Nina Turner, a former state senator and a top surrogate for Sen. Bernie Sanders' 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns, and Cuyahoga County councilwoman Shontel Brown shook hands as they united together on stage at a predominantly Black megachurch in suburban Cleveland.
The short moment of peace arrived two days before Tuesday’s primary election in the special election in Ohio’s 11th Congressional District, a predominantly Black and overwhelmingly Democratic district that covers large portions of Cleveland and its southern and eastern suburbs, as well as parts of the city of Akron.
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Turner and Brown, who are both Black, are the top two candidates in a 13-candidate field in the race to fill the seat left empty when longtime Democratic Rep. Marcia Fudge left earlier this year after being approved as Housing and Urban Development secretary in President Biden's administration.
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"Soon as church is over, y'all go back to fighting," senior pastor R.A. Vernon of the Word Church announced as he prayed for both Turner and Brown.
Turner, the 53-year old front runner in the contest, backs Medicare for All and the Green New Deal, two top aims for progressives. And she’s hauled in almost $6 million in fundraising since starting her campaign in December, more than twice what Brown’s raised.
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The battle between Brown and Turner – always tense – has turned even more negative in recent weeks.
The narrator in a Turner commercial underlined that Brown "voted to give herself a $7,000 raise while opposing Biden’s $15 minimum wage plan." The narrator then shed light at a report questioning Brown’s ethics before charging that "Brown could face charges, if convicted, jail time." Brown’s campaign denounced the ad as false.
Brown, 46, is targeting Turner as a Democratic outsider who’s far too critical of President Biden.
"In Congress, I’ll bring people together and work with Joe Biden to stop gun violence and provide economic relief for families. That’s different from Nina Turner," Brown states in a campaign commercial from May. The ad then show’s a brief clip of an MSNBC interview with Turner where the anchor points out that Turner’s been "highly critical" of then-President-elect Biden."
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An outside group backing Brown has gone even further, running a spot that underlines critical remarks from Turner from July of last year when she claimed that for Sanders followers, there was basically minimal difference in voting for Biden over then-President Trump, comparing it to eating half a bowl of s**t instead of a full bowl of excrement.
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