Brown sweeps Ohio newspaper endorsements; papers call Mandel unprepared, and worse

Well, this doesn't happen too often.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown has won the endorsement of every major daily newspaper in Ohio, shutting out Josh Mandel 7-0. Even the conservative editorial pages couldn't justify endorsing the senator's young challenger.

"Sherrod Brown has a record of working for Ohio jobs, workers, businesses and consumers," argues the Cincinnati Enquirer, which endorsed Mitt Romney for president. The Akron Beacon Journal, endorsing Brown for the first time, praises his "attention to what matters for Ohioans, from manufacturing and jobs to health care and farming."

Every editorial page -- from progressive (the Toledo Blade) to conservative (the Columbus Dispatch) to centrist pages that didn't endorse Brown in 2006 (The Plain Dealer) -- praised the senator's work in his first term.

But most striking is what the seven papers say about Mandel. Let's line them up to see the trend.

Akron Beacon Journal: "He isn’t ready for the job. It is apparent in his shallow positions, mostly the usual talking points of the far right. ... an ill-prepared candidate overmatched by his opponent."

Youngstown Vindicator: "Imaginary outsiders will say whatever they think the voters want to hear. If there were a dictionary entry for such political mendacity, it could carry the picture of Josh Mandel."

Plain Dealer: "Electing ... Josh Mandel would reward one of the nastiest campaigns ever waged in this state. It would reward a candidate who hasn't moved beyond partisan slogans and careful sound bites. It would reward ambition untethered to substance."

Toledo Blade: "Mr. Mandel has largely ignored basic duties of the treasurer. ... His stances on major issues rarely go beyond simple partisan slogans — Obamacare, bad; regulation, bad; tax cuts, good. ... Mr. Mandel has waged an unusually nasty campaign. Independent fact-checkers have cited him repeatedly for making false statements."

Canton Repository: "Mandel has plenty of sound bites — how many ways can a TV ad say 'Washington is broken'? — but offers little of substance. His calling Brown a liar in another recent debate was another low in a campaign chock full of lows — a campaign marked, ironically, by Mandel’s collecting numerous 'pants on fire' ratings from the PolitiFact fact-checkers."

Cincinnati Enquirer: "Mandel would continue to practice the politics of divisiveness. His campaign has focused on tearing down his opponent, calling him everything from a 'un-American' to 'a liar.' Mandel’s slash-and-burn campaign has been heavily funded by out-of-state interests. ... He showed little depth on the issues beyond his rehearsed talking points. Mandel, frankly, is not ready to represent Ohio in the United States Senate."

The Dayton Daily News doesn't endorse candidates anymore. That left Brown's shutout bid in the hands of the staunchly conservative Dispatch.

Finally, this morning, the Dispatch published a terse, backhanded endorsement of Brown. It complained that he's too liberal and supports Obama Administration policies, but called him "an accessible and tireless advocate for Ohio."

The Dispatch praised Mandel for "youthful energy" but said "his limited experience... can’t compare to the nearly four decades of public service that Brown brings to the job."

What good are newspaper endorsements anymore?

At least this: In a fiercely partisan time, they still warn voters when $20 million worth of catchy slogans and dirty campaigning make a shallow candidate look serious.

Brown-Mandel debate: The dodges, and what they revealed

Watch the dodge, watch the pivot. Pay attention to the answers the candidates don’t give. In a debate like Sherrod Brown and Josh Mandel’s today, with a rowdy crowd cheering attack lines we already heard in TV ads, it’s the best way to see the candidates for who they really are.

If you’ve followed the U.S. Senate race, most of today’s City Club debate between longtime liberal Brown and upstart conservative Mandel was pretty familiar. Mandel cast Brown as a failed Washington insider; Brown called Mandel overly ambitious and untrustworthy. Brown defended the auto bailout, health care law and economic stimulus; Mandel bashed the stimulus, the bank bailout, and part of the auto bailout.

The best moments came when a panel of journalists asked well-crafted questions, trying to get the candidates to say something new. The candidates mostly dodged, but the dodges revealed a lot.

-To Mandel: Doesn’t a no-tax pledge compromise your independence? Mandel has claimed he’ll be a less partisan senator than Brown. Tom Beres of Channel 3 poked a hole in that claim by asking Mandel why he signed conservative activist Grover Norquist’s pledge not to raise any taxes.

“You said if you got to Washington, you would not allow yourself to be bullied by political bosses or lobbyists or let anybody dictate to you [how] to vote,” Beres said. “Aren’t you already sacrificing your independence?”

