For the past several months, former Rhode Island Attorney General Sheldon Whitehouse has been waging a campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination in the state. Others seeking the office include the incumbent, Republican Lincoln Chafee; Steve Laffey, the conservative Republican mayor of Cranston; and the Secretary of State, Democrat Matt Brown (with whom we spoke last week).

On Friday afternoon, Whitehouse and I spoke over the telephone about a range of topics related to his campaign. I can't seem to upload the interview at this moment, so I hope the rush transcript will suffice.

Jonathan Singer: Many political pundits would say that Lincoln Chafee, just like his father, works with Democrats nearly as often as he does with his own party. Even in a state as blue as Rhode Island, how do you run against someone trying to position himself as an independent?

Sheldon Whitehouse: I think the best way to do it is to let the people of Rhode Island know what the facts are, and they include that Linc Chafee votes with his leadership and with the White House about 80 percent of the time; that he has been a critical vote for them on things like the Republican Medicaid bill that is causing great consternation right now in Rhode Island among seniors having to cope with the confusion that surrounds the new Part D benefit; and that when all is said and done, once he has decided to organize the United States Senate under this right wing Republican leadership, all of his other votes – even if they appear defensible on the surface – are in fact window dressing because this leadership is what is setting the table in the Senate.

I don’t know how he’s going to vote on Judge Alito. If he votes against him, then the people of Rhode Island should look at the circumstance that because of Chafee’s contribution to the Republican majority, there is somebody as right wing as him as a candidate, and he’s responsible for that choice even if he takes a fig leaf vote against him.

Singer: There are issues, as you said, upon which he votes strongly with his party, and those include today’s vote on the PATRIOT Act, which he voted in favor of cloture on the bill. How would you have voted?

Whitehouse: That was very discouraging. For anyone representing the people of Rhode Island, which is a state that takes its civil liberties very seriously and has a very independent tradition, to vote the way he did I think is very, very unfortunate. The PATRIOT Act is riddled with excessive provisions, and the Senate appears to have made a concerted effort to deal with some of those, but instead of the bill that the Senate Judiciary Committee worked on, they’ve tried to railroad this other bill through. I think it’s very excessive in dealing with the difficult question of balance between liberty and security that America constantly has to face.

Singer: Where do you stand on the Murtha resolution, speaking of national defense and issues like that?

Whitehouse: I’ve been in favor of rapid and responsible withdrawal from Iraq throughout this campaign. My personal belief is that we are causing as much or more, in terms security problems by our presence there, than we are gaining through the courageous and dangerous work of so many American soldiers, and that, while we have to be responsible about extracting ourselves, the sooner we are out of Iraq, the better for everyone.

Singer: Your primary opponent Matt Brown says that you’ve shifted your position on that issue. Is that a fair assessment of the history of your stances on Iraq?

Whitehouse: I don’t think so. I have defined what I mean by “rapid,” but my position has always been that there should be a rapid and responsible withdrawal of our troops. What I’ve said is that when I mean “rapid,” I don’t mean tomorrow and I don’t mean three years from now either. I mean that by the end of ’06, I would expect to see most, if not all, of our troops redeployed. And I think that’s been a consistent position. It’s a little bit of a surprise that he would find that to be a substantial change in position considering that he came into the race actively supporting the stay-the-course proposition of the Bush administration himself.

Singer: Getting back to issues of Senator Chafee and his Republican Party. Jack Abramoff, Randy “Duke” Cunningham – a number of corruption/ethics issues swirling around the Republican Party. Earlier this month, Josh Marshall reported that a staffer in Chafee’s office had come up in a number of emails relating to usage of Abramoff’s skybox in the stadium in Washington. How hard are you going to hit this issue of ethics against Republicans, generally, and Chafee, specifically?

Whitehouse: I’ve been a United States Attorney. I’ve been an Attorney General. I’ve lead significant public corruption investigations. And I take the breach of faith that public corruption represents extremely seriously.

