Sherrod Brown | Biography & Facts (2024)

Sherrod Brown (born November 9, 1952, Mansfield, Ohio, U.S.) is an American politician who was elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2006 and began representing Ohio the following year.

Brown grew up in Mansfield, Ohio, where he was active in the Boy Scouts, eventually becoming an Eagle Scout. He attended Yale University, receiving a bachelor’s degree in Russian studies in 1974. He then went to the Ohio State University, where he studied public administration (M.P.A., 1979) and education (M.A., 1981). During that time he married (1979) Larke Recchie, and they had two children before divorcing in 1987. Brown later wed (2004) Connie Schultz, a Plain Dealer columnist who won a Pulitzer Prize in 2005; the couple had two children.

In 1974 Brown became the youngest person elected to the Ohio House of Representatives at the time. He was reelected three times, serving from 1975 to 1982, when he left to become Ohio secretary of state. He won a second term in 1986 but was defeated in 1990 by Republican Bob Taft, who later was the state’s governor. In 1992, having relocated to the Cleveland area, Brown ran for and won a seat representing Ohio’s 13th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He assumed office in 1993 and served seven terms. In 2006 he ran for the U.S. Senate and easily defeated the Republican incumbent. Brown took office the following year.

While in Congress, Brown earned a reputation as a liberal Democrat with a strong record of voting with the progressive wing of his party. He was a vocal advocate of labour and labour unions, and he was considered one of Congress’s leading supporters of American manufacturing. He led opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement and later published Myths of Free Trade (2004). In the Senate Brown provided strong support for the initiatives of Pres. Barack Obama’s administration, including the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (2010) and other health care reform measures. A leading advocate of education, he repeatedly convened the annual Ohio College Presidents Conference in Washington, D.C., to explore ways in which federal resources could be used to promote higher education and job training in Ohio. He also emerged as a critic of the financial and banking system, pressing the party’s case for reform on Wall Street.

He later was a vocal critic of Republican Pres. Donald Trump. In 2018 Brown was reelected to the Senate, and there was speculation that he might run for president in 2020. However, in 2019 Brown announced that he would not enter the race. Later that year he published Desk 88: Eight Progressive Senators Who Changed America (2019).