Sherrod Brown Accuses Judge Kavanaugh of ‘Siding’ with Insurance Companies While Taking $700,000 from Insurance Lobby

Sherrod Brown

Sen. Sherrod Brown’s (D-OH) favorite criticism of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh is that he would be too friendly toward big insurance corporations and “special interests.”

But as an elected member of the U.S. House and Senate, Brown’s has shown no aversion to campaign cash from big corporations in the insurance and banking industries.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Brown, who is running for re-election to another six years in the Senate against Rep. Jim Renacci (R-OH-16), has bagged tens of millions in special-interest donations from lobbyists, bankers, insurance giants and liberal law firms.

Between 2013 and 2018, Brown has:

  • Received $706,864 from the insurance industry
  • Received more than $3.2 million from liberal law firms
  • Received $1.1 million from securities and investment companies
  • Received $693,817 from movie, music and television producers, much of it from liberal Hollywood
  • Received another $351,619 from miscellaneous finance companies.

Despite his record of accepting mega-corporate cash from insurance and banking interests, Brown tweeted the following message on the first day of the Kavanaugh hearings:

In an Aug. 24 press release Brown announced he’d already made up his mind to join his party’s leadership and oppose Kavanaugh’s appointment, nearly two weeks before the confirmation hearings would be held. He dismissed the 53-year-old judge’s entire career as “siding with insurance companies over cancer survivors, financial scammers over customers…”

By almost any objective analysis, this is a distortion of Kavanaugh’s record as a judge.

Here is Brown’s full quote in context:

After thoroughly reviewing his record, meeting with him face-to-face, and listening to Ohioans, I am convinced Judge Kavanaugh would side with special interests over working people and threaten the rights of Ohioans. Special interests already have armies of lobbyists and lawyers on their side. Working people need Justices who will put their rights first, not Justices who will side with insurance companies over cancer survivors, financial scammers over customers, or massive corporations over American workers.”

Judge Kavanaugh, an appeals-court judge and law professor, made it clear in the first two days of hearings that he would not have any pre-concluded decisions but would always draw his legal opinions based on an honest and independent interpretation of the Constitution.

“I am not a pro-plaintiff or pro-defendant judge,” Kavanaugh told the committee. “I’m not a pro-prosecution or pro-defense judge. I am a pro-law judge.”

But that’s not good enough for Brown and his colleagues. They want him to telegraph his decisions on Obamacare, abortion, same-sex marriage, and every other controversial issue that could come before the court. He can’t and shouldn’t do that, not for Democrats, not for Republicans, not for anyone. And especially not for a career politician like Brown, who has accepted millions of dollars from the very lobbyists and corporations he accuses others of being in bed with.

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Anthony Accardi is a writer and reporter for The Ohio Star.

 

 

 

 

 

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