“I’m proud to stand up for lower taxes in our state [and] our country,” Mandel replied. He talked about his role reducing property taxes as a Lyndhurst city councilman and trying to abolish Ohio’s estate tax. Left unanswered was how Mandel could compromise with Democrats and reach a budget deal if he’ll never raise a tax.

-To Brown: What would you give up to solve the fiscal crisis? Henry Gomez of the Plain Dealer asked Brown how Congress can avoid the “fiscal cliff,” the deep spending cuts and expiring tax cuts that hit Jan. 1 and could plunge the country into a new recession.

“What should happen in the lame-duck session?” Gomez asked. “What would you give up?”

Brown quickly called for a “balanced approach” -- the Democrats’ catch phrase for a mix of spending cuts and higher taxes. Then he went back to 1993 to assert his budget-balancing bona fides, citing his vote for that year’s budget deal (which raised income taxes on the wealthy and cut them for the poor). Brown began to blame the deficit on the Iraq war when Gomez interrupted him.

“What should happen in these next few months to address this problem?” Gomez asked. A balanced approach following the same principles, Brown repeated.

After rejoicing that Gomez had challenged Brown, Mandel responded that he’d save money by closing some military bases in Europe. That might not be enough to solve the fiscal crisis, but it was a more specific answer than Brown’s.

-To Mandel: Did the auto bailout help Ohio? Until today, Mandel has been vague about how he would’ve voted on the auto bailout. Instead, he’s blasted Brown for one aspect of it, the fact that it caused some workers at the auto parts supplier Delphi to lose their pensions.

“Do you believe, on balance, that the auto bailout has a boon for the Ohio economy?” Tom Troy of the Toledo Blade asked Mandel.

“I would not have voted for that,” Mandel said. “I couldn’t have, because it stripped from middle class retirees their pensions.”

But Mandel didn’t answer Troy’s question: whether the auto bailout did more good than harm in Ohio. Brown pounced, noting that Republicans George Voinovich and Steve LaTourette also voted for it. “To be against the auto rescue just boggles my mind,” he said.

-To Brown: What free-trade deals would you vote for? Brown is one of Congress’ most reliable opponents of free-trade agreements. Gomez mentioned the senator’s opposition to free trade deals with Colombia, Peru and South Korea and asked what would ever lead him to support a trade deal.

“These trade agreements have clearly sold out the middle class,” Brown said. He argued that Obama’s enforcement of trade rules had led the opening of a steel mill in Youngstown. He said he’d written legislation about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks “that will make a difference in putting trade agreements on the side of American workers and American manufacturers.”

What Brown didn’t say was that he’s almost never met a trade deal he liked. He’s only voted for one in two decades: a 2000 agreement with Jordan.

-To Mandel: How would you pay for the popular parts of the health care law? “As unpopular as Obamacare is among conservatives, some elements of the plan have popular support,” Troy noted. He asked Mandel how the government could maintain those goals, such as requiring insurance companies to accept people with preexisting conditions, without requiring people to buy coverage.

“We’d have to make cuts in other parts of the government,” Mandel said. “In order to pay for covering folks with pre-existing conditions, young adults on their parents’ insurance, if there’s leaders in Washington who want to do that without Obamacare on the books, we’ve got to make significant cuts.”

It’s a confusing answer. How would he help people with pre-existing conditions? Does he mean he’d have the government pay insurance companies to insure them? Or pay to set up a high-risk insurance pool? He didn’t say, and his website’s health care page doesn’t either.

People in the audience of 1,300 definitely noticed most of the dodges. The Renaissance Cleveland Hotel ballroom buzzed as Mandel meandered through his answer on the auto bailout and as Brown tried to steer his answer away from the fiscal cliff. Partisans on both sides cheered and laughed and razzed the candidates, loudly interrupting the debate several times but also calling out Brown and Mandel when they wouldn’t give a straight answer.

Live-tweeting Brown-Mandel debate today

I'm live-tweeting the City Club's U.S. Senate debate between Sen. Sherrod Brown and challenger Josh Mandel today.  It starts at 12:30.  Click here to read my tweets during the debate. 

I'll be posting a report about the debate here this afternoon.

Rob Frost stokes draft-Mandel movement for Senate

Josh Mandel, the young state treasurer from Lyndhurst, is living a charmed political life. The 33-year-old Iraq war vet just got his new job, and already, conservatives are cajoling him to run fo the U.S. Senate against Sherrod Brown next year.

Last week the Washington Post profiled Mandel in its series "The Rising" about young elected officials with promising careers. Next, conservative talk-show host Hugh Hewitt hyped Mandel in his Washington Examiner column as Brown's "worst nightmare."