A friend of mine who was an extremely highly-placed figure in the Clinton Department of Justice is encouraging me in my race and supporting me. And among the reasons he said to a gathering recently is that we need to have people who have that kind of law enforcement experience down here because when the day comes that the Senate again enjoys Democratic control and the Senate investigative function is no longer being squelched by the Republican monopoly on power, to use the quote, “it is a target-rich environment for Senate investigation.” I very much believe that to be true. I think that the abuse of power and the extreme levels of the Abramoff scandal, at the slightly less extreme but perhaps even more damaging levels of putting incompetent people like “Heckuva Job Brownie” into significant leadership positions at FEMA, and further into the corruption, for instance, at the EPA of its mission to protect the environment by stuffing polluting industry lobbyists into key decision-making positions. I don’t know that we’ve seen anything like it in America before.

Singer: Specifically on the issue of lobbying, your primary opponent Mr. Brown has pointed to his successes as Secretary of State in trying to rein in and reform lobbying in the state. Where do you stack up specifically on that issue?

Whitehouse: I’m not in a position to comment on what my opponent has or hasn’t done as Secretary of State. As I’ve said, I have a very lengthy record of public corruption investigations and I think a strong reputation for integrity in government.

Let me just give you a seconds of background on me to just to give you kind of an appreciation of where I’m coming from. I grew up the son of a Foreign Service officer who was in turn the son of a Foreign Service officer. As a little boy, I can remember being thrown over the wall from our house into the Saudi compound next door because there was rioting going on outside and my mother was scared for the safety of myself and my little brother. My father was at the Embassy trying to cope with things, so that was the decision she made to protect us.

Experiences like that kind of bond you to the government career that your family has embarked on and I am, as a general matter, extraordinarily proud of the American government. I think the American system of government is ultimately the path to peace and prosperity for our world, and that we, in the United States, have consequently a nearly sacred obligation to conduct ourselves in that system of government with the highest level of integrity so that it can in fact be an example that other countries are proud of and follow. That’s kind of my core belief. So anyone who trespasses on that, to me, is damaging something that is very significant, and very special, and I think that kind of conduct is intolerable, and that’s one of the reasons I’m running for this office.

Singer: Are there any local issues – something like a bridge or an Air Force base – that you’re going to specifically point to during your campaign?

Whitehouse: In terms of what?

Singer: I don’t know. Getting more funding for road projects, or improving schools – Rhode Island issues, or local issues.

Whitehouse: I think the most significant issues that we are facing here in Rhode Island are putting together a prescription drug benefit for seniors that does not confuse and frighten them. I can tell you from my travels among seniors and through the senior centers of Rhode Island that they are very confused and often quite frightened by that confusion.

And then making sure that the federal government comes through on the promise that George Bush broke to fund No Child Left Behind so that our public schools don’t have to strip out there arts programs, their music programs, their gifted programs, their honors programs, their science labs – anything that is not essential to the purpose of teaching to the test, as NCLB demands.

Singer: One final question. What would you like to say specifically to members of the liberal blogosphere to get them more involved in the campaign?

Whitehouse: I think the members of the liberal blogosphere have a great opportunity in this Rhode Island case. I think Bob Casey has done a great job in Pennsylvania and looks in a very strong position against Rick Santorum. That’s a seat we can and should take back. It’s my belief that Rhode Island is the second most likely win.

I invite anybody reading or listening to this to go to WhitehouseForSenate.com and participate in our website, which has a running blog. We would be really privileged, and the campaign would be assisted, by people of good faith sharing their views and helping us win this race, because as a lot of people around the country have said, it’s hard to imagine a way to win the Senate back without winning this seat in Rhode Island.

Singer: Terrific. Well thank you so much for your time and good luck.

Whitehouse: Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate this opportunity.

[THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.]

For the past several months, Rhode Island Secretary of State Matt Brown has been waging a campaign for the Democratic senatorial nomination in the state. Others seeking the office include the incumbent, Republican Lincoln Chafee; Steve Laffey, the conservative Republican mayor of Cranston; and the former state Attorney General, Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (with whom we are arranging an imminent interview).

