherrod was going to win. Since mid-October, Sherrod had been telling me he would win by double digits. The morning of the election, he told me he’d win by 12.68 points. He said it exactly like that. The process he used to conjure up that number involves a lot of political acumen and a little bit of magic.
First, Sherrod tallied what he called his W and L days. Starting March 1, Sherrod asked himself every single day, “What do I have to do to win?” At the end of the day, he’d evaluate his efforts. By his measure, he usually had either a winning day or a losing day. Winning days got a W. Lots of good press coverage earned a W, for example, as did any day when he raised a lot of money with a single event. Losing days w
ere marked with an L, such as when DeWine got a newspaper’s endorsement or whenever Bush came into Ohio for a fundraiser. W days made for a chirpy Sherrod. L days made for long nights as he rehashed mistakes and missteps. Fortunately, the W days far outnumbered the L days.
This was only the beginning of Sherrod’s equation for victory. He also looked at polling trends—his numbers had steadily climbed as DeWine’s steadily fell; then he weighed other factors from March 1 to November 5: his 411 TV hits, 668 radio interviews, and the 7,277 handwritten letters he’d sent to a wide range of Ohioans, from anyone turning ninety or celebrating more than fifty years of marriage to newly minted Eagle Scouts. (By the way, once you’re an Eagle Scout, you’re always an Eagle Scout, which I learned after I spoke to a roomful of men and mentioned that Sherrod “used to be” an Eagle Scout. Oh, the furor. Learn from me.)
After Sherrod calculated those numbers, he did that thing he does in his head that I don’t understand and he can’t explain, and decided he would beat DeWine 56.34 to 43.66, a 12.68 percentage margin. He wrote this equation in his calendar the night before the election.
How accurate was he?
To quote a postelection e-mail from John Kleshinski:
“Don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back.”
OUR TWO YOUNGEST KIDS, CAITLIN AND ELIZABETH, WENT WITH us on Election Day to vote at 9 A.M. at the Avon Public Library, which is about a half-hour’s drive west of downtown Cleveland. Lots of cameramen, photographers, and reporters followed us around, which made me wince for all the other residents in our precinct who were just trying to cast their vote. Liz, who grew up with such hoopla, took it in stride. Cait, not to be outdone by her sophisticated (and beloved) stepsister, also acted as if it were the most normal thing in the world to have a gaggle of strangers document your every tap-tap-tap of the electronic touch screen.
. . . And His Lovely Wife Page 23