Rob Frost, Cuyahoga County's Republican chairman, likes the buzz. "Hugh has joined the chorus of Ohio conservatives, Republican leaders and business leaders who are trying to draft Josh into the Senate race against Sherrod Brown," Frost writes in an e-mail this morning. Frost wants to draft Mandel too: "Josh has made it clear that he's focused on running the Treasurer's office, but the consensus that is developing in Ohio and across the country is that Josh is our best bet to beat Sherrod."

Ohio Republicans have Sherrod-hunting on their minds this week. The senator is learning, the hard way, the first rule of cyber-era political debate: The first person to invoke Hitler loses the argument.

Meanwhile, Mandel's working to repair his biggest campaign foul, his fall TV ad against Kevin Boyce, widely criticized as Muslim-baiting. From the Post profile:

"I made a mistake, and I learned from it and put it behind me," says Mandel now. "I regret running the ad, and I've broken bread with my opponent and we've both put it behind us."

I get why Republicans dream of a Mandel candidacy, why his quote to the Post — "I'm not ruling it out" -- sounded to them like a horse race's opening bell. War veterans are attractive candidates, and experience in the Iraqi desert adds gravitas to Mandel's baby face. More mathematically, Republicans would be shrewd to run a Jewish candidate from Northeast Ohio -- it'd scramble the electoral map, peel away votes the Democrats usually count on.

Still, the buzz isn't entirely convincing. Hewitt's dismissal of Brown as an "off-the-rack lefty, tired, worn out" underestimates the Democrat's political talents, especially his ferocious campaign skills. I thought Brent Larkin sized up the race right last month: "A Mandel candidacy remains unlikely," he wrote, "as would an eventual victory." So far I haven't seen anything to lead me to disagree.

Lynne Thompson profiled Josh Mandel for Cleveland Magazine in 2008. You can read her piece here. I profiled Sherrod Brown in 2007, after his election to the Senate, and Rob Frost a few months later, when his entertaining missives, "News from the Pork Barrel Buffet," began to poke the seemingly impregnable Jimmy Dimora.

Jackson vs. FitzGerald: Who has more power?

Right now, who is the most powerful politician in Greater Cleveland?

Many people say Ed FitzGerald’s new job is the most influential political position in town. Voters’ hopes for change are focused on the new Cuyahoga County executive: Their demands for a more efficient government and an end to corruption and self-dealing, their belief that local government can step up and reverse Northeast Ohio’s economic decline.


“The charter has created a position where Cuyahoga County can speak with one voice,” FitzGerald told me in an interview for the Power 100 issue of Inside Business, out now. “To the extent that I can grow into that role, also to the extent that I can build coalitions, it gives me entrée into all kinds of situations I may not have direct control over.”

FitzGerald debuts in our Power 100 list at No. 9, behind business leaders such as Sandy Cutler of Eaton (#1) and Chris Connor of Sherwin-Williams (#3). The county exec also ranks below one other politician: Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson, who drops from #2 in last year’s rankings to #7 this time.

Jackson had a pretty tough 2010, considering his troubles with the LED lighting contract and the water department and his futile endorsement of Terri Hamilton Brown for county executive. But politicos will remind you that a city still has a lot more legislative powers than a county. And people who think about power say it doesn't just come with a new job -- it's acquired over time by leading, cooperating, and persuading. For now, Jackson’s still got more clout than Ed FitzGerald, an unknown quantity. But a year from now? Maybe not.

My “Political Shakeup” piece in the Power 100 package tracks the rising and falling influence of Jackson and other Northeast Ohio politicians. Steve LaTourette moves up from #20 to #16 in our rankings, thanks to the November elections and his friendship with House speaker John Boehner. Sherrod Brown, now Ohio’s senior senator, moves up a bit, from #17 to #15, though we’ll see how he adjusts his senatorial style to divided government.

Don Plusquellic holds fairly steady as he ponders whether to run for one more term as Akron’s mayor. The biggest fall? Bill Mason, who had the worst 2010 of any local public official not under indictment, drops out of our top 100.

Brown, Fudge push Stuart Garson as Democratic chair

Cuyahoga County Democrats have figured out who'll succeed Jimmy Dimora as party chairman, says the Plain Dealer's Mark Naymik. And it's not one of the usual suspects. It's Stuart Garson, former campaign treasurer for Sherrod Brown.

Garson has lined up support from Brown, Marcia Fudge, and Bill Mason, Naymik reports in his column today -- nearly enough to clinch the job before the party's June 16 vote.

