Sherrod Brown Has Some Advice for His Reeling Party

How bad was the gut punch Democrats received from working -lass voters on Election Day? It managed to fell Sherrod Brown, the Ohio senator who has made his name as a pro-union, workers’ rights icon with blue-collar credentials that stretch all the way back to his opposition to NAFTA.

Though Brown, 72, ran nearly 8 points ahead of the top of the Democratic ticket, the dissatisfaction among a broad cross-section of the clock-punching electorate was sufficient to end Brown’s 30-plus year career in Congress.

So what happened? How did it go wrong? And how can Democrats fix it?

I caught up with Sen. Brown on Thursday to get the answers in an interview for the Playbook Deep Dive podcast.

It’s the first time Brown has really opened up about his race — and loss. He told me what he thinks Democrats can do to fix the party’s brand. And also, he gave me some gossip about some phone calls he had with Joe Biden and Barack Obama, as well as what he’s been telling his fellow senators about how Democrats can get back on their game.

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity by Deep Dive Producer Kara Tabor and Senior Producer Alex Keeney. You can listen to the full Playbook Deep Dive podcast interview here: 

Listen to this episode of Playbook Deep Dive on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

I want to start with you and your election. How are you processing your loss after surviving for so many years in an increasingly Republican Ohio? 

I'm proud of my service. I'm proud of the accomplishments all sort of born from my focus on workers.

So I don't see Nov. 5 as a failure. I see it as sort of a new start of continuing my work focusing on workers. So I'm disappointed, for sure. We ran 7.5 points ahead of the national ticket. And I go back to Democrats over the last 30 years — essentially since NAFTA. Democrats have historically been the party of workers, but I’ve seen that support erode from workers because Democrats haven't focused on workers the way that we should over the last 30 years.

Going into the election, the conversation that we heard about Ohio was that if Vice President Harris could keep it within about 8 points in Ohio, you could still win. Did you guys have your own numbers on this? What was the margin you guys went with?

There was no reason for us to have a margin. I endorsed Harris. I’ve been friends with her since she came to the Senate. I knew that she was going to focus on seven states as she should have. I didn't have a number. My focus was continuing to talk to workers, talk about accomplishments, talk about the future, and again, focus always on workers. And that's why we did relatively well, but not good enough.

Were you just kind of caught up in this national narrative of “Democrats don’t think about the working class” or was it something specific happening in Ohio?

No, I think it’s national. The national Democratic brand has suffered, again, starting with NAFTA. My first term in the House when NAFTA was voted on. I led the freshman class of 160 Democrats, 40 Republicans, give or take, in opposition to NAFTA. I was in all the strategy meetings, all the vote counts. So, more Democrats voted against NAFTA than for it. More Republicans voted for it than against it. But it was seen [as a mark against Democrats], because we had a Democratic president, even though it was negotiated by a Republican, but that's all background noise now.

But what really mattered is: I still heard in the Mahoning Valley, in the Miami Valley, I still heard during the campaign about NAFTA.

I've seen that erosion of American jobs and I've seen the middle class shrink. People have to blame someone. And it's been Democrats. We are more to blame for it because we have historically been the party of [workers]. They expect Republicans to sell out to their corporate friends and to support the rich. But we don't expect that from my party — and that's my future in this party — to focus on helping the Democratic Party and my colleagues understand how important it is that we talk to workers and we make decisions with workers at the table.

Did you talk to either President Biden or Vice President Harris during their campaigns about your concerns that the party was taking its eyes off of workers? 

I really didn’t. Vice President Harris left me a nice message the day after the election. I had a conversation with Obama, a pretty detailed conversation with him a few days later. He called me. I talked to Biden on Election Day. At this point, this has been 30 years since NAFTA of the Democrats drifting away from workers. Surely progress was made in the last four. I bragged about that. But it's been 30 years. So I don't pin the blame on any one.

So it's bigger than Vice President Harris? 

Yeah. And I wasn't going to change her campaign. She wasn't even coming to my state. It's the slow drift away from workers that our party needs to restore.

When President Obama and Biden spoke to you, did they agree with you about workers? Did you guys talk about how the party had moved away from workers and workers’ rights?

My last conversation with Biden was really Election Day and “good luck.” My conversation with Obama, again, not to disclose private conversations other than generally — I told him what I think we needed to do. And he said he'd love to help.

So he agreed with you?

He said he'd love to help. I don't know if he agreed. Call him and ask him.

One of the things I hear when I talk to Democrats, especially Democrats from marginalized communities — people of color, women, LGBTQ+ community — when they hear “working class” a lot of them think it’s code for white, blue-collar, non-college-educated voters. And the Democratic Party has prided itself on being a bigger tent. 

As the Democratic Party moves to expand the demographic tent, what do you think needs to happen to make sure that everyone in the working class, the races, ethnicities, different gender identities, etc., feel represented? 

Because a lot of people are seeing it as an either/or. 

So many of the lowest-paid workers are likely more diverse because that's what our economy has been throughout our history. You know that.

