Ohio secretary of state Jennifer Brunner has her eyes on George
Voinovich’s soon-to-be-vacant U.S. Senate seat and is in the middle of
a primary campaign against lieutenant governor Lee Fisher. Fisher has
loads of campaign money, but Brunner is casting herself as a
progressive candidate who isn’t afraid to speak out on issues that make
conservatives freak (gay marriage) and other politicians hide from (a
death-penalty moratorium in Ohio). Brunner visited with Scene during a recent visit to Cleveland. — Damian Guevara
What do you think is the big difference between you and Lee
Fisher?
What seems to be happening in the race is that I’ll make a very
clear statement on a position that may be controversial, and then he’ll
usually catch up and speak in a more bland way about that issue. For
instance, the Stupak-Pitts amendment [restricting access to abortions]
that was adopted in order to get the health-bill reform passed out of
the House of Representatives: I came out very strongly on it, and later
[Fisher] finally made a statement about it. On gay marriage, he started
out saying he could be convinced, and once I came out strongly for it,
he was for it. On the Employee Free Choice Act, I came out strongly for
it, and finally, at a state-party dinner, he said in one simple
sentence that he supports it.
You drive around Cleveland, and parts of it are a wasteland.
Who’s to blame for the foreclosures, and how does the region
recover?
I served as a common pleas judge [in Franklin County, 2001-05] and
as a result, I saw a huge uptick in foreclosures, even as I was leaving
the bench to run for secretary of state. When you really delve into the
foreclosure crisis, what you discover is that there has been this
trading of mortgages. Mortgages can be pieced together, securitized,
sold as one, sold in parts — it’s like unregulated securities.
There’s an organization called MERS, Mortgage Electronic Registration
System, which literally holds the debt interest in people’s mortgages,
and the trading and the transferring of that interest goes on without
having to record it in the county recorder’s office. So many times on
the foreclosure, [law firms] file a foreclosure with the wrong owner of
the mortgage. This kind of blatant disregard for the state and local
laws of recording and showing who actually owns the property, as well
as the plight of people who are caught in the situation — it’s
all about money. This is such an ingrained pattern over the last few
years that it’s going to take some major systemic changes to be felt by
individual consumers. If the original lender had to keep a little skin
in the game, even 10 percent, I think you’d have a completely different
story here.
With so many people out of jobs and below the poverty line in
Cleveland, where are we failing in Ohio, in terms of public
education?
Clearly with funding, and it’s been that way for years. The young
man whose name was on the original lawsuit that challenged the
constitutionality of school funding in Ohio [Nathan DeRolph of Perry
County], he went completely through high school [with no change]. We
had a supreme court that had [the case] four times, and even though it
had the power to hold the legislature in contempt, it never did. But to
completely fix the funding formula might entail adding more state
dollars to it, which is really tough in the economic times we have
now.
What’s the next generation of industry that can revive the Ohio
economy, and what kind of skills will Ohioans need to take advantage of
that?
Ohio stands to gain greatly from bringing the public and private
sector together to develop clean-energy jobs. It could mean building a
new grid — you have steel plants that could contribute to that.
As far as wind power, there aren’t a lot of new sites able to be
developed, but we know where on the best locations for wind are going
to be. Part of the problem is connecting [a wind-energy system] to the
main grid. We could go further with a smart grid, where consumers can
actually see when they’re wasting electricity and resources, because
the cleanest energy is the energy that is not used. We have so many
pieces and parts to put together a coherent plan and operation for
clean- energy jobs and to actually make money for Ohio, but it’s going
to take some determined and consistent leadership to get that from
start to finish.
How would a clean-energy plan work?
If we focused on small- to medium-size cities — cities of
50,000 to 500,000, which would include Cleveland, Cleveland Heights,
Parma, Lakewood, Euclid, Mentor, Lorain, Elyria — those size
cities are not that far removed from open land. There are a lot of
places in those cities where there is vacant land that can be used and
bought at a much lesser cost than in larger metropolitan areas. You
could create a field of solar panels — it takes eight acres
of land for one megawatt of electricity, which would provide enough
electricity for 10,000 homes. The grids we have for electricity are
antiquated. They’re meant to carry large loads on long distances. When
you carry them those long distances, there’s a 10 percent loss of
electricity. If we could start localizing our energy production,
starting first with the grids, there are so many jobs there in
manufacturing, in training. When you’re talking about retooling
factories, you bring in the building trades to do that.
What would the government’s role be in all this?
It takes a government with a political will to bring people together
and keep on it. It’s one of those things you talk about when improving
the lives of people in poverty or bringing more jobs — you just
don’t throw money at it. It takes people who roll up their sleeves and
stay on it. The Republican viewpoint — at least for those
running for Senate — is, “Well, we have to be more favorable to
business and the jobs will be there.” Yes, we do have to be more
favorable to business, but we have to stay engaged.
Do you also see potential for agriculture in Northeast
Ohio?
There seem to be more people in urban areas paying attention to
where their food comes from. Why couldn’t there be partnerships where
you’re localizing some of your food production and you’re creating a
partnership with city schools, and you have an organization or business
that supplies local produce directly to the schools? If we start
looking for the things we have in common, so much can be done more
quickly than we think and for a lot less money.
During the Romell Broom execution fiasco (covered in
Scene, “Dead Man Talking,” September 30),
you clearly were against the death penalty on [news website] Huffington
Post. Why do you think Ohioans, and Americans in general, are tolerant
of the death penalty?
I don’t know why they’re tolerant of it, having personally seen or
talked to people who have been incarcerated for 26 years and who were
found innocent later, and they were on death row for part of that time.
If we make an erroneous execution, we can’t undo it. I understand that
for someone has been the victim of a heinous crime, maybe there is some
satisfaction. I myself don’t know if that gives them the closure or the
satisfaction they need. They’ll never get the person back.
This article appears in Dec 9-15, 2009.