By Joe Vardon

Columbus Dispatch and

Jack Torry

Washington Bureau

President Barack Obama’s $787 billion economic stimulus package was hanging in the balance. Sherrod Brown’s personal life had already been turned upside down.

Brown, Ohio’s Democratic first-term U.S. senator from Avon, had lost his mother to leukemia the week before in February, 2009. The vote to salvage the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was being held the same night of her memorial viewing.

So when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., telephoned Brown and said his vote was needed, Brown, his wife, and grown daughters boarded a military jet in Mansfield — a commercial flight would never have arrived in time for the vote. At 10:45 p.m., Brown entered a nearly empty Senate chamber, voted in favor of the bill, turned about and flew back to Mansfield for the next day’s funeral.

“It was a little surreal,” said Brown, now 59, of the ordeal. His wife, Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Connie Schultz, accompanied him to the Capitol that night.

It was a vote defined by personal tragedy during a six-year Senate term that defined a generation.

The issues that arose during Brown’s time in the upper chamber not only highlighted the deep partisan divide in Washington, they divided the country. They are issues that will not only decide elections, including the race between Brown and Republican state Treasurer Josh Mandel on Nov. 6; they also profoundly shaped the present and future in America.

The stimulus package. Obamacare. The American auto rescue. Each was enacted, either by an act of Congress or at the direction of Obama, with Brown’s support.

It’s a record Brown staunchly defends as Ohioans decide whether to send him back to Washington for another six years.

“I look at a lot of these things the last four years and see how we’ve really made a difference,” Brown said, arguing that each act helped set the country on the right course.

“The Recovery Act, if we hadn’t done it, it would’ve been much worse. When the stimulus and the auto rescue really started to kick in, Ohio’s unemployment rate was 10.6 percent. Now it’s down to 7.2 percent. How can that be anything other than progress? Not enough, but clearly progress.”

Brown’s is a record Mandel and the outside interests that support him love to attack — the Republican candidate has used words like “un-American,” “extreme,” and “liberal” to label Brown.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which is among those outside groups spending millions of dollars to help defeat Brown, says he’s voted in favor of their interests just 32 percent of the time in a career that includes 14 years spent in the U.S. House of Representatives.

After a recent Brown speech to the Dayton-area chamber, Brown responded tersely when approached by Middletown chamber president Bill Triick.

“I asked him a question and he was argumentative and defensive,” said Triick, who acknowledged that supports Mandel as well as the U.S. Chamber’s views of Brown. “It was really disappointing. It would be nice to hear him explain why he votes the way he does.”

During his 2006 campaign for the Senate, Brown peppered his speeches with sharp denunciations of major oil and insurance companies, seemingly relishing the role of the class warrior. When Brown took office, analysts believed he would be a national voice for progressive ideas, much like Sen. Howard Metzenbaum during his three terms as a Democratic senator from Ohio.

But unlike Metzenbaum, Brown has demonstrated a willingness to put down his sword — if a link can be demonstrated between a company’s vitality and its workers. Brown enthusiastically backed the 2009 federal bailout of General Motors and Chrysler and has aired a commercial of him admiring a new Chevy Cruze built at the GM plant in Lordstown and declaring, “We’re both from Ohio.’’

“Every day Sherrod looks at his job as how it impacts Ohio’s jobs,’’ said Dennis Eckart, a former Democratic congressman from Cleveland and a friend of Brown’s. “Howard had a more traditional view that if it’s big it must be bad.’’

On the night he was elected to the Senate in 2006, Brown told enthusiastic supporters in Cleveland that “because of progressive principles and mainstream progressive values, as Ohio goes in ’06, so goes the nation in ’08!’’

He embraced a visible role on ending U.S. combat involvement in Iraq, saying in January of 2007 that “one of the things we were elected to do was stop the escalation of this war.’’ When Schultz, his wife, wrote a book in 2008, “And His Lovely Wife — A Memoir of the Woman Beside the Man,’’ it seemed to be the final proof anyone needed: Sherrod Brown planned a national role for himself.

Instead, lobbyists and analysts have seen a different Brown emerge. He seemed content to emphasize issues that were important in Ohio.

He accentuated his opposition to free trade agreements such as the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, occupying a niche that won the enthusiastic support of organized labor in Ohio. He authored a currency manipulation bill as Ohio companies sought help to compete with the Chinese.

He talked about the need to combat global warming, but in 2008 voted to kill a bill championed by Democrats that would have forced coal-fired utilities in Ohio to curb their emissions of greenhouse gasses. When a similar bill was being considered in 2010, Brown said it “falls short of what we need’’ to protect Ohio industries.

Unlike Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who accepted a high-profile post on last year’s super committee that hoped to forge a major deficit reduction package, Brown appeared to shy away from such visible roles. In many ways, he seemed a more comfortable fit with traditionally cautious Ohio senators, such as Republicans George V. Voinovich and Mike DeWine or Democrat John Glenn.

“He doesn’t do big things,’’ said one Washington lobbyist who spoke on condition of anonymity. “DeWine didn’t do big things. Voinovich? It’s hard-pressed to think of what he did. That’s the way Ohio senators have been. The only guy who saw himself as fighting for big national issues was Metzenbaum.’’

While Brown is accessible to Ohio newspapers and broadcasters — when the Senate is in session he holds a weekly conference call with Ohio reporters — he has not appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press’’ since he has been in the Senate. His aides boast that he visited all 88 counties in Ohio during his first two years in office and has conducted more than 200 community roundtables.

Among the unlikeliest of relationships Brown has cultivated, the senator has forged an association of sorts with Alex Fischer, the president and chief executive officer of the Columbus Partnership. Before he joined the organization, Fischer donated money to one of Republican Josh Mandel’s earlier races.

Fischer credited Brown with helping to secure a $100 million federal grant for the Ohio State Medical Center and $16 million to help complete the East-West Connector that will link the Rickenbacker Intermodal Facility in Columbus with U.S. 23 and Interstates 270 and 71.

“I would dare say philosophically there are many things we don’t agree on,” Fischer said, “but in terms of those issues related to the community and Columbus in economic development, the senator has been a very good partner on projects that are community important.’’