The best union meeting I had was with Unite Here. And I mean the best of many because I love talking to unions and I love listening to workers. And this probably is emblematic of it. These were people who work in casinos. They're people that are paid, probably all of them, less than $20 an hour. Many of them are new to the union movement. Almost everybody there was new to politics. And I walked into a room and there were 20 workers sitting around the room. And I sat among them outside of the square, if you will. And the international president was there. Gwen [Mills] was there.

And I think when I walked in, they expected me to make a speech and “rah rah, go get ‘em.” And here's what I found out: I stared at the woman on my left, and it was probably two-thirds people of color — in Ohio, more African Americans than Latinos and probably three-fourths women — [and for] 20 or 30 minutes,I just asked each of them, “Why are you here? Tell me your background. Tell me what this job means to you. Tell me about yourself.”

And I got a call from one of the leaders in the union. They’d never been in a meeting like that where an elected official sat down and wanted to know about them and their opportunities and their futures. So I would assume they were more invested in this campaign, in political action and in the union more when they left than when they got there.

And that was my job, to listen to them and encourage them to be that.

So I understand that you think they don't see it as an either/or. But what do you think about the concerns that people have that the party might turn into an either/or? 

I understand them.

Because, you think about what we've heard already from some Democrats that there was too much focus on trans issues, for example. 

For example, you had Rep. Seth Moulton say that he also doesn't want, in his words, to have his daughters playing sports with people who used to be male. 

So as this conversation goes on within the Democratic Party, there are times when people might think that the Democratic Party might put the progress of all the things that you're talking about, the human rights aspect of the party, to the wayside.

No, I don't think we're doing that. I certainly don't do that. I've always supported human rights and my record is longer and —

But how do you strike that balance? How does the party strike that balance? 

I mean, what we have in common is work. And there's no reason why you can't focus on the dignity of work and human rights. I've spent 32 years in Washington being that person, being one of the people that does that. It's clear to me.

My mother was always troubled by racial issues, both in the South as a small-town girl and in the North as a grown woman in a medium-sized city. And she got very involved. She founded, with another woman, the Ohio Council of YWCAs. And the YWCA’s mission for 100 years has been to eliminate racism and to empower women. That's where I come at this from. So that makes my focus on the dignity of work deep and extensive and life-changing, or at least life-setting. So I don't know why you can't be both, why you can't be supportive of civil rights and human rights in every iteration. Because I think of worker rights as a civil right and a human right.

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But you know, in 2024, the nuance that you're talking about is often lost in our politics and people are looking for easy answers, including in the Democratic Party. Are you in favor of a quick autopsy here? Because you guys only have a couple of years before you’re right back in a presidential cycle.

If we focus on work the way that we should, those issues, the cheap shot ads that Republicans put out that simply aren't true [won’t matter as much]. I ran 7.5 points ahead of the national ticket in my state because I had built trust among a lot of workers that when they saw those ads on immigration and transgender that were proven by neutral fact checkers not to be true, I had enough trust among workers that I’d built up over 32 years that I did much better than the national Democratic brand. And Kamala was the national Democratic brand in that sense. It was some other things, too, of course. But it's clear to me that if you build that trust with workers, they will say, “I don't think those ads are true” or “We know this guy and he fights for me in the workplace.”

And if Democrats focus on the dignity of work and show up at picket lines and go to union halls and listen to workers and tell stories about how unions have changed people's lives for the better, you will see —

But President Biden did do that, and it didn’t work.

As a president, he was burdened with workers moving away from the Democratic Party. You can't fix it in four years.

So you’re talking about a ground-up approach?

Yeah, but it's top down too. It's all of us doing it.

You talked about the national brand of the Democratic Party looking like it turned its back on workers. But then you also mentioned a bunch of different policies and laws that you guys have done — specifically under President Biden — that seem more tailored toward workers. Is it a messaging problem or is it an actual policy problem that the Democrats are dealing with here?

Certainly we've had major, major accomplishments. It's what my career was about and will continue to be about. I don't think we talk to workers enough, though. When we pass a bill that helps workers, I think we move on to the next bill without talking about them. The president should have done that more. All of us should have done that more. But having worked at the table — I mean, one of the things I prided myself on is I go to picket lines regularly if there's a strike —

President Biden was the first president to do something similar. 

Yes. And I was glad he did. I talked to him about that ahead of time.

Did you convince him to do it?

I didn't. I don't claim convincing anybody of anything. I know that I weighed in. I can only say that. But it also means when there's an organizing drive, weighing in, if the union wants us to weigh in. Sometimes it’s calling the CEO, asking him to back down. Other times, to be neutral. Sometimes it's walking a picket line with those workers that are trying to organize or signing a letter. But I've worked with workers trying to organize at a Starbucks. Understanding the law is tilted against union organizing.

I was in Cincinnati one day at an AFL-CIO dinner and I met the half-dozen women sitting at one table. So I said “What brings you here?” And they said, “We represent 1,200 custodial workers in downtown Cincinnati.” Probably two-thirds African American and Latino, one-third white, but a very diverse workforce. They're the ones that work all night at low wages to clean the offices for people that look like me coming in to work the next day.

