. . . And His Lovely Wife (23 page)

But—while I rarely quote any Yankee [Sherrod's an ardent Cleveland Indians fan]—it ain't over till it's over.

We have to be even better in the next 23 days. We have to continue to be aggressive and smart. We have to raise more money and continue to work for earned media. We have to organize even better than we have already.

The bigger our margin—and we haven't even won yet, so get that out of your mind—the bigger our margin, the more down-the-ballot races we win. The bigger our margin, the stronger national message we send that an unapologetic progressive—who cares about the poor and the middle class, who cares about social justice, who cares about globalization—can win anywhere.

Remember that David Brooks of
The New York Times
said that this was the most important political race in the country. We need to show him and everyone else watching that this is also the best campaign in the country. So far, it has been; that's why Karl Rove pulled the plug. We need to continue—only better—for the next 23 days.

Thank you; Connie and I are so proud of ALL of you.

Sherrod

I
N
O
CTOBER, ALL THE
O
HIO NEWSPAPERS' EDITORIAL BOARDS
announced their endorsements. Of all the major daily newspapers, Sherrod got only one endorsement—from the Toledo
Blade.
Both Cincinnati papers, the
Dayton Daily News, The Columbus Dispatch,
the Canton
Repository,
the Youngstown
Vindicator,
the
Akron Beacon Journal,
and even
The Plain Dealer
endorsed Mike DeWine. We found out about that last one just as we were leaving for dinner on Sweetest Day, which we normally never celebrated, but we were grateful for the excuse to spend a few hours alone. I was signing off my computer when I noticed the e-mail from a
Plain Dealer
colleague. I read it, and my heart sank. I'd always known this would happen, but it still felt awful.

Sherrod walked up just as my computer screen went dark, but he could tell by the look on my face that something was wrong.

“
The Plain Dealer
is endorsing DeWine tomorrow.”

Sherrod looked at me, gave me a hug. “Of course they are. Let's go eat.”

What we didn't know that evening was that
Plain Dealer
columnist Dick Feagler, a Cleveland treasure, would counter the
Plain Dealer
editorial with his own endorsement in the same issue titled “I'm for Sherrod Brown.” If I had to choose between the readership of the editorial page and that of the popular Feagler, it wasn't even a contest.

That night at dinner, Sherrod gave me a new pack of Moleskine notebooks, which is what I used to take notes during the campaign, and after our meal the waitress delivered a bouquet of fall flowers to our table. Immediately, I was a blubbering fool.

“Happy Sweetest Day, baby,” he said, clearly pleased with himself.

We pulled on our coats and started to leave, but another couple stopped us. The woman smiled at Sherrod. “I was going to vote for you anyway,” she said. “But seeing what you just did for your wife seals the deal.”

Sherrod threw me a sheepish grin. “I swear,” he said as we walked to our car, “I swear, I swear, I didn't mean for that to happen.” I just laughed and buried my face in those flowers, grateful that the campaign was almost over.

The newspaper endorsements had an interesting effect on the campaign trail. Naturally, Sherrod's supporters were angry, but a lot of reporters talked to me about them, too. A few said it was making their job harder, because most readers don't know there is a difference between the editorial board that endorses candidates and the reporters who work hard to stay neutral. They were getting hammered by readers who now accused them of bias. One photographer was so upset with his paper's DeWine endorsement that he slapped one of Sherrod's stickers on his jacket at an event he was assigned to cover.

Long before I knew Sherrod, I thought newspapers should not endorse candidates. Unlike editorial writers, reporters are out on the trail, working long and hard to cover these races fairly, and they often feel undermined when their own newspapers come out at the last minute favoring one candidate over another. Even more troubling, most readers don't know that some editorial endorsements don't even reflect the vote of their board. Sources later told us that three editorial boards had voted to endorse Sherrod but were overruled by their newspapers' owners. That was never disclosed to readers, which is disingenuous, if not unethical. I wish more newspapers would adopt the policy of Al Neuharth, the founder of
USA Today,
when it comes to endorsements. In all the major races, his editorial board abstains, trusting the voters to make up their own minds.

Sherrod assured me the editorial boards were out of touch with Ohio's voters. In just a few days, we would find out just how out of touch they really were.

         

S
HERROD'S FINAL DEBATE WAS SCHEDULED FOR
F
RIDAY,
O
CTOBER 27,
in Cleveland. Dennis Eckart had negotiated the debate dates and venues with the DeWine camp, and we were surprised—and thrilled—that DeWine agreed to do the last one in Cleveland, our home base.

By then, the RNC had pulled its money from DeWine's race, and his attack ads had reached a new low, including an accusation that Sherrod had promoted an unnamed employee who dealt drugs out of his secretary of state office more than twenty years ago. DeWine refused to name this employee, and Sherrod had no idea who he could be talking about. Several newspapers deplored DeWine's tactics as unfair and desperate, but he refused to pull the ads.

Before the debate, my friend Meg Driscoll, who worked in the flower department at Heinen's grocery store near our home, sent an e-mail she hoped I would forward to Sherrod. I first met Meg when she came up to me to thank me for advocating for hourly workers in my column. She had watched the Toledo debate on television and wanted to pursue one of the questions a reporter had asked DeWine:

The reporter asked what DeWine did with the $73,000 he got in tax cuts over five years. That comes out to $14,600 per year. That is more than people working at 40 hours make at minimum wage, per year. Probably they don't get health coverage and many don't get the 40 hours, but rather just under that so they are considered part time. I am furious that he insults our intelligence. That we working people making even more than minimum wage would be [placated] by a mere $500 to $2,000 while he is raking in such profit and voting against people working so hard for so little. I can't tell you how this cut to the quick in me. So, I am writing to you in hopes that you will pass this response from a voter on to Sherrod.

Sherrod printed a copy of Meg's e-mail to take with him to the debate. “I don't know if I'll use it, but I don't ever want to forget it,” he said.

Sherrod woke up early for the final debate, which was sponsored by the City Club of Cleveland. A record crowd—more than eleven hundred—was expected, so the City Club had moved the debate from its usual venue to the ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel on Cleveland's Public Square.

Make-up artist Kylee Cook, who was practically family now after dabbing our cheeks and noses for television appearances all over the state of Ohio, showed up at our home around ten that morning. The debate would be telecast, and we wanted to make sure Sherrod didn't look pale under the hot lights. He was in his usual good temper about this, grumbling the entire time she patted him with pancake, but Kylee cheerfully assured him that this was the price of fame.

Dennis joined us and our driver, Nick Watt, for the half-hour trip to downtown Cleveland. Charlie Anderson, a retired Iraq War veteran and veterans liaison for Sherrod's campaign, had told us that a traveling antiwar exhibit, “Eyes Wide Open,” would be set up across the street from the hotel. Charlie knew we'd want to stop there.

Sherrod and I had opposed the war from the beginning. By our first date, in January 2003, Sherrod had already voted against the war, and I was regularly writing columns against it. I had first written about the “Eyes Wide Open” exhibit in 2004, when more than eight hundred pairs of empty military boots filled row after row on a grassy hill in Cleveland Heights to represent the American troops who had died in Iraq. Now, in October 2006, the exhibit, which was sponsored by the Quaker-based American Friends Service Committee, displayed more than three thousand pairs of boots, and included rows of children's shoes to represent the tens of thousands of Iraqi citizens who had died. Throughout the campaign, the war was always there, always hovering, and by the day of Sherrod's final debate, Ohio ranked fifth in the number of troops killed.

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.”

         

T
HE FINAL
S
ENATE 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.

         

T
HREE DAYS AFTER THE
C
LEVELAND 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.