Brown, who has been in the U.S. Senate since 2007, urged the people in the crowd of about 200 to get out and campaign for him and talk to friends and family to help him win what he said will be a very close race against Republican businessman Bernie Moreno of Westlake in the Nov. 5 election. Libertarian Don Kissick also is running.
This news outlet recently covered a campaign stop by Moreno to the area, and attended the IBEW event to let readers hear from both leading candidates why they think voters should cast ballots for them.
The race is the most expensive Congressional race on record, with spending and future ad reservations totaling $416.4 million, according to AdImpact, an advertising tracking firm.
While Brown held the advantage on ad spending during the spring and summer, Moreno and outside groups supporting him surged ahead in September, spending about $70 million during the month, twice what Brown and his allies have spent on TV, radio and digital advertising, according to a recent NBC story that used numbers from AdImpact.
“I have a reputation of fighting for workers and most people aren’t believing those ads, number one,” Brown said in comments to this news outlet after the rally. “They know the oil companies and the drug companies and the big railroads are going spend money to beat me because I stand up to them. Voters know that and we’ll tell them that over and over.”
He said fact checkers have proven some of the ads false and he thinks voters understand that.
“And this kind of stuff is made up by a desperate candidate,” Brown said. “Moreno doesn’t want to talk about the differences in the candidates.”
Brown said Moreno “wants to repeal the minimum wage. I think it should be higher. And he wants to distract people from his national abortion ban. He knows that the public overwhelmingly opposes what he’s for, that he’d go to Washington and vote for a national abortion ban. So he’s going to change the subject. He’s going to make up lies and that’s what he’s doing.”
In his speech Brown criticized remarks Moreno made about suburban women during a town hall in Warren County on Sept. 20.
In audio first reported by a Columbus NBC affiliate, Moreno said, “Sadly, by the way, there’s a lot of suburban women, a lot of suburban women that are like, ‘Listen, abortion is it. If I can’t have an abortion in this country whenever I want, I will vote for anybody else.’ OK. It’s a little crazy by the way, but — especially for women that are like past 50 — I’m thinking to myself, ‘I don’t think that’s an issue for you.’”
Brown said, “Bernie Moreno thinks that any woman over 50 can’t have an opinion on abortion....I also don’t want a senator who thinks that people should only look out for themselves, that a 50-year-old woman has no business caring about abortion rights, or caring about civil rights or caring about worker rights.”
Reagan McCarthy, spokeswoman for Moreno, responded to Brown’s comments via email on Friday afternoon.
“Bernie was clearly making a tongue-in-cheek joke about how Sherrod Brown and members of the leftwing media like to pretend that the only issue that matters to women voters is abortion,” McCarthy said. “Bernie’s view is that women voters care just as much about the economy, rising prices, crime, and our open southern border as male voters do and its disgusting that Democrats and their friends in the leftwing media constantly treat all women as if they’re automatically single issue voters on abortion who don’t have other concerns that they vote on.”
Dayton City Commissioner Shenise Turner-Sloss attended Brown’s rally and called Brown a true public servant who is “going to stand up and fight for all of us.”
Retired nurse, Patrick Boltz, 75, of Dayton also attended the rally.
“I like his personality,” Boltz said of Brown. “You get the feeling this guy really cares about people.”
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