WASHINGTON — On Tuesday in Washington, Sherrod Brown rose to speak from the chambers of the U.S. Capitol for what may have been the final time.
Fittingly, Ohio's senior U.S. senator used it as a just another opportunity to praise the people he has long believed are the backbone of this country: workers.
"My job, in both the House and Senate, has been to represent those workers — to listen to them, to speak out for them, to fight for them," Brown told his colleagues and hundreds of others who came to hear his remarks. "Not Wall Street. Not the drug companies. Not the big railroads. To fight for the people who make this country work."
Brown will be leaving Congress next month after 32 years as a federal legislator, including the last 18 in the Senate. He was one of Ohio's few remaining statewide elected Democrats, often seen as having some sort of elixir against the state's increasingly rightward shift, before finally losing his bid for a fourth term to Republican businessman Bernie Moreno in November.
Though his time as an elected official is over (for now), Brown is adamant he will continue to use his voice.
"This is my last speech on the Floor this year," he said. "But it is not — I promise you — the last time you will hear from me."
Brown, a native of Mansfield and son of a family doctor, first served as a state representative and Ohio's secretary of state before being elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992. Upon arriving in D.C., one of his first major initiatives was opposing the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which at the time had broad support among Democrats.
"Bill Richardson — the pro-NAFTA Democrat from New Mexico — lamented Congressional recess to me. He said, 'Every time members of Congress go home my side loses votes,'" Brown recalled. "There was a reason for that. We're supposed to listen to our constituents."
NAFTA ended up winning approval, but Brown's opposition to similar free trade agreements remained, with him feeling that they shipped American jobs overseas with little benefit. By his final term, he was even touting his similar stances on the issue with Republican Donald Trump, who as president in 2020 helped replace NAFTA with the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement (which Brown voted for).
"I saw what corporate greed and presidents of both parties did to my hometown — and to towns like it all over this country," he said Tuesday. "Through all my years in Congress, I've tried to be their voice and their megaphone."
To Brown, that also served as his inspiration for opposing the 2003 war in Iraq, a conflict that eventually involved "sending working class kids from Ohio to fight, and too often, die." Three years later, he unseated incumbent Sen. Mike DeWine for a spot in the Senate, and later earned two more terms with victories over Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel and U.S. Rep. Jim Renacci.
Over his three-decade career, Brown has introduced more than 1,400 pieces of proposed legislation, many of which wound up becoming law either on their own or as part of larger bills. Among those he expressed pride in Tuesday was the Butch Lewis Act, named after an Ohio union worker and Vietnam veteran, which is credited with "saving the pensions of over 100,000 Ohioans, and a million Americans around the country."
"These victories don't come easy. Of course they don't. But they matter to millions of families," Brown explained. "When we stand up to corporate special interests, when we guarantee workers a seat at every table, when we see decisions here through the eyes of workers — we all do our jobs a bit differently, and better."
Before departing the floor to a standing ovation, Brown paid special tribute to his family: wife and Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Connie Schultz, their four children, and seven grandchildren (one of whom could not attend due to taking college finals). He also noted the pin he wears on his lapel — not his U.S. Senate pin, but one depicting a canary in a bird cage, given to him years ago by a steelworker in Lorain.
"When I walk off the Senate Floor at the end of this year, nothing changes," he declared. "I'm not taking off this pin. I'm not giving up on our fight for workers."
You can watch Brown's speech below.