. . . And His Lovely Wife (3 page)

Then the earth shifted.

Suddenly, Sherrod was considering a run for the Senate.

A Democrat had not been elected statewide in Ohio for fourteen years, but the political climate was changing dramatically in our state, and the gale winds were threatening to topple the Republican Party.

Republican Bob Taft had become the first Ohio governor charged with a crime after he failed to report gifts and golf outings. He was convicted of violating Ohio ethics laws and ordered to pay $4,000 and apologize to the state. One widely publicized poll of governors' popularity ranked him last.

Tom Noe, a Republican fundraiser and party activist in the Toledo area, oversaw the state's rare-coin fund investment with the Bureau of Workers' Compensation. Noe made headlines across the country after the Toledo
Blade
exposed his role in what was soon dubbed “Coingate.” Noe was headed for conviction on charges of theft, money laundering, forgery, and corrupt activity. In a second scandal, he was charged with illegally funneling $45,400 to President George W. Bush's reelection campaign. The Bush campaign had originally honored Noe with “Pioneer” status, but after he was indicted, many prominent politicians, including Sherrod's potential Republican opponent, Senator Mike DeWine, scrambled to return the money Noe had raised for them, or to donate it to charity.

Finally, we had the nonstop coverage of Republican congressman Bob Ney. He represented the 18th District in southern Ohio until he decided not to, which came after he pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy and making false statements related to the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal.

So much Republican scandal, coupled with Americans' growing opposition to Bush's war in Iraq, made even the most reticent of Democrats on the state and national scene start talking about perfect storm this and sea change that—often casting a hopeful eye in Sherrod's direction.

At first, some Ohio Democratic Party officials tried to persuade Sherrod to run for governor. It was a proposition loaded with history, both political and personal.

In 2001, Sherrod considered running for governor against Bob Taft after the Republican majority threatened to take away Sherrod's congressional district. Sherrod's only electoral loss up to then had been to Taft in Sherrod's 1990 bid for reelection as secretary of state, but this time it was Taft who looked vulnerable. Sherrod had barely whispered his possible candidacy for governor before the Republicans folded on the redistricting scheme, drawing an even safer district for Sherrod in the end. Journalists felt robbed of a feisty rematch and branded Sherrod as a guy who always leans but never runs.

If Sherrod ran for governor, I would essentially have to run for Ohio's First Lady, the mere suggestion of which provoked rounds of hysterical laughter among friends who claimed to love me. After several glasses of wine one evening we all agreed that the best way for Sherrod to have a successful run for governor would be to ship me off to Europe for six months. First Ladyhood and I just weren't a good fit. Poor Sherrod. I still remember his look of utter horror when, in a state of heightened anxiety brought on by three successive calls to our house in one night urging him to run, I screamed, “Okay, but if you win, I'm never going to give any gift shaped like the state of Ohio!” An understandable outburst, I think, when you consider we have a basement full of baskets, pie tins, Christmas ornaments, clocks—you name, we got it—all given to Sherrod by elected officials and shaped to resemble the great state of Ohio.

Fortunately, Sherrod didn't want to be governor. He loved the stuff of national politics, and eventually a good friend and Democratic colleague, Congressman Ted Strickland, announced in 2005 that he would run for governor. His wife, Frances, was the perfect candidate for First Lady, too. She had a doctorate in education, was the embodiment of grace, and wrote political songs that she sang while playing her guitar all over the state of Ohio. Sherrod's staff eventually started suggesting that maybe I should come up with some kind of talent—someone proposed that I learn how to play spoons—but I was destined to be a far less entertaining candidate's spouse.

Sherrod made it clear from the beginning that even if he decided he did want to run for the Senate, he would not do it without my unequivocal support.

“I won't do this unless you want me to,” he said over and over. “And I don't mean you finally shrug your shoulders and say, ‘Oh, all right, go ahead.' That's not good enough. You have to want me to run, because I'm not going to do this without you.”

