The Democrat wants troops out of Iraq in the next 18 to 28 months.
YOUNGSTOWN — U.S. Rep. Sherrod Brown, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, acknowledges that his campaign got off to a rough start, but he is now running one of the best, if not the best, Senate races in the country.
"[The campaign] sucked the first four months," Brown, of Avon, D-13th, told The Vindicator on Thursday. "It's been great in the last seven months. We made mistakes in the first four months."
Among those initial mistakes were hiring the wrong people, an "uneven message," fund-raising problems and fighting with Democratic Web bloggers, Brown said.
But all of those problems are gone, and the campaign is extremely effective as it gets closer to the Nov. 7 general election, Brown said.
Brown said he makes about 200 fund-raising telephone calls a week, and his campaign is attracting a lot of national interest. U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat, campaigned for Brown in Austintown on Saturday. Most polls show a tight race between Brown and U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine of Cedarville, a Republican seeking his third six-year term in the Senate.
No comment
Brian Seitchik, DeWine's campaign spokesman, declined to discuss the quality of Brown's campaign.
"The voters will make that decision on Election Day," he said. "But Congressman Brown has no record of accomplishment despite being in Congress for 14 years."
Brown and DeWine have accused each other of not responding appropriately to providing body armor for the military in Iraq.
"One thing that angers me about these attacks is the body armor issue," Brown said. Republicans, including DeWine, "voted to start this war without providing a sufficient amount of body armor for our troops. For Republicans and Mike DeWine to attack me for not supporting body armor when they voted to send troops to war without enough body armor is shameful."
Brown said he sent letters to President Bush and spoke in favor of providing body armor for troops.
Brown voted against body armor for troops at least five times, Seitchik said.
DeWine's campaign recently began airing a television commercial with the sister of Lt. Col. Dominic R. Baragona, originally from Niles, criticizing Brown's body armor votes. Baragona died in May 19, 2003, in Iraq after a vehicle accident.
Troop withdrawal
Brown wants U.S. military leaders to develop a troop withdrawal plan from Iraq to get them out of the country between 18 and 28 months.
"There's a clear message to the Iraqis that we're sticking around, and because of that, there's no reason for them to do anything," he said. "Staying the course isn't working. Things are getting worse. If we stay the course, we'll have this same debate two years from now. We're having that debate now because we decided to stay the course two years ago."
DeWine told The Vindicator last week that he believes the United States will have a reduced presence in Iraq during the next 18 to 24 months. But he said there should be no time frame on the total withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.