. . . And His Lovely Wife (7 page)

“No one said you had to,” she said, but she started nodding her head as soon as I began rattling off the list.

The war in Iraq was a cornerstone of Sherrod's campaign.

Overworked pharmacists were trying to help senior citizens make sense of the new, impossibly complicated Medicare prescription drug plan. Great column, but Sherrod was holding news conferences in pharmacies around the state blasting the Republicans for passing legislation that was driven by the drug companies.

Voter registration, which I had championed in a series of columns in 2004, was off-limits, even as Republican secretary of state Ken Blackwell, now a candidate for governor, tried to push for more restrictions. His Democratic opponent, Congressman Ted Strickland, was Sherrod's close friend.

“Yeah,” Karen said, nodding her head. “Doug would never let you write about that now.”

I stared at her for a moment, then silently nodded. We both knew what was happening.
The Plain Dealer
's website wasn't the reason I had to leave. It was just the final push I had known was coming: The website had forced me to lift the shade from the window to see how the landscape had changed. I could not be the columnist I wanted to be as long as Sherrod was running for the Senate. Slowly, but ever so surely, I was losing my voice. I could not give readers the column of substance they deserved, and I wasn't the journalist I wanted to be.

Before I went to see Clifton, I stopped by the desk of my editor, Stuart Warner. He had warned me that this day would come, but he had also urged me to think about what Sherrod's race could mean for the state and the country. Stuart and I had had many long talks about the importance of this race, and how Sherrod would need me with him on the road.

“You're going to be his secret weapon,” Stuart had said more than once. “You'll do more good on the road than you can ever accomplish here.” He never said it without scowling, though, because he knew how much I loved my job, and working with him. He was my editor, my mentor, and my friend.

“You'll never stop being a journalist,” he had written in an e-mail to my home the previous week. “It's in your blood.”

He looked at me now and didn't even try to smile. He knew what was coming. “I know this is hard for you, but it's the right thing to do,” he said. “We're going to be covering the race more, and Sherrod is going to need you.”

That night, Sherrod greeted the news with shock—and anger. Not at me, but at my profession. He was forever insisting that no one could possibly question my ethics or credibility, and I knew he meant that, but I also knew he was struggling with considerable guilt over the impact his decision to run was having on my life.

“There's no way you should have to stop writing about what matters to you,” he said. “This is bullshit.”

“It's not,” I said, “and you know it's not. I have to avoid even the appearance of conflict, and that list of topics is growing too long.”

He looked stricken, and I felt defeated. We had both known it would come to this, but his love for me and his faith in my integrity had never let him consider it a real possibility. His refusal to accept this inevitability had led to more than one argument, always unresolved.

“I'm so sorry,” he said. “I didn't want to think this could ever happen to you.”

The next day, on February 10, I met with Clifton to tell him I would write for the following week and then take a leave of absence for the rest of the campaign. To my surprise, he said he hadn't expected me to leave so soon. Like my supervisors, he grimaced when I told him what some of the bloggers were saying, and he nodded when I told him I wasn't having any fun anymore writing my column.

“You'll come back, right?” he said, after agreeing that I would write an exit column. “You have to say in that column that you'll be back in November.”

Sherrod had left for Washington that morning. After speaking to Clifton, I went home that afternoon and didn't leave the house for the next two days. I needed to sit with my decision and think about what it would mean.

Then, the following Monday night, the campaign received stunning news. John Ryan and press secretary Joanna Kuebler were wrapping up a meeting at our home when an Elyria
Chronicle Telegram
reporter called to ask Sherrod one question: “Is it true that Paul Hackett has dropped out of the race?”

Sherrod had heard no such thing, and told him so.

Moments later, Joanna's cell phone rang. A campaign staffer read a breaking news story on
The New York Times
's website: Two days before the primary filing deadline, Hackett was out. He was angry, too, claiming that Senators Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid had pressured him to get out of the race. He was done with politics, he told
New York Times
reporter Ian Urbina.

The Plain Dealer
soon reported that Hackett's own pollster said that Sherrod was ahead by an almost 2-to-1 margin. With those kinds of numbers, Hackett couldn't possibly raise the money he needed to wage a primary race. And without Hackett, the Democratic field was clear for Sherrod. There would be no primary.

Sherrod greeted Hackett's news with relief.

“Well,” he said, “at least Hackett's behind us now.”

He couldn't have been more wrong.

         

S
TUART
W
ARNER CALLED ME EARLY THE FOLLOWING MORNING.

“Would you reconsider your leave of absence? The coverage will die down for a while now that there's no primary.”

Karen Sandstrom also asked me to stay longer. “Doesn't this change things?”

For a whole twenty-four hours, I thought maybe they were right. Maybe I could continue to write a column for a while.

Then one of my oldest friends at the paper, editorial writer Joe Frolik, wrote a blistering attack on Sherrod—without identifying himself as a longtime family friend. Our families had celebrated many birthdays and holidays together. His take on the race was a two-fisted thrashing of Sherrod, a litany of my husband's flaws through Joe's eyes.

I had no idea it was coming until I woke up that morning and turned to our op-ed page. The lengthy column, wrapped around a large photo of Sherrod and his friend Congressman Ted Strickland, was titled, “Brown Has a Little Time to Get Back on His Game.”

When I arrived at the newsroom, several colleagues and a couple of editors mentioned the column to me. All of them said they were surprised by the vitriol, and they raised the same question ricocheting in my own head: Why wasn't that writer held to the same standard of full disclosure as I? Why didn't he reveal his family's long-term friendship with the candidate's wife?