On Monday morning, Brown and I spoke over the telephone about a range of topics related to his campaign. You can listen to the call here (warning: a 13.5 megabyte mp3), or read the rush transcript.

Jonathan Singer: As Secretary of State, you have instituted some tough regulations on lobbyists. Given the scandals surrounding Jack Abramoff, Randy “Duke” Cunningham and others in the Republican Party, to what extent will lobbying reform play in your campaign?

Matt Brown: It’s an important part of our campaign and, more importantly, it’s an important part of what I want to do after we win the election. I’ll tell you a little bit about the experience we had here and how it will translate to Washington.

When I came into office, a scandal came to light. The chairman of the Health Senate Committee was getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the big healthcare companies to block healthcare reform from even coming to a vote. And meanwhile, Rhode Islanders, like people across the country, were paying skyrocketing rate increases every year for their healthcare. People were losing healthcare coverage.

I saw that the problem was that it was possible for these kind of payments to be made by lobbyists to elected officials because the lobbyists weren’t disclosing the expenditures they were making, and that if they were forced to disclose those expenditures, of course they wouldn’t get away with these kind of payoffs to elected officials for favors.

So we did two things. One is we closed the loopholes in the lobbying law and required that lobbyists disclose all of their expenditures, not just sum up the expenditures that had been previously itemized in the law. It required them to disclose all their expenditures.

We put those reports up online so the public could see them for the first time without having to come sift through files. But equally important to strengthening the law, we got much tougher than my predecessor had been on enforcing the law. We wrote them letters, we called them – the lobbyists, that is – to demand that they actually comply and fill out these forms that disclose this information. When they didn’t, I personally called them and also went on to the floor of the House and the Senate and tracked these lobbyists down and told them they had to disclose this information.

We got most people to do it, just through perseverance and effort. But there were still some that did not disclose after that, so we, for the first time, posted the names of these delinquent lobbyists who failed to file their information on our website, so the public could see who was not complying with the regulations. And, of course, the press wrote about it, and now we have full disclosure in this state. Hopefully, that will prevent the kind of corruption that we had in the state in the past.

And we see, as I’m running now for Senate, the same kinds of problems that we had here in Rhode Island taking place in Washington, where lobbyists are not disclosing expenditures they’re making, they’re not disclosing which bills they’re even working on, they’re not disclosing their interactions with elected officials. Because of that, they’re getting away with wielding undue influence over our elected officials, and I want to bring a stop to that.

Singer: Specific to the campaign, while there have been allegations against a number of members of the Republican Party in Congress – certainly Randy “Duke” Cunningham comes to mind. Lincoln Chafee hasn’t been explicitly tied to lobbying problems. Do you think you’ll still hammer away at his connection to the Republican Party, or will this be more of a general issue?

Brown: The problem with lobbying in Washington is that the system is broken, and it’s broken for two reasons. One is that there’s very little enforcement – nearly no enforcement – of the current requirements for lobbyists to disclose their activities. And secondly, the regulations as they stand aren’t strong enough.

So it’s a similar problem to what we had in Rhode Island when I came into office, and it requires a similar fix. We need to strengthen the laws and require more disclosure by lobbyists, full disclosure. One of the things that I called for in my proposal is that the lobbyists file disclosure reports monthly. Now they only file them twice a year. You file only twice a year, you could have already influenced legislation, gotten it passed, before the public even has a chance to hold you accountable for your activities and interactions with elected officials. So we require monthly disclosure to provide much more oversight of the lobbyists activities.

We call for real enforcement. Right now, it’s the fox guarding the henhouse. You have entities that work for the Senate and the House overseeing the regulation lobbying activities with Senators and Congresspeople. So we call for granting the Justice Department the authority to enforce the lobbying regulations, as they do currently with foreign lobbyists. The Justice Department has the teeth and the muscle to actually hold these lobbyists accountable for their wrongdoing.

The third thing we do is extend the window, from one year to two years, in which elected officials and senior staff can waltz through that revolving door and become high-paying lobbyists. And the reason, of course, is that we want to prevent what we see now in Washington, which is members of Congress making decisions not for the good of the public but in the hope that when they get out of office they may be rewarded with a high-paid lobbying job.

