Hilary Clinton endorsed a challenger to Nina Turner’s congressional bid, recalling the divide between the former secretary of state and Sen. Bernie Sanders that dominated the 2016 Democratic presidential primary.
Passing over Turner, who started as a “Ready for Hillary” signee before jumping ship to support Sanders’s presidential candidacy, Clinton endorsed Shontel Brown, a Cuyahoga County councilwoman widely regarded as the most formidable challenger to Turner in this year’s special election.
“I’m proud to endorse @ShontelMBrown for Congress in the OH special election. Shontel made history as the first Black woman to chair her county Dem party, and she’ll work to help her state and our country recover from COVID,” Clinton tweeted, inviting her followers to “join [her] in supporting” Brown by linking to an ActBlue donation page.
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Brown accepted the endorsement, calling Clinton “an inspiration to [her] for decades.”
“She is a champion for working families,” she said. “I’m thrilled and honored that she endorsed our campaign for Congress.”
Secretary Hillary Clinton has been an inspiration to me for decades. She is a champion for working families. I’m thrilled and honored that she endorsed our campaign for Congress.
We have so much work to do for Northeast Ohio. Let’s win this campaign, and get to work. https://t.co/nGwbOPqC6F
— Shontel Brown for Congress (@ShontelMBrown) June 16, 2021
Turner, a former Cleveland city councilwoman and Ohio state senator, supported Clinton’s candidacy throughout 2014. However, the Ohio Democrat threw her support behind Sanders in 2015 ahead of the 2016 presidential election.
“I’m very attracted by his message and his style and that he has held pretty much strong on his beliefs, and the world is catching up with him,” she said in November 2015, according to multiple outlets.
After Turner filed paperwork to run for Ohio’s 11th Congressional District on Dec. 9 of last year, the Twitter account People for Bernie, a group of liberal activists and organizers, celebrated the news.
“It’s official,” the account wrote. Turner also secured the backing of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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Turner and Brown are vying for the seat vacated by former Rep. Marcia Fudge, who left Congress to join the Biden administration as the secretary of housing and urban development. The primary is set for Aug. 3.
The seat is not expected to be competitive in the general election. It has a partisan voter index of D+30, meaning the district voted 30 percentage points more Democratic than the United States as a whole.
