Take it from Mary Taylor, a longtime businesswoman and the current lieutenant governor of Ohio: Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is a fraud, and his entire re-election campaign is built on the necessity of presenting himself to Ohio voters as something he is not.
Brown has the backing of Big Labor and has even been seen walking the picket lines with striking workers. This is good for his image. But when it comes to substance, he has very little to show for himself, Taylor says.
In a Sept. 22 op-ed for the Marietta Times, Taylor explains why most of what Brown says about himself as an advocate for the working person is superficial, at best. When it comes to delivering the goods, those who take a close look will discover the emperor has no clothes.
“Don’t believe Sherrod Brown when he says he’s for Ohio workers,” she writes. “He’s not.”
And here’s why.
According to Taylor, Brown’s votes on tax cuts and immigration prove that, despite his highly charged rhetoric, he only cares about workers to the extent that it will enhance his reelection prospects.
Brown loves to tell Ohioans that he supports President Trump’s counter-tariffs on China and other countries that have for years benefited, at the expense of American workers, from unfair trade deals. But Taylor exposes how the senator has done next to nothing over his 25 years in Washington to actually help American workers.
“In fact, the decimation of the manufacturing base in Ohio coincided with Brown’s tenure and Barack Obama’s presidency,” she writes. “Aside from his support for protective tariffs, Sherrod Brown opposes virtually all of President Trump’s other major economic policies, directly hurting workers.”
The Trump tax cuts and deregulation Brown opposes have resulted in unprecedented job creation and increasing take-home pay for workers and hard-working middle-class Ohio families. These families get to keep an additional $2,200 a year, thanks to Trump’s tax cut.
Perhaps no other issue affects American workers’ ability to get jobs and earn a living wage more than immigration. On that issue, Brown has whiffed. His policies actually help the corporate titans and their never-ending thirst for cheap foreign labor.
Brown “fully supports the Democrats’ open-border policies that flood our country with cheap labor and drive down wages for American workers, as well as bring drugs and crime into Ohio communities,” Taylor notes.
In the end, Brown is the exact opposite of his opponent, Congressman Jim Renacci (R-OH-16).
“Renacci, like President Trump, will do everything in his power to ensure that Ohio’s economy is working for every Ohioan,” she writes.
Renacci and Trump are “actively trying to find ways to bring more investments and jobs to Ohio,” she reports. “Just recently, the Congressman was in the Great Lakes region working with officials to increase productivity at the Port of Toledo – a major economic engine in the state.”
“Meanwhile, when it comes to job creation in Ohio, Brown is nowhere to be found. He’s usually too busy in Washington opposing the Trump agenda that has created new prosperity and safer communities.”
She points out that during Brown’s two terms in the Senate, the share of income earned by Ohio’s middle class fell from 15.4 percent in 2007 to 14.8 percent in 2016, one of the largest declines of any state in the country.
Also during that time, Ohio’s unemployment spiked to the second-highest level in recorded history.
“Brown’s disdain for small business (which make up 99 percent of Ohio’s private sector) isn’t helping the situation either. He voted against President Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which led to the economic boom that small businesses and workers in Ohio are now enjoying. Thankfully, Republicans in the Senate were able to get it passed despite his opposition.”
Perhaps Brown is too busy trying to create new opportunities for workers from Mexico and the rest of Central America to be focused on Ohio and American workers.
“In fact, he’s done more to help and protect illegal immigrants in Ohio than he’s done for the thousands of workers and small business owners who drive the state’s economy,” Taylor writes.
So while he talks a good game, Sherrod Brown has proven over and over again that Ohio workers cannot depend on him when the chips are down. That’s because of his allegiance to the radical Democrat party platform of open borders and unfair trade cancel out any hope that he might actually cast a vote in favor of any legislation that truly brings prosperity to American workers.
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Anthony Accardi is a writer and reporter for The Ohio Star.