[Cross-chatter over microphone level]

Singer: In your role as Secretary of State, you’ve worked hard to ensure that everyone votes and that every vote is counted. As Senator, what will you do to continue this?

Brown: We need to strengthen the Help America Vote Act and we need to make sure the federal government does what it was supposed to do over a year ago as a part of the Help America Vote Act, which is to set national standards for the improvement and conduct of elections in this country.

The Help America Vote Act was a response to the disasters of the Florida election. What happened with the Florida elections that it exposed, not just a problem in Florida, but a problem in states and counties and towns across the country, which is that our elections were deeply flawed, our election systems were deeply flawed. Machines not working, registrations not being counted properly, votes not being counted properly, people not being told the right place to vote – all kinds of problems in the model democracy for the world.

So the Help America Vote Act was passed to provide some funds to help solve those problems, but also to set standards for the kind of voting machines we need to have, the way to count ballots, all sorts of areas that require clear standards. The people in Washington failed to set those standards.

Here in my state, I went ahead and set very high standards for us here in Rhode Island and implemented the Act, and actually have created one of the first state-of-the-art central voter registry systems in the country, which is really the cornerstone of the strong and accurate election system – to have an accurate, computerized, updated, fraud-proof voter list. And I ran a program called R.I. Vote to increase voter turnout, including making it easier for men and women serving abroad to register to vote.

So we went ahead here and did a lot of things to improve the conduct of elections, but there are places around the country, I know, where those improvements have not been made. And it’s really a failure of the leadership in Washington to set the standards of elections.

[Cross-chatter over time remaining]

Singer: Let’s move directly to the primary campaign, some specific questions there. Your opponent, Sheldon Whitehouse, has been endorsed by the state’s two Democratic Congressmen and has more cash-on-hand than you, almost by a 2:1 margin. Can you win the Democratic nomination?

Brown: Absolutely. I’ve got a great family, I have a new baby. I wouldn’t be doing this unless I believed that we were going to win this race. There are a lot of other things in life that I enjoy doing. I’m not going to run a campaign unless I am confident that we’re going to win it.

And we’re going to win it similar to how we won my race last time. I challenged the entire political establishment in my state against a corrupt local political machine. They threw everything they had at us. And I beat the incumbent in a primary with 58 percent of the vote and won the general election with 68 percent of the vote. Now that, as you know, was the same primary in which my current primary opponent ran for governor with the full backing of the establishment and lost the primary with 38 percent of the vote.

What wins these elections in the end is earning the confidence of the voters. We have over 1,000 people signed on to my campaign committee, people from all across this state of all different backgrounds. And the reason why people are getting involved in my race and the reason we’re going to win this is that people know that the crowd that we’ve had in office for all these years hasn’t gotten the job done. That’s why people can’t find a decent school for their kids, they can’t afford their healthcare, they can’t afford to heat their homes.

So they know that we need a very different kind of leadership. They know the fact that I spent most of my adult life working directly in communities, in neighborhoods with people is a good, an important kind of experience to bring to the United States Senate, because I understand what’s going on in people’s lives.

They know the fact that, as Secretary of State, I have fought some of the most powerful interest groups – not just in the state, but in the country, including the Bush administration, to make it possible for Rhode Islanders to buy their prescription drugs from Canada; including the lobbyists; including the healthcare companies, to get an Insurance Commissioner in our state and oversee the rising healthcare costs.

And they know that this is the kind of leadership that we need in Washington, leadership that does not wait for permission from the establishment or from the interest groups to do things, but leadership that does what is right no matter how tough the pressure. And they know from my record that’s what I’ll do, and that’s why we’re going to win this race.

Singer: Do we have time for one more quick question?

[Cross-chatter over time remaining]

Brown: What’s your last question?

Singer: I just wanted to know if you had anything specific to the blogosphere about the campaign.