And she said, “We signed our first union contract.”

I said, “What's that mean?”

She said, “I'm 51 years old. It's the first time I'll have a paid one-week vacation.”

I spoke to our Democratic caucus yesterday. They had the candidates who were in cycle speak. And I told that story and I said, “We've got to tell stories like that. We've got to talk about victories like that. We've got to show a better relationship, solidarity with those workers.” My wife was a daughter of a utility worker — 35 years, carried a utility worker card in Ashtabula, Ohio. And she said when she was 16, she almost died from an asthma attack. She said, “My dad's union card saved my life because I could get health insurance.”

We've got to tell stories like that. We've got to talk to workers more. We've got to spend more time at union halls. We've got to side with them on organizing drives. We've got to side with them in labor management, not stand back and say, “Well, we're going to be neutral.” Because neutrality in this means that the wages continue to be flat while executive compensation and profits skyrocket.

President-elect Trump and the leadership of the Republican Party haven't exactly been on picket lines. What is it that the voters in this election saw about the Republican Party and Donald Trump that made them think that they are better for them?

Trump said the economy was so much better under him and so much worse under Biden. They just don't tell the truth on a whole lot of things. You know the top priority for Trump and Republicans are going to be more tax cuts for rich people. That will probably come first in the things they do. I'm not an expert in psychoanalyzing how voters get to Donald Trump, but I know that we've let them get to Donald Trump by not focusing on them and listening to them and showing we're on the side of workers all the time.

If Democrats have taken their eyes off workers and their needs, what is the thing they had their eyes on while all of this was happening. Where was the focus instead of on workers?

Well the focus was on everything. You know, I do other things, too. My whole life, I've fought for women's health to make their own decisions on abortion rights. I was very early in supporting marriage equality.

Human Rights Campaign endorsed you this time around.

Yeah. HRC has always endorsed me. My wife — do you know who my wife is?

Oh, yeah. We've been on TV together!

We met 22 years ago. Six months into our dating, she said, “I checked your voting record before I decided to go out with you. If you weren’t 100 percent pro-choice and 100 percent pro-marriage equality, there would not have been a first date.”

There are a lot of emotions running around in the Democratic Party right now. Lots of blame being thrown all over the place. Do you worry about the Democrats overthinking what happened in 2024 and what's been happening for years?

I worry less and act more. I'm going to stay in this arena. I'm not going away. I will continue wearing this canary pin. I laugh and I think, when I came to the Senate, they give you a really fancy piece of jewelry that says: “You can strut around. I'm a senator, I'm really important.” and I wore it about a week and took it off and put this pin back on. So I've essentially worn it for 25 years, except for that one week where I wandered off.

I just know what my focus is going to be. I know that everybody analyzes this stuff and psychoanalyzes all these decisions and [asks] “Why this group?” I mean, one of the things about workers is that what we all have in common as a country, except for the wealthiest, is work. And that's what our party should be addressing. I'll always support human rights. I'll always be concerned about climate change and realize we need to focus on that as elected officials, too. But it all runs through work, to me.

A story I always now tell when I speak at [Dr. Martin Luther] King holidays is the story of the last four months of King's life. In February of 1968, in the segregated state of Tennessee, in the segregated city of Memphis, in a segregated neighborhood in February, there was a torrential downpour as four — two white and two black — workers were picking up garbage. And the four workers, to shield themselves from the torrential downpour, crawled into — believe it or not — a segregated garbage truck. The two white workers crawled in the front cab, the two black workers into the back and the compactor malfunctioned and the two black workers, young fathers, were killed. And that's why King was in Memphis.

Kamala Harris sent me a book by Michael Honey. It's a compilation of King's speeches to labor unions. For the last 10 years of his life, he spoke to unions. And he wove together better than any figure maybe in history, worker rights and human rights and human rights encompassing voting rights, civil rights, everything. And that sings to me how important it is that we talk about worker rights.

There's a lot of people who are interested in you running in the special election for JD Vance’s seat when he takes over as vice president. Have you completely ruled that out?

I’ve not ruled anything out.

Yeah. How do you see Vice President Harris fitting into the next iteration?

I hear that she's looking to run for governor of California. I have no idea what she's thinking. I have enough trouble deciding what I want to do next. I don't put that on anybody else.

As Democrats are trying to rebuild the brand, you guys will also have to tussle with President-elect Donald Trump. How do Democrats need to approach Trump 2.0 versus his last administration?

I look at some of his nominees already. Particularly national security, he had solid people: Gen. John Kelly, Gen. James Mattis. Now he has sort of the Matt Gaetzes of the world and then Tulsi Gabbard. I just think Democrats need to work with Republicans when some of these nominees are so out of the mainstream. And I also think Democrats have to make sure that voters know that this administration's all about helping the rich and all about hurting workers. And that's what it is. And it's pretty clear. That's the positions they're going to take on their tax bill and other things.

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