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The Columnist Who Shut Up to Speak Out
"I'm having to rein myself in," says Connie Schultz of her role as wife to Rep. Sherrod Brown.
(By Joanna Kuebler/The Post)
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He did and they met for dinner on New Year's Day 2003.
"Within two seconds," says Emily, "they were in love."
Precisely 10 months 26 days later, Schultz told her readers, they married.
'Mrs. Brown' She's Not
Plain Dealer readers know much about the contours of Schultz's heart. She wrote of her nervousness, at age 45, about their first date. She told about Brown becoming friends with her cat, and her inaugural trip to buy manure for his tomato vines. Also, their pedometer competition, their "all day long" e-mail exchanges and the night he proposed.
"Falling in love when you're knee-deep in middle age takes some getting used to," Schultz wrote. "For one thing, you feel mighty silly giggling all the time, especially in front of your grown kids."
The character and the cadence of her columns infuse her performance on the hustings. She tells of campaign encounters and describes her working-class roots in Ashtabula, Ohio, where, as she puts it, a couple of nobodies wore themselves out so their children could become somebodies.
But her talk turns tough when she shifts to Republican criticism of her husband.
"We're going to fight back," she told the UAW crowd. "You respond, you pivot, and you deck 'em."
"Connie has never known the luxury of an unexpressed thought. It's into her head and out of her mouth very quickly," says Cassara, a Cleveland Realtor and the close friend described by Schultz as "my sanity in this race."
Total strangers suddenly have expectations, from how she should wear her hair to how she should gaze upon her husband as he speaks. People regularly ask when she will change her name to Mrs. Brown. Answer: She won't.
"You know what the difference is now?" Schultz asks one morning over coffee. "I'm having to rein myself in. I'm less myself."
This is Brown's race, after all, and he must remain the focus.
