Our Team

As a Congressman from Ohio’s 13th District for 14 years, Senator Sherrod Brown earned a reputation as an independent voice for ordinary Ohioans and middle-class families – a man of principle who has made a career of standing up to special interests that have too much influence in Washington.

In 2006, Ohio voters elected Sherrod to the United States Senate with one of the largest margins over an incumbent in U.S. history. Since then, he has been working on behalf of Ohioans to stop the erosion of jobs in Ohio due to the wrong-headed trade and economic policies of the past.

A series of firsts defines the judicial career of Justice Yvette McGee Brown. She was the first African-American elected to the Franklin County Domestic Relations/Juvenile Court. In January 2011, she became the first African-American woman to serve as a Justice on the Supreme Court of Ohio.

Justice McGee Brown was first elected to the Franklin County Court of Common Pleas, Domestic Relations and Juvenile division in 1992. As lead Juvenile Court Judge, she led the creation of the Family Drug Court and the SMART Program, a truancy and educational neglect intervention program. She served on the Common Pleas Court until 2002, when she retired from the bench to create the Center for Child and Family Advocacy at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

Senator Eric H. Kearney serves as Minority Leader of the Ohio Senate and represents the 9th Senate District. A life-long Cincinnatian, he is a graduate of St. Xavier High School and earned a B.A. in English from Dartmouth College. He received his J.D. from the University Of Cincinnati College Of Law. He is married to Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney Esq. and they have two children, Celeste and Asher. In 2004 the Kearney family was honored as the Black Family Reunion’s “Family of the Year.”

Prior to joining the Ohio Senate, Senator Kearney founded Sesh Communications—one of the largest African American owned publishing companies, which publishes The Cincinnati Herald, The Northern Kentucky Herald, and The Dayton Defender. He also practiced law with Strauss & Troy, LLP and later became a partner with the Cincinnati law firm Cohen, Todd, Kite & Stanford, LLC.

Armond D. Budish (D-Beachwood) is the Minority Leader for the 129th Ohio General Assembly and was Speaker of the House for the 128th Ohio General Assembly. He represents the 8th House District, which includes parts of the city of Cleveland and its eastern suburbs.

Leader Budish obtained his Bachelor’s Degree with honors from Swarthmore College, and then earned a Juris Doctorate, Order of the Coif, from New York University Law School. After clerking for a federal judge in Washington, D.C., he joined the law firm Hahn Loeser and Parks in Cleveland.

Representative Marcia L. Fudge is a committed public servant who brings a hard-working, problem-solving spirit of determination to Congress and to the task of creating jobs, attacking predatory lending, and improving health care, small business, and education.

These characteristics were honed as Warrensville Heights’ first African American female Mayor. As the city’s top executive, Representative Fudge led Warrensville Heights in building 200 new homes and shoring up a sagging retail base. Former Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell described Representative Fudge to The Plain Dealer as “absolutely the hardest worker you have ever seen.”

Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur, who represents Northern Ohio’s Ninth Congressional District, is currently serving her fifteenth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She is the senior-most woman in the 112th Congress.

Congresswoman Kaptur, of Polish-American heritage with humble, working class roots, mirrors the bootstrap nature of her district. Her family operated a small grocery where her mother worked after serving on the original organizing committee of an auto trade union at the Champion Spark Plug Company. Congresswoman Kaptur became the first member of her family to attend college, receiving a scholarship for her undergraduate work. Trained as a city and regional planner, she practiced 15 years in Toledo and throughout the country.

Congressman Dennis Kucinich represents Ohio’s 10th District. Having been elected to Cleveland’s City Council at age 23, Dennis J. Kucinich was well-known to Cleveland residents when they chose him as their mayor in 1977 at the age of 31. At the time, Kucinich was the youngest person ever elected to lead a major American city. Since being elected to Congress in 1996, Kucinich has been a tireless advocate for worker rights, civil rights and human rights.

Tim Ryan was first sworn in as a member of Congress on January 7, 2003. Now in his fifth term, Ryan has proven himself to be strong advocate for the working families of Ohio’s 17th District and a dynamic leader in the House of Representatives.

In 2006, Ryan was chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to join the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which is responsible for nominating Democratic Members to serve on House Committees and advising the Speaker on policy. That same year, the Steering and Policy Committee appointed Ryan to the House Committee on Appropriations, where he served on the the Subcommittee on the Defense, the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, Related Agencies (“Labor-HHS”), and the Subcommittee on Financial Services.

A leader who makes a difference for Northeast Ohio, Betty Sutton has spent her life fighting to make the lives of Ohioans better. Her work both as a labor lawyer and as a public servant has earned her a reputation as an independent leader and tenacious advocate for the people of Ohio. She has made a career putting the greater good of the many ahead of special interests of the few.

Betty has never been afraid to take on tough fights and to do what is right, even in the face of unbeatable odds. In 1997, Sutton fought tirelessly from her post on the Commerce and Labor Committee, against attacks on workers compensation benefits.