Ohio Sen. Brown campaign fundraises off email exchange with conservative blogger

Sen. Sherrod Brown's (D-Ohio) reelection campaign is fundraising off an email exchange between the senator's wife and a reporter who did not know the two were married.

The fundraising email uses an exchange between the senator's wife, opinion columnist Connie Shultz, and a reporter who asked about a number of pictures of Shultz and Brown hugging. Shultz posted the email exchange on her Facebook page a week earlier and redacted the name of the reporter.

The fundraising email was written by Shultz's daughter, Caitlin Shultz Gard.

"I just had to share this email my mom got from a conservative blogger," the email sent on Monday reads.

Shultz Gard included the entire exchange with the reporter in the fundraising email.

"We are doing an expose on journalists in the elite media who socialize with elected officials they are assigned to cover. We have found numerous photos of you with Sen. Sherrod Brown. In one of them, you appear to be hugging him," the reporter wrote. "Care to comment?"

"Sometimes, even in the midst of all the mud-slinging, you just have to laugh. Of course, Mom being Mom, she just had to write back," Shultz Gard writes in the fundraising email.

"Dear Mr. [Name Deleted]: "I am surprised you did not find a photo of me kissing U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown so hard he passes out from lack of oxygen. He's really cute. He's also my husband. You know that, right?," Shultz wrote in the email exchange.

In concluding the email, Shultz Gard notes that the reporter never wrote back to Shultz. 


"By the way, Mom never heard back from that conservative blogger," Shultz wrote. "But we’d always love to hear from you -- especially if you can help the campaign fight back against all these outrageous attacks."

Recent polling has shown the liberal Brown with a strong lead over his opponent, Ohio state Treasurer Josh Mandel. A Quinnipiac poll in late June found Brown leading Mandel, 50 percent to 34 percent, meaning that Brown has a bigger lead than President Obama does against Mitt Romney in the state.

The email exchange isn't the first time Shultz's job as a syndicated columnist has been called to attention. In 2011, Shultz resigned as a columnist after a column she wrote included a speech by Mandel. In response, the Ohio State Republican Party Chairman, Kevin DeWine, went to the The Cleveland Plain Dealer concerning the conflict of interest between Shultz as Brown's wife and her job as a political columnist.

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