Majority Leader Schumer Floor Remarks On Ohio’s Departing Senator Sherrod Brown

Washington, D.C. – Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) today spoke on the Senate floor paying tribute to longtime friend and Senate colleague Sherrod Brown as he bids farewell to the Senate. Below are Senator Schumer’s remarks, which can also be viewed here:

This afternoon a beloved colleague of ours will deliver his farewell address – my dear friend, Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

If there’s one statement that captures Sherrod Brown best, it is this: workers look at Sherrod and say “he is one of us.” Workers look at Sherrod and say “he is one of us.”

Now, elected office wasn’t part of the Brown family tradition. But fighting for justice certainly was.

Sherrod says, and he said it many times – I've seen that smile on his face when he says it – he says he inherited his activist bent from his mother, a Georgia native who marched on the front lines of the early civil rights movement. Sherrod’s mom taught him and his brothers, Charlie and Bob, the power of political activism, and the moral duty we all have to serve our neighbors.

Sherrod got the message early. His first taste of politics came in high school, when he was elected president of the student council. Right away, he became a proud thorn in the side of the principal, organizing anti-Vietnam War protests and pushing for racial equality in the education system.

During his senior year in college, Sherrod was recruited to run for state representative. Admittedly, his parents weren’t thrilled about his decision. In fact his dad told him, with a little tough love, “I will not be voting for you, you’re too young!”

Do you think Sherrod listened? Would anyone who knows Sherrod today think he listened?

Of course not! He didn’t listen. He won in a stunning upset, also typical of Sherrod. So, at twenty-one years old, he became a state representative. During those years, he would spend his Fridays not at home but at the local union hall in Mansfield, Ohio, United Steelworkers Local 169. He did nothing but listen.

He’d listen to the workers who’d drop by before their shift. He’d listen to them talk about their jobs, their families, their kids, about the union. They’d keep him abreast with the latest news about strikes and reminisce about heroes of the labor movement. They’d talk literature together – Grapes of Wrath, Joe Hill – that depicted the struggle of American workers, and the relentless drive to achieve the American dream.

Those Fridays at the union reshaped Sherrod’s worldview forever.

They taught Sherrod one of the greatest truths about America – our country was built back up from the middle class, and the middle class was built by unions and union workers. My family knows the same thing. Everything Sherrod did in politics from then onwards was in service to this truth.

So, when Sherrod came to Congress many years later, it’s no surprise that one of his very first votes was opposing NAFTA, fearful of the devastating consequence it would have for Ohioans.

Decades later, he has brought jobs back to Ohio, helping break ground on some of the largest manufacturing projects in the state’s history through the CHIPS and Science Act – and we made sure, Sherrod and I and some others together, that it will be done through union labor. I insisted on that in the CHIPS and Science Act, and Sherrod was in my ear, making sure that happened all the time.

Years before we passed the ACA, Sherrod was also one of the leading proponents for health care reform and expanding access.

He famously refused to get health insurance on his own as a Congressman and Senator until the day we passed the ACA.

On infrastructure, Sherrod was the relentless force behind the Buy America provisions in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, ensuring that America’s roads and bridges and highways were built, were built from American-made steel and iron and concrete.

On pension reform, this is something we so much cared about, Sherrod was the author and champion of the Butch Lewis Act, putting money back in the pockets of retirees who faced the unthinkable prospect of seeing the benefits dry up. And it was so typical of Sherrod, it wasn’t an abstract idea for him – he knew the Lewis Family and they came here and lobbied. It was all about people, and how you could make their lives better, and America better.

The record goes on – Sherrod has been a leader on Wall Street reform, saving U.S. auto jobs, lowering prescription drug prices, protecting the right to organize at work, investing in apprenticeship programs, expanding the child tax credit, protecting workers on the job, and so much more. It's amazing, amazing what he did. He was here 18 years, and amazing what he accomplished for working people. It's a record that anyone would be very, very proud of, and we are also proud of Sherrod's record.

The common theme to all this is a phrase Sherrod has embraced his entire life: the dignity of work. It’s something he repeats again and again. He’s even named his bus tours on it. And he also talks about the canary in the coal mine, that when there are bad signs coming from certain places about working people, we better all listen, because it's the canary in the coal mine. He regularly wore a canary in the coal mine on his blazer.

Finally, let me end at the beginning, with a quick and humorous moment from Sherrod’s youth. As a high school senior, Sherrod one day got together with his friends Paul and Jon to organize a rally in Mansfield to honor the very first Earth Day, in 1970. This is what he did. He organized rallies. Some people went to ballgames. Some watched TV. Some people went out to restaurants. Sherrod organized rallies.  They expected a good turnout at this rally. But they didn’t expect a thousand people to descend on downtown Mansfield, which wasn’t that big a city.

As Sherrod described it: “We did this really cool march and we had a really big crowd. But we get down to the square and none of us had thought about what you do when you get down there. We didn’t have any speakers! And [we said], ‘Oh, shoot!’ So we just disbanded!”

Now, only in Sherrod’s account, he didn’t use the word “shoot.”

Isn’t that a vintage Sherrod story? And he never made that mistake again, he was a speaker at so many of the rallies.

You know, I recruited him – I knew he would be a great Senator. When he first decided not to run, he was a House member in 2006. I spent a lot of time in the House gym, and we spent time on the bikes next to each other, panting and sweating, but also convincing him with his great talent and his great passion for workers that he was so needed in the Senate. I'm so glad he decided to run, because he has done so much, and left an amazing imprint on this body.

So, the story Sherrod accounts for with his rally in Mansfield is always been who he has been: direct, unflinching, passionate. A man who is warm and welcoming down to his very core, yet rough around the edges in just the right way. A man who will shun a tailored Italian-made suit in favor the Cleveland shop just a few miles from his home. A man who can penetrate the dense language of public policy, but who will always prefer to ponder a line from the scripture, from Tolstoy, or from Martin Luther King, or a worker from whom he heard something. A man with a gifted mind, and he has such a gifted mind, but this is a true compliment: an even more-gifted heart.

Thank you Sherrod, for everything. We wish you, Connie, and your entire family our very best.

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