This tells us a lot about where the local Democratic party is going. Now that the Dimora and Frank Russo era is over, Brown and Fudge are stepping into the vacuum, getting involved at the grassroots, nudging rank-and-file Democrats toward new names and strategies. They've lined up Mason's support in the party chairman contest, but they're not deferring to him. That's a sign that Mason's political network will remain a factor in Democratic politics, but not dominate it.

Here's another sign: Tom Day's name didn't come up in Naymik's column at all. Last year, the Bedford Municipal Court clerk was considered the insider choice for party chair. He counted both Dimora and Mason as allies -- which, in the old party politics, was more than enough to make him a front-runner. But handing the party chairmanship to a prominent figure in the Mason machine was not what Brown and Fudge had in mind.

Sherrod Brown in Wash. Post: "Too big to fail is simply too big"

Sherrod Brown has an op-ed piece in tomorrow's Washington Post and online tonight. He argues that Congress should establish a maximum size for banks.

"Too big to fail is simply too big," he writes.

He chose a nice round number for his maximum: $1 trillion, just bigger than the country's largest banks today.

You can read Brown's piece here.

Kucinich will vote yes on health care

It was a moment of truth for Dennis Kucinich: Would he preserve his progressive purity by voting down the biggest progressive reform of our time?

No. He's changed his mind: He's voting yes on the president's health-care plan.

"This is not the bill I wanted to support," Kucinich said at a Capitol press conference this morning. "However, after careful discussions with President Obama, Speaker Pelosi, my wife Elizabeth and close friends, I’ve decided to cast a vote in favor of the legislation."

Notice how his wife ranks up there with the president and the speaker of the house? The health-care talks in the Kucinich household must've been as weighty as Dennis' high-pressure ride with Obama in Air Force One. The young, striking Mrs. Kucinich doesn't just help her husband by attracting press cameras and coverage. She's become his conscience, an adviser who reminds him what he stands for -- and tells him when compromise isn't a sell-out, but a wise strategy.

"In the past week it has become clear that the vote on the final health care bill will be very close," he said at a 10 a.m. press conference at the Capitol. "I know I have to make a decision, not on the bill as I would like to see it, but the bill as it is." (See the Plain Dealer and The Hill for more coverage. Or, read his full remarks here.)

After holding out for government-run health care longer than most anyone, Kucinich has accepted something Sherrod Brown has been reminding progressives for months now: Reform in America is almost always accomplished step by step, not all at once.

"If my vote is to be counted, let it now count for passage of the bill, hopefully in the direction of comprehensive health care reform," he said today.

At the last moment, on the verge of either making himself irrelevant at a moment of great change or actually scuttling it, Kucinich proved that even he knows how to compromise.

Obama pressures Kucinich in Strongsville, on Air Force One

Dennis Kucinich flew to Cleveland on Air Force One with Barack Obama yesterday, and the president spent the flight pressing stubborn Dennis to vote for his health-care reforms. Up on the podium in Strongsville, Obama turned up the pressure with a smile. He name-dropped Kucinich, an audience member shouted, "Vote yes!" and Obama turned and said, "Did you hear that, Dennis?"

But Kucinich has already said he's voting no on the Democrats' health-care bill. {See update below.} His Sunday Plain Dealer op-ed lays out his reasons why: Forcing people to buy private health insurance, without giving them a publicly-run option, risks exposing more people to insurance-company abuses.

Kucinich is taking a huge risk. Voting no will preserve his reputation as a champion of government-run health care -- and his self-image as a solitary hero. But it'll anger his progressive allies and donors across the country. They'll see what many Clevelanders saw in 2007 when I wrote my Kucinich profile, "The Missionary": His solitary far-left stands can make him irrelevant when progressives try make real but incremental change. Markos Moulitsas, founder of the left-wing blog Daily Kos, says Kucinich should face a Democratic primary challenge in 2012 if he votes no and the bill goes down.

Last night on MSNBC, Rachel Maddow was interviewing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, and she mentioned Kucinich in her question about a public option. Without talking about his colleague, Brown drew a distinction between Kucinich's approach and his.

"You understand how progressive movements work," Brown said. "When Social Security was passed in the '30s, it wasn’t all that great at the time. When Medicare was passed, it was good but not great. So much of what we’ve done on abolishing child labor, on safe drinking water and clean air, worker’s compensation and minimum wage: We passed a decent bill and improved on it decade after decade."

Check out this video, with Obama making his case in Strongsville at 0:30 and pressuring Kucinich at 3:38, and Maddow's question to Brown at 8:32.

{Update, 3/17: The pressure worked. Kucinich will vote yes.}

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Brown helps forge Senate Democrats' health care deal

Sherrod Brown is one of five liberal Democrats who helped craft the U.S. Senate's latest health care deal, which would allow people age 55 to 64 to buy into Medicare. This New York Times analysis (registration required) says a lot about Brown's new role as negotiator.

