SHELBY — Democrat Sherrod Brown, the incumbent candidate to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate, spoke with Richland Source on Oct. 17 about his campaign.
Brown is running against Republican Bernie Moreno, who declined to be interviewed by the Source after multiple inquiries.
The 10-minute interview was conducted with Audience Engagement Editor Brittany Schock at the USWA Union Hall in Shelby. Below is the balance of that conversation, which has been edited for brevity and clarity.
Our discussion with Brown touched on a variety of issues — using some of the questions developed by author and reporter Amanda Ripley as a way of cutting through conflict with questions that “complicate the narrative.”
Ripley’s work is aimed at helping reporters and editors dig beneath people’s positions and get to their motivations, to cover conflict more thoughtfully, to “revive complexity in a time of false simplicity.”
Listen: Richland Source interview with Sherrod Brown
Read: A conversation about Brown’s campaign for the U.S. Senate
Richland Source: In this age of misinformation and disinformation, how do you personally decide what information you’re going to trust?
Brown: I come home every weekend — typically we’re out of session Thursday and I come home until Monday night — and I talk to a lot of people. I’ll do round tables and listen to opinions and think through what that means. I have a staff that I trust both in Ohio and in Washington, and their job is to find out what’s true.
I don’t think it’s that hard to find out what’s factual. I don’t get most of my information from the internet, I get it from trusted sources, real documents, real newspapers. And I don’t think it’s as complicated as your question suggests.
Richland Source: So what I’m hearing you say is it matters to talk to people as opposed to just being online all the time, can you say more about that?
Brown: The way I do my job is when I’m home, I don’t do a lot of town halls where people yell at each other, I do round tables of eight and 10 — it might be a dozen teachers, it might be 15 veterans at the American Legion in Mansfield, it might be me with a bunch of nurses telling me their perspective.
They tell me the problems they face, and sometimes they say we ought to write a bill, other times they just tell me their problems. And then I take those ideas and I try to find a Republican to co-sponsor if we can.
Sometimes we can’t, like on the pension bill, no Republicans would help us but we fixed the pensions for 100,000 workers. I knew it was a problem because I heard from a lot of those workers. It’s not complicated if you pay attention.
I’m skeptical of all information, but I know whom I can trust and what I can trust.
Richland Source: You said something earlier that I think is important, which is you talk to Republicans, you talk to people who disagree with you. Why do you think that’s important?
Brown: It’s important because I want to hear their perspectives.
If they have a different set of “facts,” they aren’t facts, but I want to hear their perspectives about what we need to do. And if they start in an honest, factual place, I go with it.
Richland Source: You also mentioned you do lots of round tables with people telling you issues they care about, what is the main issue you keep hearing over and over again? Is there a theme?
Brown: The theme is, people feel like there’s an intense distrust of corporate America, and it’s deserved.
There’s sort of a distrust of government, and sometimes that’s deserved.
It’s clear that corporations have too much power in this country, and that government has not always sided with the public. My mission is to try to fix both of those.
Richland Source: When corporations have too much power, how does that affect a person living in Shelby, Ohio?
Brown: It causes inflation — when you’re going to the grocery store you’re paying more because of stock buybacks, it makes housing more expensive, it’s all of that.
When corporations have too much power, wages are too low, costs are too high, the rich get richer and the middle class shrinks. It’s so obvious.
What do you do when corporations try to tell the public that’s not happening? You’ve got to show some discernment when you hear this stuff.
Richland Source: I was going to ask, what are the issues that you think are oversimplified that people are talking about? Do you think that’s one of them?
Brown: Maybe, yeah. Solutions are oversimplified. Politicians play to that, for sure.
I’m also concerned that some people reject climate change as even an issue, and we’re seeing more and more terrible weather patterns. And that’s just not factual, for instance.
Richland Source: How does a person cut through the oversimplification and talk more about nuance?
Brown: Turn off cable TV on all sides, excuse yourself from the internet for a while, and read reputable sources. That’s fairly simple.
Richland Source: We’ve talked about how people have moved to their partisan corners. What do people get wrong about labeling someone ultra-liberal or ultra-conservative?
Brown: I don’t look at the political world as left or right, I look at it as whose side are you on? And that makes it much simpler.
I don’t look at the liberal position or conservative position, or the Republican or Democratic position, I look at whose side are you on, and it clarifies.
It’s why I take on the drug companies, because they charge too much. That’s factual. It’s why I hold Wall Street accountable because they have too much power and they make housing too expensive and they buy up companies and lay off workers and hurt communities. It’s very clear to me and very simple.
Richland Source: And you would be on the side of…?
Brown: I would be on the side of workers and on the side of communities that get hurt by Wall Street greed.