Enquirer - Hackett embraces Brown

(The Cincinnati Enquirer)

After five months of bad-mouthing Sherrod Brown at every opportunity, Paul Hackett embraced his former rival's U.S. Senate candidacy Monday at a Democratic "unity rally" on Cincinnati's riverfront.

"This was about me being a hot-tempered Irishman," said Hackett, the Iraq war veteran and Indian Hill lawyer who had planned to challenge Brown for the Democratic Senate nomination. "It's over now."

Hackett - who achieved rock star status among southern Ohio Democrats after narrowly losing the 2nd District congressional race to Republican Jean Schmidt last summer - campaigned last fall and into early 2006 for the Senate seat held by Republican Mike DeWine.

He dropped out in February and immediately went on national television to accuse Brown of spreading rumors that, as a Marine major in Iraq, he posed for inappropriate photos with the bodies of dead Iraqis.

Monday afternoon, as a reminder of the bitterness between the two, the National Republican Senatorial Committee released a sheet of quotes from Hackett about Brown, including ones where he said Brown was "puking out the same old garbage" and should be "put in a corner and (made to) wear a dunce cap."

The Brown-Hackett feud ended Thursday, Hackett said, when he was cutting the grass at his Indian Hill home and decided to call Brown. "I decided this had gone on long enough," he said. "I didn't want my kids to think their father was the kind who would hold a grudge."

Brown, a congressman from Lorain, and his wife, Connie Schultz, stood side-by-side with Hackett and his family Monday afternoon at a hastily-arranged outdoor rally at the Theodore M. Berry International Friendship Park - an appropriate venue for a coming-together of two political rivals.

"Sherrod Brown is apparently desperate enough that he'll take an endorsement from a guy who doesn't like him and thinks his voting record is toxic," said Ohio Republican Chairman Bob Bennett.

Brown said he and Hackett worked out their differences in the Thursday phone call and on Saturday, when the Browns visited the Hacketts at their home.

"It's over," Brown said. "We have so much more in common than ever separated us. I'm glad to have his support."

E-mail hwilkinson@enquirer.com