Politics & Power Quote by Sherrod Brown

A line like this works because it turns politics into a custody battle: government has been “in the hands” of the wrong adults, and Sherrod Brown is promising to bring it home. The phrasing is deliberately physical and moral. “Take our government out” suggests extraction, even rescue, from a force that’s not merely influential but improperly possessive. “Corporate special interests” is a compressed villain: faceless, out-of-state, moneyed, and self-dealing. It lets listeners fill in their own culprit, from health insurers to Wall Street to Big Tech, without Brown naming a target that could narrow the coalition.

The subtext is classic Midwestern populism with a local seal. By specifying “Ohio families,” Brown isn’t just being parochial; he’s converting an abstract anti-corruption message into a constituency with faces, paychecks, and school calendars. “Where it belongs” does moral heavy lifting: it frames democratic control as a matter of rightful ownership, implying that corporate influence isn’t just unpopular, it’s illegitimate.

Contextually, this is campaign language designed to fuse economic anxiety with civic grievance. Brown’s brand has long been pro-labor and anti-outsourcing; this sentence extends that posture from factories to the Statehouse, arguing the same power imbalance is rigging both. It’s also a prophylactic against cynicism. If voters think the system is bought, he doesn’t ask them to trust government as-is; he promises to repossess it. The intended emotional payoff is not hope in institutions, but solidarity against capture.