Ohio’s primary election is Tuesday. In less than 48 hours, the polls will be closed, and votes will be getting counted. It’s been a long campaign for the only contested statewide race on the Democratic side of the ballot. Both candidates announced in February 2009 and have been campaigning ever since.
http://www.jenniferbrunner.com
As everyone here knows, I support Jennifer Brunner. I got to know her in 2006 when she ran for Ohio secretary of state, promising to do everything exactly the opposite of how predecessor Ken Blackwell did in 2004. And she did. In two short years, she cleaned up an office that turned out to be in even worse chaos than many of us expected and brought off our 2008 election without a hitch. And she did this despite a state GOP that trumped up attacks and filed lawsuits, desperately seeking a way to continue the voter disenfranchisement Blackwell had put in place. Jennifer fought off every one. She’s a problem solver and she’s tough.
Since then, she has campaigned tirelessly, focusing on her clear, forceful yet well-considered positions. She introduced herself to the blogosphere last June with a column supporting total marriage equality. She responded powerfully to the Stupak-Pitts amendment, reiterating her belief that a woman’s right to control her own body should never be compromised. Some may not have agreed with her, but she never watered down or hedged on what she believed in. She’s talked about wanting to focus on working toward a public option and eventually single payer, about getting out of Afghanistan and Iraq in an orderly but expedited manner and reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act to restore safety to financial markets. Her website has been packed since day one with detailed position papers that she writes herself — she proudly calls herself a policy wonk.
She hasn’t had money because she isn’t the candidate the Democratic establishment preferred. Trolls supporting her opponent will probably come in and claim this is a lie, but both the state party establishment and the DSCC have actively worked to crush her fundraising, twisting arms, threatening livelihoods, funding and access. The trolls always demand you name names or accuse you of lying, when it’s clearly impossible for the same reason these people feared donating to Jennifer. But I’ve been in the thick of the campaign since the beginning and this is just fact. (Actually, the hostile exchange between Jennifer and Bob Menendez at the DSCC is a matter of record. Go Google it.)
Yet despite lack of funding, Jennifer’s been the Little Candidate Who Could. Until just this week, polls didn’t show much of a difference between the two candidates — and my phone banking showed huge numbers of people undecided or simply uninformed. In the past week, two new polls have showed her opponent opening up huge leads. That may reflect reality — or it may not. Everything about this campaign is so vague, unsettled and nebulous. On person in Jennifer’s campaign said, “No result would surprise me.”
But Jennifer isn’t sitting in a corner with her head in her hands moaning “I lost the election — the polls prove it” — and neither are we. I’m totally phone-phobic, but have made over 600 calls. And Jennifer took a month’s vacation from work and has been driving around the state on her rehabbed school bus the “Courage Express.”
She’s got another full day tomorrow in Cleveland. She’ll be at the fabled West Side Market from 9:45-10:45, then join Hispanic and immigration-rights groups for a rally downtown at the Free Stamp from 11-a.m.-1 p.m. She’ll then visit a senior center, work Terminal Tower’s lobby during rush hour, and head to a neighborhood type bar in Ohio City on Cleveland’s near-west side from 7:30-9 for refreshment she clearly will need by then.
Win or lose, Jennifer Brunner has run a tireless, honorable, gracious, substance-based campaign. She has stayed in a race for a year and three months when many thought she’d never survive until the summer. She has talked with thousands of voters about issues that really matter to them and won many friends and supporters. She has made Ohio better for her service as secretary of state and for her run for the U.S. Senate. I am hoping she wins on Tuesday, and we can proudly work to send her to Washington as Ohio’s first ever woman senator, and one with more guts, courage, intelligence and tenacity than almost any of them.