Brown: I’d say get involved, pay attention to it. It’s not early anymore. This is a major race. This has been identified as one of best chances we have in the country to win a Senate seat back.

Don’t wait. This really begins now. Really, the beginning of the year is when this campaign gets into high gear. This is a seat we should win, we need to win – this is a 4:1 Democrat state – and we need people all around the country to get involved, speak out, help us, come out here, feet on the street.

I know that there’s a lot of talent and a lot of energy, a lot of commitment and conviction out there in the blogosphere, and we want all of it involved in our race.

Singer: Terrific. Well thank you so much and good luck.

Brown: OK. Take care.

[THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.]

This weekend, Congressman Sherrod Brown officially launched his bid for the Democratic senatorial nomination in the state of Ohio. As a part of this push, Brown wanted to not only to address Ohio voters but also speak with the liberal blogosphere. On Monday afternoon, Brown and I spoke over the telephone about a number of issues related both to the general election and the primary. You can listen to the call here (warning: a 15.5 megabyte mp3), or read the rush transcript.

Jonathan Singer: In your first congressional campaign in 1992, you took a 200-mile bicycle tour of your district to trumpet your campaign. What’s the likelihood of seeing something like that again this year, maybe statewide?

Sherrod Brown: We will, I’m sure, do creative things to get our message out. Part of the issue here is I have a full-time job in Washington during the week and will have less time to travel the roads of this state on a bicycle or walking, or something like that. I think that we’re going to be creative enough through use of the blogs, through radio and the fact that I’m going to speak out decisively and strongly on issues that I think we are going to get the media attention that we need to get our message out.

Singer: In order to get that message out, you’re going to need to get some sort of parity, or at least somewhere close to parity, on the fundraising side. I know that during that 1992 campaign, you were outspent by roughly a 1.8:1 margin, but still pulled off victory. Right now, Mike DeWine has about a 1.8:1 cash-on-hand advantage. Do you think you will be able to pull off the same success despite the dollar lead of his?

Brown: Yeah. First of all, if we have enough money, it doesn’t matter how much he spends, because we need enough to get our message out. That’s our goal. I don’t need to outspend him. I know that the drug industry will spend two or three million dollars against me, separate from what Mike DeWine spends. I expect the oil industry, probably insurance companies, to spend another million or so each. They will come into this state spending millions of dollars under a different name. They aren’t going to say, “The drug companies just beat up Sherrod Brown in an ad,” they’re going to say, “Paid for by ‘Citizens for Better Medicare’” or some group like that. That’s the way they’ll hide, that’s the way they’ll mask their coming in and running these sleazy attack ads because I stand up to the drug company on the Medicare bill, and the insurance industry, and stood up to the oil interests on the energy bill.

But I’m not concerned about it – I’d rather they didn’t, of course – but I’m not so concerned about it as long as we have enough money to get our message out. My message is going to be strong enough that I think it’s going to cut through a lot of the noise of typical political ads. We’re going to be creative, we’re going to be bold. We’re going to say, “Who’s side are you on? Do you want a Senator who’s on the side of the drug industry and the side of the insurance companies, that does the oil companies’ bidding, that does whatever President Bush wants? Or do you want a Senator that’s going to represent your interests rather than those of the drug companies and the President of the United States, regardless of party?”

Singer: I’ll get back to the prescription drug bill in a minute, but Mike DeWine raised roughly a million dollars for his son’s special election campaign, and there were wide reports of his twisting arms of lobbyists and the business community to raise money for his son. So he was really able to pull that money out of there. Are you going to hammer away at that kind of deep connection to lobbyists?

Brown: I don’t know. I’ve heard complaints from people who said that Mike DeWine put the arm on them for his son. But rather than talk about his fundraising, I’d much rather talk about Mike DeWine being an obedient servant, if you will, to the President of the United States. When the President said we’re going to attack Iraq, Mike DeWine essentially said, “Whatever you say, boss.” When George Bush said, “I want to privatize Social Security,” Mike DeWine said, “I’m already there, Mr. President. I’ve already introduced a bill.” When George Bush told Mike DeWine and the Senate that he wanted to push through an outsourcing agreement with Central America to cut costs for large corporations, Mike DeWine was one of his chief cheerleaders.

