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Democrat Sen. Sherrod Brown reportedly failed to include wife’s six-figure pension on annual financial forms

August 16, 2023 | | Print Article

Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) evidently failed to disclose his wife’s hefty six-figure pension on previous annual financial forms which made it appear that he is worth much less than he actually is.

According to CA Knowledge, the leftist politico is worth approximately $8 million currently.

The failure to declare his wife, Connie Schultz’s pension amount understates his net worth by as much as half a million, according to a recent report.

According to that report, Brown, who is now 70, revealed in his 2022 financial disclosure that his wife had somewhere between $250,001 and $500,000 in a 401(k) that she acquired during her time as a journalist with Cleveland.com and The Plain Dealer. She worked there as a columnist between 1993 to 2011. She also had a teacher’s pension as a former professor at Kent State University worth between $100,001 and $250,000.

The amounts were disclosed in a brief subsequent filing by Democratic law firm Elias Law Group LLP, according to the New York Post. Attorneys showed in the filing the retirement assets for Schultz going back as far as 2007, which was Brown’s first year in the Senate.

“Connie’s retirement was not listed and the previous reports have now been updated,” Rachel Petri, a spokeswoman for Brown’s campaign, noted in a statement.

The non-listing of the amounts is a violation of ethics rules in the Senate but it is unlikely there will be any repercussions for the omissions.

Brown also reportedly has assets in a state employee pension plan and bank accounts that range anywhere from $133,006 to $395,000. He has between $200,002 and $500,000 in liabilities for mortgages on properties in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio as well.

The Democrat earns $174,000 per year as a senator. He also collected approximately $27,000 last year from his Ohio pension as a former state lawmaker.

Ironically and hypocritically, Brown has savaged his opponents for not filing timely financial disclosure forms. In 2012, his campaign tore into Republican Senate candidate Josh Mandel for filing his personal finance forms six months late.

The senator has had other financial missteps this year. Back in May, he erroneously claimed tax credits on his properties, according to NBC News. Following that, he was late making payments on one of them a number of times. He has paid back taxes on the properties and is foregoing credits in the future according to his campaign.

In 2012, Brown also made a similar late tax payment on a DC condo, according to The Plain Dealer.

Brown is seeking a fourth term in 2024. His financial snafus may be used against him in that race.

GOP Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose, GOP state Sen. Matt Dolan, and Buckeye State businessman Bernie Moreno (R) are all nipping at Brown’s heels in the latest polls.

“Sherrod Brown has been in Washington, DC so long, he’s completely lost track of reality and his own hypocrisy,” Dolan told the New York Post in an interview. “After voting to raise Ohioans’ taxes, Brown got caught dodging his own tax payments. Now he’s guilty of ignoring the same ethics rules he used to attack Republicans.”

“Sherrod Brown arrogantly thinks the rules don’t apply to him, but next year Ohioans are going to send him a message that he’s dead wrong,” he vowed.

Brown and Schultz have been married since 2004 when she was working at The Plain Dealer. She began teaching at Kent State in 2015. This year, she left that position to take another in Denison University’s journalism department.

Financial disclosures from 2022 show that Schultz earned over $4,000 in her professorial roles, her royalties from the publisher Random House, and her work as a columnist at USA Today. She also received $750 for two articles published in The Washington Post.

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