When I read Joe's column now, all these months later, it doesn't ignite the rage I felt at the time. He is a smart and gifted writer, and I wish him well. But his column still stings. I had tried to step as carefully as possible in the newsroom after Sherrod announced his candidacy. I had stopped attending newsroom meetings about political coverage, to avoid even the appearance of scouting for the campaign. I knew that Sherrod's race would be scrutinized at every turn, which is what good journalists do—and I worked with some of the best. But I could not accept that after more than twenty years of friendship, there was no warning that my friend's column was coming. And if I could not accept that, it was time for me to go.

I told Stuart and Karen Sandstrom that my decision was final: The next day's column would be my last. Even friends in the newsroom who had argued earlier in the week that I should stay until the summer now agreed there was no way I could.

Stuart asked to speak to me privately. I thought he was going to lobby me to change my mind, but he was doing what he has always done for me in the newsroom. He was looking out for me one last time.

“If you don't remember anything else I've told you in the last four years we've worked together, I want you to remember this,” he said. “The media are not your friends anymore. The people here are not your friends. They are journalists covering your husband's race, and your history with them does not matter.”

I hated that he said that, and I hated that he was right. I felt as if I were losing an entire community of friends.

The day before my last column ran,
The Plain Dealer
's reader representative, Ted Diadiun, announced my impending departure in the “Daynote,” a daily in-house e-mail to the newsroom:

A FOND (AND TEMPORARY) FAREWELL:

As you will read in her column tomorrow, Connie Schultz will be on sabbatical through the end of the political campaign in order to avoid the inevitable charges of conflict of interest while her husband, Sherrod Brown, campaigns for the U.S. Senate. The energy she brings to both the newsroom and the pages of
The Plain Dealer
will be sorely missed.

This might be a waste of typing energy, but it would sure be nice if our readers could learn this news from Connie before somebody sends it to Romenesko and the blogosphere. That said, in the office pool for how long it will take for the news to get out there, “Daynote” claims 30 minutes after this posting.

Ted was off by twenty minutes. Ten minutes after he hit the send button, Jim Romenesko, who edits one of the most popular journalism blogs in the country on the Poynter Institute's website, called my direct line at
The Plain Dealer.
“I wanted to beat the thirty-minute deadline,” he said, chuckling. “On principle, you know.”

My column was posted that evening on the
Plain Dealer
's website and ran in the next day's paper, on February 16. I wrote it in less than an hour, probably because I'd had plenty of time to think about what I wanted to say. I didn't want anyone to think I had been forced to leave. It mattered to me as a journalist, and as a feminist, that this was my decision, my timing. I also didn't want a lot of women readers blaming Sherrod. I laid out my reasoning—and my life—as clearly as I could, hoping that no one would read imaginary motives between the lines. I wrote about how much I loved my job, then laid out the conflict:

I still want to write about what's on my mind, but that is becoming increasingly difficult. Each passing week brings more limitations in my choice of topics because there is a concern that some will accuse me of using my column to stump for my husband.

As a woman and a feminist, the suggestion that I am merely parroting my husband both amuses and offends me.

As a journalist, however, I am sensitive to even the appearance of conflict. I am also keenly aware of the difficulties my remaining in this job could create for my colleagues, some of whom are dear friends, who must cover the Senate race.

As a wife, I feel the pull to be the partner my husband deserves. Sherrod has been incredibly supportive of my career at every turn. Not once has he ever asked me not to write about an issue, even when he knew it might create problems with some of his constituents.

I want to be just as unequivocally by his side now. I cannot play a significant role in his campaign as long as I work at this newspaper.

Now comes the hard part.

What may not feel great for me is better for everyone around me. So, this column is my last for a while. I'm taking a leave for the duration of the campaign.

I assured readers that this was my decision, and that I planned to return to the paper after the election. I ended by reminding them of some of the people who had driven my work as a columnist:

In the meantime, please remember to ask who gets the money in the tip jar at the coat check and at the bar.

Tip restaurant servers in cash whenever you can.

And if you or someone you love is thinking of settling down with another human being, keep in mind what my mother always told us girls:

“Don't marry him 'til you see he how treats the waitress.”

Over the next few days, hundreds of readers weighed in, almost all of them incredibly kind. Even those who made sure I knew they usually didn't agree with me politically wished me well, although occasionally making it clear they weren't so sure about Sherrod. “I'm going to miss the column,” wrote one man who worked for an insurance company. “I don't think you'll be gone for long. I think Sherrod is going to have a tough time beating DeWine. Maybe he should try being a house husband!”

One of the most meaningful notes came from my colleague John Campanelli. John was at least a decade younger than I, the devoted father of two elementary-age children, and a gifted writer. I knew him as the funny guy who sat in the row in front of me, but I didn't realize we had working-class roots in common until he wrote this e-mail, which he sent as soon as he heard I was leaving:

I'm going to say this now, because it's safe to assume that things might get kind of hectic next week (and because it's so much easier for me to express things with a keyboard).

My grandfather came to Cleveland in 1922, made a living with a strong back, hauling cinders from the mills and then selling them to concrete companies. He didn't make it past third grade in Italy, but he never resented “the guys in the ties” like some of the other laborers did. He sacrificed plenty so his son, my dad, could go to college and be one of those guys in the ties. My grandfather and father taught me about pride in work and pride in city—as much as a suburban kid can feel, anyway.

And I can tell you that I have never felt a greater pride for my city and paper, the one I delivered as a kid, than when that guy—because of you—came forward and confessed to the rape that had been pinned on Michael Green. That feeling was then eclipsed when you won journalism's highest honor.

I want to thank you for that. That's just really, really cool.

Working in the same newsroom with you has been an honor.

John's letter reminded me of where I come from, and why those roots mattered. I wasn't losing my job, nor was I facing the kind of daily grind that wore my father out. I was about to take a leave of absence from a job I loved so that I could help my husband run for the United States Senate. What a privilege.