Politico – Sherrod Brown is Ohio’s last statewide Democrat standing after a Republican tide washed over the state in November. The first-term senator’s approval rating rests below the perilous 50 percent mark, and he’s compiled one of the most liberal voting records during his four years in the upper chamber.

Political custom suggests that Brown, who’s up for reelection in 2012, would have made a break toward the center by now. But even as some of his fellow swing-state colleagues show the typical signs of recalibrating their profiles in advance of an election year, the 58-year-old Brown shows no indication of dulling his progressive edge.

Most recently, during the standoff over the Wisconsin legislation limiting collective-bargaining rights for public employees, Brown underscored his status as a dyed-in-the-wool defender of the labor movement — at some cost, because of the vehemence and impropriety of his remarks on the Senate floor.

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