Schultz: Women can have major influence on politics

From Mount Vernon News:

MOUNT VERNON -- Life, women and politics. Connie Schultz has a good grasp on the true meaning of each of those three issues.

Schultz, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the wife of U.S. Senate candidate Sherrod Brown, shared those thoughts and many others during a spirited speech and question-and-answer session with the Knox County Democratic Women on Tuesday at The Inn at HillenVale.

"It is so important that you not be concerned with how you sound, but that you sound at all. I tell women that all the time because I predict that if more women were covering politics, more Americans would be voting," Schultz said.

Schultz, who has taken a leave of absence from her job during her husband's campaign, kept nearly 75 Democratic women laughing, listening and thinking as she regaled them with stories about politics, women's voting rights, writing and her life growing up the daughter of a staunch union worker.

"When I started writing my column, some of the editors and some of the readers were complaining I wasn't a typical arts and life columnist. It's no surprise that the majority of these people were male," said Schultz. "My attitude about the arts and life section is, well, women think about everything, so I'm going to write about everything. I'm going to write about the art of living. How do we feel about things, how we feel about the war, how we feel about voter registration, how we feel about ex-cons getting out after just 13 years."

Schultz explained her background, telling the members how she introduced herself as a columnist -- as the daughter of a union man who brought his lunchbox to work every day. She also kept the audience in stitches with stories of her and her husband, Sherrod Brown, buying what turned out to be a $9 red, white and blue donkey for $75 at an auction in Adams County, and about the power of women speaking up.

"Sherrod and I went to a dinner at a fancy place and there was a tip jar full of 5s and 10s, not just ones and change, at the coat check," said Schultz. "The woman behind the counter was older and looked tired. I pointed to the tip jar and said, `at least you get to keep the tips.' She said no, management does. I said whoa, there's a story. I got calls from two vice presidents saying there wasn't a story here. They said they used the money for the Christmas party and that the workers didn't care who got the tips.

"I told him, if you change the policy right now, I'll write the column about how you saw the light. They said no because nobody cares. So I wrote the column. I told the story then said at the end, `they say you don't care who keeps the tips. I think they're wrong. What do you think?'

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06/08/2006 / Permalink / Central Ohio, Connie, Hometown Tour, Women, (all tags)