Thirty-One Days to Go

Hello from Dayton and Hamilton and Kingston and Delaware...

Cashman’s Farm in Delaware County, Ohio.

Greetings from day two on the campaign bus.

By the time we pull into our own driveway on Sunday evening, we will have visited 12 towns where, if habit holds, we’ll have been greeted by crowds always happy to see us. It’s hard to describe our swirl of emotions every time we roll up, except to say this bus is starting to feel like hope on wheels.

This adventure gives Sherrod a chance to talk with voters throughout Ohio. For me, it is a weekend full of reminders of why this campaign is the privilege of a lifetime.

So much went into making this trip a success, all of it by a team of people who sacrifice daily to make this campaign like nothing we’ve ever seen before. It’s one thing to feel that surge of excitement when you are first hired for a big, statewide race. It’s quite another experience to be 31 days from Election Day and working for the most targeted Senate race in the country.

Everyone is tired and nobody complains, and there’s not a person on this campaign I wouldn’t trust with my life. That includes the youngest among them. Anyone tempted to bash Gen Z—I love that we call them Zoomers—had best avoid running into me for the rest of my days. I’m surrounded by Zoomers, as a professor at Denison and as a candidate’s wife. My time with them is the reason I feel so optimistic about the future of our country.

The bus, to state the obvious.

One of my biggest flaws as a campaign spouse is my inability to mingle well at large events. I’ve made a career of asking people questions and listening to their answers, and it’s a hard habit to break. I’d rather spend ten minutes listening to one person’s stories than meet dozens of people in a series of drive-by hellos, thank yous, and, “Sure, let’s do that selfie.” It’s not that I don’t appreciate everyone who shows up to support Sherrod. My constant concern is that these rushed bursts of interaction give them no reason to believe I do.

Our first stop this morning was at Ron Hinton’s ranch in Ross County. Everyone calls him Coach because that’s what he’s been doing for 51 years. He ranks sixth in Ohio for his number of high school football wins, but even when we were talking with him in the middle of his trophy room he didn’t brag. He refused to call Sherrod anything but Mr. Brown because he said he didn’t know him well enough for the privilege. We tried to convince him otherwise, to no avail, and so Sherrod called him Coach even though Mr. Hinton insisted that was not necessary. Quite the entertaining exchange, from my quiet perch.

Once the rally began, I was standing on Coach’s wide front porch listening to a campaign speech when one of his daughters whispered into my ear, “We’ve got horses here,” she said, pointing to a barn. “Would you like to meet them?”

Would I!

I wanted to race right to the stables, but I’m married to the man who was speaking and it occurred to me, perhaps not as quickly as it should have, that some people in the crowd might misread the intentions of a senator’s wife running out on him in mid-sentence. So, I waited until the final round of applause before following a trio of Coach’s grandsons who kindly sneaked me into the stables.  

There they were, those gorgeous angels with manes.

This is Jax.

And this is his buddy Tex:

I fed them treats and petted them, and talked to them like they were my long-lost friends. All my life, I have loved horses. When I was a kid, one of my closest friends used to regularly take me to visit the horses in her uncle’s barn. God, I loved hanging out with those strong, beautiful creatures. When I was 13, I believed they were the only earthly beings who could hear the song of my heart. Some days, I still think that.

There is something about looking into the big brown eyes of a horse that transports me to a place far away from where I’m standing. It’s like they know things, and I’m just waiting for them to decide when I’m ready to know those things, too. I’m still waiting.

Yesterday we ate lunch at a restaurant called Lily’s Dayton. The food is terrific, and every inch of the place is a feast for the eyes. When Sherrod started introducing himself to everyone in the dining room, I tip-toed away and nearly ran into this shy cow. She was peering out from behind a rainbow Christmas tree, and why not? I told her I get it. All these friends and kind strangers, working so hard and daring to hope. Sometimes you just want to step out of sight and inhale the wonder of it all.

I’ll leave you with one of my favorite photos so far from this bus trip.

The back story: Recently, Sherrod’s opponent was recorded on video saying this about women over 50:

“You know, the left has a lot of single issue voters. 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.'"

In this picture, Sherrod was on stage in Hamilton—the city, not the musical—and had just asked the crowd, “How many women here are over 50?”

Sherrod does this at every stop. Every time, so many women thrust their hands into the sky and hoot and holler. It’s our Ohio way of saying, “See you at the polls, pal.”