Sherrod Brown’s Flip, Paul Hackett’s Strength

[Columbus]

Sherrod Brown has masked himself as a proponent of grassroots empowerment. He started Grow Ohio, which has now become part of his campaign with this rationale: “Grow Ohio is a community-based project with the goal of empowering the grassroots of Ohio’s Democratic Party.”

Unfortunately Sherrod Brown is rapidly turning himself into an Ohio Democratic Party shill in order to advance his personal political desires.

The Ohio Democratic Party Chairman resigned on the day before Thanksgiving—a reason for Democrats in Ohio and Democrats who want to win in 2006 and 2008 to be truly thankful. The ODP is now setting a business as usual bum’s rush deal to elect a new Chairman and freezing out the grassroots.

Paul Hackett has made a statement on the ODP Chair race. Sherrod Brown has made a statement on the ODP chair race. You decide: who believes in grassroots empowerment and who believes in closed door deal-making leading to ultimate failure.

From
http://www.OhioHonestElections.org

Thursday, December 01, 2005
“How are we going to open up this party in order to have people feel a part of it?” she asked. “You’re not going to win any statewide races if you can’t do that.” — New ODP Chair Mayor Rhine McLin. Click here to read about the Democracy for Democrats Project.

Thursday, December 01, 2005

A Profile In Courage. Paul Hackett’s Statement in Support of the Grassroots: “The selection of a new Ohio Democratic Party Chair should not be taken lightly. Day in and day out, men and women work their hearts out to help build our state party by registering new voters, going door to door and spreading our message. They are the foundation of our party and deserve not only the opportunity to hear directly from the candidates for Chair but more importantly the opportunity to let those candidates know their thoughts and concerns on the party’s future. I hope that the Ohio Democratic Party will give the men and women who make up our party the opportunity to be involved in the process. Regional meetings may just be the forum we need to make that possible.”

“All over this state I meet people who feel forgotten by their party… that the red pigment their town or county represents on a map serves as a stop sign to their party when resources are being handed out. If we fail to compete in every region of this state, we will continue to fail in election after election. This party needs an eighty-eight county strategy for growing our party and building a farm team of candidates. If we ever want to win an election, we must compete in every county, city, town and precinct.”

And Brown’s statement:

“We have seldom been blessed with such a broad group of talented persons ready to step up and run the Ohio Democratic Party. We all should be grateful that such capable members of the Party would take the time and demonstrate what clearly is thoughtful consideration of this significant responsibility.”

“We should ask each of them to lay out their plans so we all can learn of their intentions as Party leader over the next four years. As I understand it, the 137 members of the State Executive Committee will meet on December 19 to make a final decision. I look forward to working with the next Party chairman and hope that all the candidates stay active and involved in the Party. We are in this together.”

[blm]

1. Which one believes in voting machine fraud?

.

[zbdent]

2. This is one of those situations where I feel that Reagan got one thing

right:

Don't talk nasty about your own party - that is just giving the enemy (the Repukes) extra ammunition to use against us.

I would like to see a good campaign where our guys would not try to kill each other, and would be able to focus on the people who are really ruining this country.

[goodhue]

3. Brown is not wearing any mask

He is a proponent of grassroots empowerment. No doubt one of the many reasons Kucinich supports Brown . . .
http://www.hillnews.com/thehill/export/TheHill/News/Campaign/101905.html

[goodhue]

4. Who is Sherrod Brown? An unabashed progressive takes aim . . .

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2406/

Features > November 21, 2005

Who is Sherrod Brown?

An unabashed progressive takes aim at a Senate seat in Ohio

By Christopher Hayes



Brown and wife, Connie Shultz, in downtown Cleveland.

There are two small but revealing items affixed to Ohio’s 13th District congressman Sherrod Brown. On his lapel, he wears not an American flag, but a pin of a yellow bird in a cage. On a Thursday morning in October, as we leave his office to walk to the Capitol for a committee meeting, Brown hands me a bookmark-sized slip of paper that explains: “The canary represents the struggle for economic and social justice.” It recounts how miners once took canaries into the mines so that when the birds died, they knew the air was too toxic to breathe. “Miners were forced to provide for their own protection. No mine safety laws. No trade unions able to help. No real support from their government. … It has been a 100-year battle between the privileged and the rest of us.”

Clipped to Brown’s belt is a small blue pedometer, one of a pair worn by him and his wife Connie Schultz, a Pulitzer-Prize winning columnist at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. He walks, or perhaps more accurately, stalks all over Capitol Hill, leading with his chest pitched forward just slightly in a gait that is halfway between a bounce and a prowl. “He never takes the elevator,” his spokesperson Joanna Kuebler tells me as we wait for Brown to emerge from a meeting with a group of scientists advocating for nuclear disarmament. When it’s time for a vote on the Hill, he eschews the underground subway that whisks members from their office buildings to the Capitol.

Handsome, with a slightly weathered face, curly hair and a deep, warm voice, Brown is universally described as “down to earth.” In person he’s as unposed as any politician I’ve ever met. “Those are the columns my wife wrote that won the Pulitzer,” he says, dumping a pile of papers into the lap of Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, who’s waiting for the underground shuttle as we trot past. “He’s a Republican,” Brown whispers as we walk away, “but I like him. How could I not? He represents Cooperstown.”

Brown, a huge baseball fan and an avid athlete, will to need to marshal every last bit of his considerable energy in the next year as he seeks to be become the first Democratic senator from the state of Ohio since John Glenn retired in 1998. He faces a primary challenge from Iraq war veteran and Internet darling Paul Hackett; if he wins the primary, he’ll face Republican incumbent Mike DeWine, a senator with some of the lowest approval ratings in the country, but a seat that the Republicans will zealously defend. With Ohio still the nation’s premier political battlefield, the race will be one of next year’s most-watched campaigns: If a bedrock economic populist like Brown can win in a red state, it will explode the post-Clinton conventional wisdom that anything resembling “class warfare” is a non-starter for the Democrats.

* * *

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2406/