The Adobe Flash Player is required to view this multimedia interactive. Get it here.

Strickland makes running mate choice for November election

Tea Party’s impact may be strongest for general election
11:11 a.m.
Victim of human trafficking speaks to students
11:00 a.m.
‘App economy’ job prospects booming
10:05 a.m.
Bullying law brings rule changes
10:04 a.m.
GE to hire 5,000 veterans, add 400 new manufacturing jobs
9:37 a.m.
> More headlines

By William Hershey, Staff Writer Updated 7:34 PM Tuesday, January 19, 2010

COLUMBUS — He’s a country boy, one of nine kids in a family from rural southern Ohio who took showers in an outside stall.

She’s a city girl from Columbus, the daughter of a single, teen-age mom who worked two jobs to help her daughter succeed.

That makes them the perfect couple to lead Ohio back from a recession caused by Wall Street, Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland said on Tuesday, Jan. 19, as he introduced Yvette McGee Brown as his lieutenant governor running mate for re-election.

“Many of you know that I grew up on Duck Run in Scioto County. Yvette grew up in the city,” Strickland told a crowd of supporters at Ohio Democratic headquarters. “But both of us came from modest means whose families sacrificed to give us something we could only dream was possible as children.”

Without naming Republican opponent John Kasich by name, Strickland, 68, took several swipes at Wall Street. Kasich, a former U.S. House member from suburban Columbus also worked as a managing director for Lehman Brothers, the investment bank that collapsed in 2008 helping trigger the economic slump.

“Ohio well knows that this recession did not start on High Street in Columbus or Market Street in Akron or on Vine Street in Cincinnati,” he said. “It started on Wall Street.”

McGee Brown, 49, a former domestic relations and juvenile court judge in Columbus, said she agreed to leave her current job as president of the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus after Strickland came calling.

“When the governor called and asked me if I would be willing to consider it I didn’t see any other option. I wanted to be part of Ohio continuing to prosper,” McGee Brown said.

McGee Brown wouldn’t be a newcomer to state government. She served as an assistant attorney general and legal counsel to two state departments, a job that brought her in contact with the late state Rep. C.J. McLin, Jr. of Dayton.

“C.J. was the master,” said McGee Brown. “I got some of my best political lessons sitting in C.J.’s office.”

McGee Brown gives the Democratic ticket the same gender balance as the GOP ticket which has Auditor Mary Taylor as Kasich’s running mate. The choice didn’t impress state Republican Chairman Kevin who used a press release to blast Strickland’s “sinking ship.”

“He might need a social worker to counsel him through that failure, but Ohio needs a governor with the backbone and experience to make bold, visionary choices,” said DeWine.

Political scientist John Green said McGee Brown should help Strickland with women, minorities and in central Ohio but that there also are downsides to the choice.

“She is not well known in the state, has limited political experience and isn’t from northeast Ohio, a critical area for the Democrats,” said Green, director of the Bliss Institute of Applied Politics at the University of Akron.

Share this article