Mourning senator’s vote sealed the deal

Washington —- The Senate left open its vote on the stimulus bill for five hours Friday night as Senate leaders awaited the climactic return of Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who flew in from Ohio and cast the decisive 60th aye vote.

Brown strode into the chamber at 10:45 p.m., wearing a dark suit and no smile. He greeted Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and then gave the clerk a thumbs up, ending what had been one of the longest votes in Senate history.

Brown, whose 88-year-old mother died of leukemia last week, had dashed from her memorial viewing in Ohio on Friday night and boarded a government aircraft provided by the White House. The journey illustrated the extraordinary steps Democrats took to guarantee a major victory.

For Brown, the moment turned on the memory of his mother, who was raised in Mansfield, Ga., during the Depression. A champion of social and racial justice, Emily Campbell Brown read and reread Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” and insisted that her boys address black adults not by their first names but as “Mr.” or “Mrs.”

“I know she would want him to be there for the vote,” said Brown’s wife, Connie Schultz. “There was just no question that Sherrod would have to cast his vote.”

After Brown voted, an aide whisked him and Schultz through an empty marble hallway in the Capitol, into an elevator and toward a car that would carry them to Andrews for their flight back to rejoin family in Ohio for the funeral.