The Columnist Who Shut Up to Speak Out
2006-10-17
Source: Washington Post
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rss feedAt a lively Democratic gathering in a nearby suburb, Senate candidate Sherrod Brown is talking up his wife to the party faithful. He says, as he always does in this part of Ohio, that the crowd probably already knows Connie Schultz as a prizewinning newspaper columnist.
As the seven-term congressman praises her "terrific sacrifice" in giving up the column in the Plain Dealer during the campaign, a spirited voice calls out from the back, "Just win, honey!"
That would be Schultz, who less than a year after winning a Pulitzer Prize tucked away her pen and pad to support her husband in the toughest race of his career -- and one of the most important, most intense, most eyeballed matches of the 2006 campaign season.
The campaign role is new to her. So, for practical purposes, is the marriage. Schultz and Brown met in 2003 when each was long divorced. Now, barely on opposite sides of 50, they are learning to be political partners amid the friction and heat of a grueling race. As friend Jackie Cassara put it, "Why don't you just put them in a centrifuge and spin vigorously?"
Brown is surrendering a safe seat in Congress after seven terms to challenge Sen. Mike DeWine, a two-term Republican incumbent with a campaign treasury that stretches from Cincinnati to Toledo. Schultz is giving up the comfort and satisfaction of her freewheeling newspaper voice.
Some days, the blessing is decidedly mixed. As she arrived to speak to a crowd of 430 retirees at United Auto Workers Local 1250, the union president made a pitch for Brown's candidacy. He then turned to her and said, "I believe he's sent his lovely wife. Connie, is it?"
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