For a long while, he was not sure he wanted to risk giving up the job he loved for one that was far from certain to be his no matter how hard he campaigned. And, truth be told, aside from his family, there was not an endless string of people begging Sherrod to get in. No matter how many politicians announce their races with angst-ridden assurances that they are only surrendering to the will of the people, they are usually giving in only to the relentless call of their own ambition. That isn't as bad as it sounds. Often, it's an ambition to do good in the world, but even then you have to be mighty driven and fairly full of your own potential to believe that, out of millions of options, you are the one who should lead.

Most local people who liked and respected Sherrod, including party activists and the overwhelming majority of his constituents, wanted Sherrod to stay put. He was a seven-term Democratic congressman, a true progressive in a seat that even Republicans begrudgingly conceded was his until he didn't want it anymore. If the Democrats took the House in the 2006 midterm elections, he would chair the powerful Health Subcommittee of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Finally, he would have the chance to overhaul a health care system that benefited insurance and drug companies at the expense of the health of too many Americans.

For years, Sherrod had organized bus trips to Canada for senior citizens so they could buy affordable prescription drugs. He had refused the congressional health care plan, vowing never to take it until all Americans had health care. Noble gestures, but they didn't do anything to get to the heart of America's health care crisis. For Sherrod, the chairmanship would finally give the tiger some teeth.

He couldn't have it both ways, either. He had to choose. To run for the Senate, Sherrod would have to surrender his seat in Congress and take on a two-term Republican senator in a state that had twice delivered victory to George W. Bush, most recently in 2004, when I watched my husband slump behind the wheel of our parked car on Election Night and hold his head in his hands as one phone call after another assured him that early reports of exit polls had been wrong, wrong, wrong and we were about to give Democrats across the country a reason to hate Ohio all over again.

I still remember the postelection bumper sticker we spotted in New York City: “Have you mugged an Ohioan lately?”

National leaders, though, were prodding Sherrod to run for the Senate. Senator Chuck Schumer, head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid courted him—and wanted an answer by July 2005.

“If you need the answer now, it has to be no,” Sherrod told them. When Schumer kept pressing with continued calls, Sherrod told him that he was concerned about the impact such a race would have on our marriage and my career.

“She just won the Pulitzer this year, Chuck,” Sherrod said. “She'd probably have to leave the paper, and she's worried about what that could do to her career.”

Sherrod was reluctant to tell me Schumer's response, but I pushed.

“You aren't going to like it,” he said.

“I want to know.”

Sherrod sighed. “He said, ‘Well, Connie had her chance at the brass ring. Now it's time for her to support you.'”

I wanted to ask Schumer what exactly Sherrod had sacrificed for me to win a journalism prize, but I'd never met the man. Later, much later, I got to know Schumer, and I came to appreciate his willful disregard for perceived obstacles. No one championed Sherrod more than Chuck Schumer.

One of the most moving pleas came from a friend of Sherrod's, Dr. Jim Kim, the director general's top deputy at the World Health Organization and a close associate of Dr. Paul Farmer, a pioneer of AIDS treatment in Haiti. Sherrod and Jim became friends after they traveled together to a TB prison in Siberia in 2002. The prison's success rate in treating prisoners with tuberculosis provided a benchmark for Sherrod in his tireless quest to fund public health programs around the world for infectious diseases, such as TB, malaria, and HIV. He saw with his own eyes how the right drugs, strictly administered at relatively little cost, could save the lives of thousands of people who had surrendered all hope.

That trip to Siberia also forged a deep bond with Jim Kim. Sherrod admired his selfless commitment, frequently recounting how Jim had insisted that Sherrod wear a surgical mask but refused to wear one himself when meeting with the prisoners. Jim didn't want to do anything that might suggest he thought he was different from the patients he was helping. To him, the risk of appearing distant or arrogant was greater than any risk of infection.

In September 2005, Jim was on the faculty of Harvard University's medical school when he asked to meet Sherrod for dinner to talk about the Senate race. Sherrod assured him that he wasn't running, but agreed to meet with him. Immediately after their three-hour talk at a restaurant on Capitol Hill, Sherrod called me, and I will never forget the excitement in his voice or the weight of his words.

