Brown ad highlights work on pension issue

WASHINGTON — Sen. Sherrod Brown’s re–election campaign has launched a one– minute ad highlighting the senator’s work to save multiemployer pensions.

The ad features Rita Lewis, the widow of Butch Lewis, a retired truck driver from West Chester who died in 2015 of a stroke. Butch Lewis, the retired head of Teamsters Local 100, had spent the previous year working to protect endangered Teamster pensions, and doctors and Rita Lewis believe the stress played a factor in his death.

In the ad, Rita Lewis talks about the stress her husband felt when he received a letter slashing the pension he’d worked 34 years for. “Butch was never the same,” she says. “And a year later, he was gone.”

She said Brown “led the fight so tens of thousands of Ohioans could get what they’re owed.”

“Senator Brown is very different,” Rita Lewis says in the ad. “He is a man of true grit. He’s authentic. When he looks at you, he cares. He doesn’t forget you.”

Butch Lewis is the namesake of the “Butch Lewis Act,” a bill Brown has introduced aimed at preserving multiemployer pensions, which allow employers to pool resources and provide workers with retirement security. The bill would provide a low-interest, 30-year loan to troubled pension plans, with no cuts to benefits.

The plans, negotiated by unions, have been a key part of collective bargaining, but the Wall Street crash, as well as the Brown deregulation of the trucking industry, have left 150 to 200 of the 1,400 multi-employer plans insolvent, with the potential to run out of money in the next 20 years, according to the Pension Rights Center.

Brown and Sen. Rob Portman, R–Ohio, are members of a bipartisan committee working to solve the pension crisis. Brown, who is a co–chair of the committee, continues to push the Butch Lewis Act as a solution, though Republicans have been resistant.

The ad is rare in that it’s a minute-long — most TV ads run 30 seconds — but is part of $12.5 million that the Brown campaign has reserved for radio and TV this fall. The ad makes no mention of Rep. Jim Renacci, the Republican who is challenging Brown for re-election in November.