What do DUers thinkk of when they see Sherrod Brown

[EffieBlack]

9. What I think of makes me cry

When I see Sherrod Brown, I remember him flying to Washington in order to cast the crucial 60th vote to break the filibuster on the Affordable Care Act - on what must have been the worst day of his life.

Brown strode into the chamber at 10:45 p.m., wearing a dark suit and no smile. He placed his arm around Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), shook the hand of Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and then gave the clerk a thumbs up, ending what had been one of the longest votes in Senate history. Brown's was the critical vote Senate Democrats needed to ensure that the signature legislation of President Obama's young administration passed without a GOP filibuster. Three Republicans broke ranks to support it.

Brown, whose 88-year-old mother died of leukemia last week, had dashed from her memorial viewing in Ohio last night and boarded a government aircraft provided by the White House that landed at Andrews Air Force Base. The journey illustrated the extraordinary steps Democrats took to guarantee a major victory.

For Brown, the moment turned on the memory of his mother, who was raised in a small Georgia town during the Great Depression. A champion of social and racial justice, Emily Campbell Brown read and reread Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird" and insisted that her boys address African American adults not by their first names but with "Mr." or "Mrs."

She cast her first vote in 1944 for Franklin D. Roosevelt, and even as she lay dying she wanted to live long enough to see Barack Obama in the White House. And so it was a poignant moment last night for the son who knew that his vote would make a difference.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/13/AR2009021302342.html