Brown, till losing his Senate seat, had been in public office almost continuously since 1975, after election to the Ohio House of Representatives.
He was later elected secretary of state but unseated in 1990 by Republican Bob Taft. But Brown was elected in 1992 to the U.S. House of Representatives; unseated then-U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine, a Cedarville Republican, in 2006; then warded off re-election challenges in 2012 (the GOP’s Josh Mandell) and in 2018 (the GOP’s Jim Renacci).
Eight months ago, now-Gov. DeWine appointed Husted, his lieutenant governor, to the unexpired Senate term of Cincinnati Republican JD Vance, now Donald Trump’s vice president.
Husted, a University of Dayton graduate, grew up in Montpelier, in Williams County, in Ohio’s northwestern corner. He was elected to Ohio’s House from a Montgomery County district; later became House speaker, and, eventually, secretary of state.
In a Brown-Husted contest, Brown would have one big (historical) advantage, and several contemporary advantages. The historical advantage, noted here before, is that since in 1914, when Ohioans began to directly elect U.S. senators – that year’s winner: Marion Republican Warren G. Harding – Ohioans voters have, with one (technical) exception, refused to keep appointed senators.
True, American politics now seems a-historical, given the distracting antics of President Trump, so perhaps the past is meaningless. Still, the Election Day records of appointed senators isn’t keen.
Then there’s this: At every presidency’s mid-term, the incumbent party (in this case, the GOP) typically loses some congressional seats. That too could benefit Brown. Also important, while Husted hasn’t been charged with any wrongdoing in connection with the General Assembly’s House Bill 6/First Energy Corp. scandal – arguably the biggest attempted Statehouse rip-off in Ohio’s history – he was incontestably close to FirstEnergy’s then-management.
For a long while, Husted was also close to then-House Speaker Larry Householder, a Perry County Republican at the center of the HB 6 affair (as a result, now a guest of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons). But the Householder-Husted friendship cooled because of competing ambitions for higher office.
Ohio’s Democratic organization, if it may be called that, and which Brown virtually controlled, moved heaven and earth to win his re-election last November, but failed.
True, Brown’s share of the statewide vote was greater than Democrats’ Harris-Walz presidential ticket (43.9%). Still, Brown lost such once-bedrock-Democratic counties as Trumbull (Warren) – in that case, by 5,000 votes – despite his commendably unflagging bipartisan effort to restore full pension benefits to some 21,000 salaried employees of General Motors spinoff Delphi, including almost 5,200 Ohioans, many in the Miami Valley.
The pension cut was, in effect, allowed by Barack Obama’s GM bailout, an ugly blot on Obama’s record. (In Northeast Ohio, Warren’s Tribune Chronicle reported the salaried Delphi employees’ pension cut there “equals [a loss of] about $100 million in the Mahoning Valley alone.” Brown’s bill to restore Delphi pensions, co-sponsored by GOP Rep. Mike Turner, of Dayton, has been reintroduced this session by Husted; among co-sponsors: Moreno.
Yet for all Brown’s pro-worker initiatives, some labor leaders grouse that he should run for governor next year against the GOP’s Vikram Ramaswamy. Iffy labor enthusiasm for a Brown Senate campaign is, or should be, a storm warning for him.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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