Those are the issues I’m going to talk about, more than Mike DeWine twisting arms for his son’s campaign. I think there are connections between those oil interests and drug companies and… I’m not saying Mike DeWine votes that way because he gets drug company money, but I do say that the drug companies write big checks to Mike DeWine and say, “Well done, faithful servant.”

Singer: How much do you think you’ll bring in the conviction of Governor Taft and investigations into Bob Ney and Deborah Pryce into this election?

Brown: I think the public wants to clean house in Ohio. They’ve had enough of the culture of corruption. But they’ve also had enough of the failures of the Bush-Taft-DeWine team on education, higher education, primary and secondary education; the failures of the Bush-Taft-DeWine team on healthcare, the cost of prescription drugs, the cost of energy; and enough of the Bush-Taft-DeWine team on job loss. We’ve lost 200,000 manufacturing jobs alone in my state during Mike DeWine’s second term, during George Bush’s two terms. I think the voters have had enough of that.

We’re going to talk about issues. We’re going to talk about what they’ve done wrong. We’re also going to talk very prescriptively, very boldly about what we should do instead, on trade agreements, on the cost of prescription drugs, on healthcare, on education.

Singer: You brought up a lot of national issues. You also brought up the local issue of jobs. What other local issues will you be bringing to the table in this election cycle?

Brown: Local issues we’ll talk about… I guess I haven’t thought through the local issues as much. We’ll talk in terms of education…

Let me answer it this way, Jonathan. In Ohio, or any other state, what the federal government does on issues like Medicaid, education, economic development – especially manufacturing – has so much impact on state government and what states are doing, too. We need a cooperation that George Bush and Bob Taft aren’t very good at, a cooperation on Medicaid, on revitalizing manufacturing, on education.

The state government increases tuition for higher ed. way beyond what they should. At the same time the federal government in Mike DeWine and George Bush cut student loans and grants. So education is not affordable for middle class kids in Ohio in Ohio’s state universities, and the loans and grants are inaccessible because of federal inaction or because of federal decisions.

That cooperation is so important, and Bob Taft and Mike DeWine – even though they’re part of the same leadership team. They seem to do nothing to help one another.

Singer: Just a few more issues before we briefly move on to the primary itself. You brought up the Medicare prescription drug bill. I think it was The New York Times that had an article in the last couple of days talking about a backlash, especially in “purple” areas of the country: seniors not knowing what they need to do, or being left out, or the prices really not coming down in the new program. You voted no, Mike DeWine voted yes. Is there any way to fix it? And what would you do if you were elected to Washington to fix it?

Brown: The first thing that George Bush and Mike DeWine have to do is end their addiction to drug company money. Once you do that, then you can put on the table all of the issues that we need to address to bring down the cost of prescription drugs.

There is a prohibition in the Medicare drug bill on allowing the government to negotiate drug prices on the behalf of 30 million or 40 million Medicare beneficiaries. That’s the most important change to make. But the drug industry is not going to let their acolytes – those elected officials they’ve helped so much – make any major changes that might in some ways make a dent in drug company profits.

Singer: Looking at the tax cut bill, the House version hasn’t come to the floor, so you haven’t had a chance to vote on that version yet. But Mike DeWine voted yes to the Senate’s version. George Voinovich and two other Republicans voted no for a number of reasons, including increases to the deficit. With the growing deficit, would you be voting yes or no on this upcoming House vote? Or what would you be doing different on taxes?

Brown: I’ll vote no on that. When we have a budget deficit like this, when we’re spending a billion and a half dollars a week in Iraq, when the President is cutting programs that affect working families, middle class families, that affect the poor, we have no business giving tax cuts to the wealthiest one percent of the country, and that’s what this bill does.

Singer: Where do you stand on the Murtha resolution? Not the fake Murtha resolution that came up, but the real Murtha plan, that he laid out?

Brown: I have sponsored legislation – I’m not sure when we introduced it, three months ago, maybe; most of us who sponsored this legislation had voted against the original war resolution – that would say that the President must submit to Congress and the American people by December 31st a winning exit strategy, and that troop withdrawal must begin October 1st – but an orderly, safe troop withdrawal must begin by October 1st of 2006.

That’s the direction I think we should go. It’s pretty clear to me when I hear Condoleezza Rice say that she believes we’re going to be in Iraq ten more years, that we need to act and begin to get our troops out, partly because it’s so divisive for our country, partly because we have seen that this war is costing a billion and a half dollars a week, and partly because, as we saw in the recent 9/11 report, this war is breeding more terrorism and making us more unsafe as a nation.

Singer: Let’s look at the primary, just briefly. This is the place where the blogosphere is very impassioned on one side or the other. Here’s the difficult question: Why did it take so long to make the decision to jump in the race?

Brown: I was not working on any politician’s timetable when I made the decision to run. The first six months of the year, I devoted my entire professional life to the defeat of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. We lost by one vote – two votes, technically, one vote in reality (if one vote had switched it would have been defeated). It passed in the middle of the night only after the President cut all kinds of deals and made all kinds of promises to members, all kinds of pork, whatever they did.

Then during the next couple of months, I told Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer I could not say yes on their timetable. I needed more time. I had some family issues, which I’m not going to discuss, with my daughters and my wife, and just where we were in our personal lives at that time. And I was not able to make that decision, and told Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer I couldn’t by their timetable in August. If that meant they needed an answer, then the answer was no at that time.

By October, my one daughter had gotten married, my other two daughters were either back in school or back in work, and my wife’s work situation was such that we could go forward and make this race. And I plan to win.

Singer: One of the big issues that separates your competitor Paul Hackett from Mike DeWine is the issue of gun control, and a lot people think that that’s an issue that he might be able to siphon off some Republican votes, because Mike DeWine is more supportive of gun control laws. How do you stack up on that front? Do you think you’ll be able to capitalize on the discontent on the right like Paul Hackett might be able to?

Brown: I think that my position on hunting and fishing, and my advocacy for conservation and access to lands, and clean water issues and environmental, but especially conservation issues… What I’ve worked on in my time in the Health and Environment Subcommittee, and my work on issues of conservation and the environmentally, generally, make my candidacy attractive to grandfathers who want to take their grandkids fishing.

I grew up working on a farm. I don’t hunt myself, or fish myself. I’ve gone fishing from time to time, but I’m not a regular fisherman by a long shot. That’s the kind of family values that are important: that grandparents can take their grandsons and granddaughters canoeing and fishing. I like whitewater rafting. I’ve done things like that. As I said, I don’t hunt or fish. But I think I can talk passionately as a Senate candidate about what the outdoors means to people, and I want to encourage people to do that.

Singer: And if there’s just one more thing that you’d like to tell the host of members of the blogosphere who are very strongly in support of Paul Hackett? What would you want to tell them to bring them into the fold, whether it’s during the primary or the (general election)?

Brown: I was an early opponent of the Iraq War. I’ve had one consistent position on the Iraq War. I’m not critical Paul as a person by a long shot, but Paul has taken at least three different positions on the Iraq War.

But most importantly, I’ve been a standup progressive elected official with a proven record of fighting corruption in this country and of fighting for economic and social justice. I’ve proven that I will stand up no matter what criticism I get, on the war, on trade issues. I’ll stand up to the drug companies, stand up to the oil industry. There’s no doubt that I’ll do that in the Senate. I proved that as Secretary of State.

When I was Secretary of State in the 1980s, people in Ohio knew that their vote counted, they know that the elections would be fair, and they knew that they had a Secretary of State that wanted them to vote, to go out and register to vote, to encourage people to vote, not a Secretary of State about whom nobody has any confidence. That shows the kind of public official I’ve been

Singer: Well, terrific. Thank you so much for your time, and good luck.

Brown: Thanks, Jonathan. Thanks for what you’re doing.

Singer: You’re welcome. Have a great day.

[THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.]