“[T]o convince [me] to chip in $15 to [your] Senate campaign today” or any amount any day.  That appeal for a campaign contribution was just one among a seeming google of texts I’ve received from Sherrod Brown’s campaign during the last month.  I am on the sucker list that gets these from virtually every Democrat running in a primary or general for election or reelection to a seat in the next Congress.  But Sherrod’s campaign is unusually prolific and persistent, with what may be a highly curated list of former contributors like me.  To every previous Sherrod for Congress or Senate campaign and, in not insignificant amounts.

Joe Biden

The reason I won’t contribute ever again began in late 2023 when Senator Brown actually called me.  He had my name on his sheet, a couple of factoids about me and invoked the name of an important mutual acquaintance.  I said “Sherrod, we need you to run for President, to help induce Biden to stand down and if not to primary him . . . you are and have what is needed to do that and beat Trump if he’s nominated.”  I went on to enumerate and detail some of his credentials and past success in deepening Red Ohio.  And he did recognize what I said, and he didn’t – do the right thing, as Spike taught us we must do.  I reminded Sherrod that this was his responsibility.  His excuse, widely reported, was that he’d rather not.  Neither he nor his Pulitzer Prize winning wife were up for it.  They liked the Senate.

Gavin Newsom

I was pissed and disappointed.  I saw the predicament we were in with Biden, as readers of this blog well know.  HL 98, HL 145, HL 181, and HL 194.  People like Sherrod, who has taken tens, if not hundreds, of millions from donors in the course of a long career, accumulate a huge debt that sometimes comes due.  In the form of a responsibility that transcends and trumps one’s or one’s spouse’s druthers.  And despite Sherrod’s deadbeat response and refusal to recognize, let alone attempt to pay, his debt, I showed up at a little gathering for him months later where the cost of entry was more than 100 times that 15 bucks.  He deflected questions not only about his refusal to enter the presidential race, but also about the growing perception that Biden was not up to it in 2024, if indeed he had been in 2020.  The most substantial thing out of his mouth that evening was his recitation from memory of “Casey at the Bat.”

Mighty Casey

I liked Sherrod and don’t especially like some others who clearly are running in/for 2028.  One in particular with a Scottish/English name as geeky as “Sherrod.”  But Gavin knows that he and others like him and Sherrod have debts that they need to repay.  The best we can say these days about former Ohio Senator Brown is that there is no joy in Ohio because “mighty [Sherrod] has struck out.”