Brown is one of the Senate liberals who fought hard to create a "public option," a government-run health care plan for the uninsured. But several moderate Democrats don't like the public option, and these days it takes 60 votes to pass anything in the Senate. So Brown became part of the "Team of 10," the five liberals and five moderates who met to try to forge a compromise all Senate Democrats can vote for.

The new deal would only create a public option as a fallback if other health care reforms fail to meet a goal of insuring a certain number of people. But the Team of 10 also propose a new idea: letting people buy into Medicare starting at age 55. That would advance the liberals' goals of insuring more people and creating more not-for-profit competition with private insurers.

"To satisfy the liberal Democrats, including Sherrod Brown of Ohio," the NYT story adds, "the agreement calls for the creation of a new menu of national insurance plans, modeled after those offered to more than eight million federal workers, including members of Congress, and their dependents."

Sounds like one of Brown's ideas caught on. He refuses to accept congressional health-care benefits, as a protest against the number of uninsured people in the country. Last week he signed onto a Republican dare, agreeing with them that if Congress creates a public option, all congresspeople should have to use it for their health-care coverage. Now the Team of 10 has jumped on the idea that congressional health care and new health care plans for the uninsured should look the same.

The deal still has to get 60 votes. Then, senators will have to negotiate with the House, which passed a different bill. But it's interesting to watch how Ohio's Democratic senator is wielding influence on the year's biggest issue.

Update, 12/15: Looks like Joe Lieberman, the stubborn independent and former Democrat, refuses to be the 60th vote for expanding Medicare. Senate liberals may be stuck with no replacement for the public option. They could still try to get Olympia Snowe, the Maine Republican, to go for the public option as a backup -- or "trigger," as the buzzword goes. But it looks like the president wants to make a deal with Lieberman instead.

Connie Schultz: Dimora should resign

"Jimmy Dimora has lost his moral authority," Connie Schultz writes in her column today, calling for his resignation. "Nobody with integrity trusts him anymore."

Schultz offers the best argument yet for the idea that citizens shouldn't have to wait until Dimora is charged and convicted to demand a new leader.

"It doesn't matter that Dimora has so far escaped indictment," she writes. "Federal agents raided his house. Recent documents make it clear that he is suspected of personally benefiting from public coffers, and sometimes at the expense of our poorest citizens."

The column also breaks some news: U.S. Rep. Marcia Fudge agrees that Dimora should resign. "It's time for Jimmy to go, and I think he knows that," Fudge tells Schultz.

This column, like all Schultz's political writing, carries this tagline: "Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz is married to U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown." Schultz has said publicly that she doesn't like the tagline, but I wonder if her marriage to a senator is one reason she can write this with authority:

"For weeks, Democratic activists and elected officials in this county have had plenty to say about Jimmy Dimora behind his back, but at the sight of a reporter, their own backs buckle. Instead of saying publicly what they whisper privately -- that the scandal swirling around Dimora has made him bad for the party and worse for the county -- they sound like the enabling siblings of a brother they fear as much as they love."

One more thing: the Plain Dealer's opinion pages are rolling out a little online activism. The online version of Schultz's column comes with this box, which you can embed in your own web pages:

The Professor's "Sexiest Politician" contest returns

The Professor, the anonymous blogger at Political Science 216, has opened up the voting for his Sexiest Politician in Greater Cleveland contest. He encourages readers to "vote every single day between now and May 31!" State auditor Mary Taylor will defend her 2007 title against several challengers, including Judge Joan Synenberg, who seems to be an early favorite.

What about the guys? Looks like the Professor (or maybe his readers) lost interest in 2007 and never declared a male winner. This year's field of seven includes U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan -- who was one of Cleveland Magazine's Sexy Singles this year -- and Jeff Johnson, who's running to return to city council.

Just in case you'd like to judge their political talents as well as their photos, we've written about some of the candidates in the past. Here's my 2007 profile of Sherrod Brown, Colleen Mytnick's Joan Synenberg profile from 2006, our "singles profile" of Tim Ryan from this February, my coverage of Mary Taylor's audit smackdown of how Pat O'Malley ran his office, and a recent blog post of mine about Jeff Johnson, which leads to our 1999 profile of him and a 2007 update.

Who is The Professor, anyway? Here's my attempt to find out, from the fall.

Sherrod Brown on Fox

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown was on Fox News today, blaming House Republicans for the failure to reach a deal on the financial bailout and sparring with the anchor. Here's the video.