“Jim said, ‘You could make such a difference in the world.' He really thinks my being in the Senate could save lives.”

Another relentless tug at Sherrod's sleeve came from one of his closest friends in Congress, Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Bernie is a socialist who ran as an independent, but he and Sherrod have a lot in common, from the unruly hair on their heads and the rumpled shirts on their backs to the passion for social and economic justice that united them in battle day in and day out on the House floor. Both opposed the war in Iraq, free trade agreements, and any attempt to privatize Social Security and Medicare. They championed universal health care, an increase in the minimum wage, and countless other measures designed to bolster the poor and the middle class. They had fought together side by side throughout Sherrod's fourteen years in Congress, and now Bernie was moving on. He was running for the Senate—and he didn't plan to go it alone.

“Think about what we could do together,” he said to Sherrod, night after night. “You and me, in the Senate.”

Sherrod respected Bernie as a mentor and loved him like a brother, and Bernie's relentless whispers in the Brooklyn accent of his youth followed Sherrod home every weekend. Months later, Bernie told me that the only reason Sherrod gave him for hesitating was me.

“He kept talking about this wife he loved,” Bernie said, wrapping his arm around my shoulders. “This marriage he had, how much he cared about his wife. Uhh, on and on.”

And then there were the journalists. Political reporters and columnists were forever asking Sherrod if he was running, but their interest wasn't always driven by a passion for change. Some were political junkies looking for reasons to get out of bed, and nothing tugged on the bedclothes like the promise of a partisan slugfest. When word first got out—and word always gets out—that Sherrod was thinking of running for the Senate, reporters across the state started calling even as they let out a collective groan of “There he goes again.” Some of them were sure Sherrod was only toying with them, their same accusation when he decided not to run for governor.

Sherrod was also feeling pressure from his colleague and dear friend Ted Strickland, who had decided to run for governor. Strickland was telling everyone, including any reporter within spitting distance, that Sherrod should run for the Senate. Ted told Sherrod that running together would help them both in different parts of the state.

The greatest pressure to run came from Sherrod's family. His mother, Emily Campbell Brown, and his brothers, Bob and Charlie, wanted him to run. (Sherrod's father, Charles, a family doctor, died in 2000.) They are a political family, driven by their desire to change the world and energized by the rough-and-tumble of a campaign. Sherrod's mother was a civil rights activist in Mansfield, Ohio, and she raised her three boys to serve. All of them went to Ivy League colleges, and all have been involved in politics their entire adult lives.

Charlie, a lawyer, was West Virginia's attorney general in the 1980s and is now a public-interest lobbyist in Washington. Bob, also a lawyer, had worked for President Jimmy Carter and on Capitol Hill. Sherrod, the baby of the family, was not a lawyer. He majored in Russian studies at Yale, and then won his first election in 1974, the year he graduated from college. Sherrod was a senior when the Richland County Democratic Party chair at the time, Don Kindt, asked him to run for Ohio tate representative. Kindt expected for Sherrod to run and lose, and then later win a seat on the city council in Sherrod's hometown of Mansfield. Sherrod had other plans. He campaigned hard, knocking on more than twenty thousand doors before defeating the incumbent state rep.

Sherrod served four terms in the statehouse, then ran successfully for two terms as secretary of state before Bob Taft beat him in 1990. Two years later, Sherrod became the congressman for Ohio's 13th District, replacing the retiring Don Pease. After fourteen years in the House, most of it spent in the minority, Sherrod was feeling restless.

While Sherrod's brother Bob wanted Sherrod to run, he didn't push. “I'm not the one whose life will be hell for a year,” he said. “I'm not the one whose marriage will be tested.”

Charlie, though, did push, and hard. In September, when it was clear he had yet to convince his younger brother that he should run, he sent an e-mail to me titled “Sherrod championing your career”: