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.]