COLUMBUS, OH – As Ohioans cast their ballots, Sherrod penned an op-ed for the
Columbus Dispatch with his closing message.
While Sherrod stands up to presidents of both parties and special interests, like Wall Street and Big Pharma, Bernie Moreno has made it clear he only looks out for himself – from mocking Ohio women for wanting to make their own health care decisions, to “stiffing” his workers out of the overtime they earned and deliberately shredding documents a judge ordered him to keep to get away with it, to selling the Chinese-made Buick Envision which “shipped [Ohio jobs] overseas.”
Columbus Dispatch: Opinion: Special interest groups want me out of office. ‘I will always be on your side.’
Sherrod Brown – October 15, 2024
Elections and governing come down to one question: Whose side are you on?
Ohioans know I’ll always fight for them, and side with workers over Wall Street, with patients over drug companies, with Ohio families over the corporations raising their prices.
I was born and raised in Mansfield. My experiences there — my parents, my brothers, my time in the pews at Mansfield Lutheran, my summers working on the family farm — shaped me and whom I fight for.
I grew up walking the halls of Johnny Appleseed Jr. High School with the sons and daughters of union workers — steelworkers at Empire Detroit and electrical workers at Westinghouse and autoworkers at General Motors and machinists at Ohio Brass and Tappan Stove — highly skilled people who built Ohio and built a middle-class life for their kids.
But by the time I got to Mansfield High School, those plants were starting to shut down. Corporations searched the globe for cheap labor. They lobbied for tax breaks and bad trade deals to move manufacturing overseas, always in search of lower wages. I saw what corporate greed and politicians of both parties did to my hometown.
It’s why I’ve spent my entire career fighting for Ohio and for the dignity of work — the idea that hard work should pay off for everyone, no matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of work you do.
When presidents of my own party have pushed bad trade deals that would hurt Ohio workers and send jobs overseas — from NAFTA to the Trans-Pacific Partnership ― I’ve always stood up and fought to keep jobs where they belong: here in Ohio.
When Wall Street gambled away workers’ retirement savings, I worked with Ohio workers and retirees to lead the years-long fight to pass the Butch Lewis Act, named after an Ohio Teamster. Together we saved the pensions of over 100,000 Ohioans, with no cuts to the retirement they earned and paid into over a lifetime of work.
After years of fighting Big Pharma and their lobbyists, we capped the price of insulin at $35 a month for Ohioans on Medicare — and now I’m working to extend those cost savings to everyone.
After hearing from Ohio local law enforcement officers that the best way to help in the fight against fentanyl is to keep it out of our country in the first place, I worked with Republicans to successfully pass the FEND Off Fentanyl Act.
It will do more to stop fentanyl at its source, going after the illicit profits of the chemical suppliers in China and the drug traffickers who bring it across our southern border from Mexico.
And I’m working to grow new industries in Ohio and create good-paying, middle-class jobs. We need to make more in America, and there’s no better place to do that than Ohio.
That’s why I wrote the CHIPS Act and worked to bring Intel to central Ohio.
America invented the semiconductor chip, yet today 90% are made overseas. We are changing that, and not only bringing thousands of jobs to central Ohio, but also cementing Ohio’s leadership in this industry that will create jobs around the state. And we’re working to do the same in the aerospace industry and biofuels and other industries that will drive Ohio’s economy in the coming decades.
I also worked with former Sen. Rob Portman to include historic “Buy America” provisions in the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law — because American tax dollars should support American workers.
It’s creating good-paying jobs, expanding broadband and ensuring that every infrastructure project repairing roads, rebuilding bridges and laying new pipes is done by American workers with American-made materials.
These are reminders of what we can accomplish when we put politics aside and work together for all Ohioans. That’s what I’ll always do. That’s what’s always been best for Ohio.
But we have more work left to do. Prices are still too high — from groceries to prescription drugs to housing. Corporations have too much power in the economy. Whether they’re outsourcing our jobs or raising our prices, they squeeze the workers who make their companies successful, while funneling all the profits to the top.
We need to take on corporate greed and lower housing prices, and cut taxes for working families.
We need to pass a bipartisan border security bill that secures the southern border and ensures that border patrol agents have the tools and resources they need.
And we need to protect Ohio women’s freedom to make their own health care decisions, free from interference by politicians. While my opponent, Bernie Moreno, mocked Ohioans and called Ohio women “a little crazy” for caring about their right to private health care decisions, I stand with Ohio voters who overwhelmingly passed Issue 1 and reaffirmed that a woman’s health care decisions should be between her and her doctor — not politicians.
I know this year, the corporate special interests are spending record amounts to defeat me. They always do — because they know that no one stands up to them the way I do.
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My pledge to all Ohioans, no matter who you vote for, is that I will always be on your side. I will fight for your jobs and your wages and your retirement security. I will fight to lower your costs and to open up paths to the middle class. I will fight for your families and for your communities.
As Ohioans have begun casting their ballots, I am humbly asking for your support so that together, we can keep fighting for Ohio and to make sure that all work has dignity.
