Hillarysworld

"The Washington view is that the worth of a candidate is their fundraising prowess. But the voters don't feel that way. The voters don't care," Brunner told CQ Politics last week in Washington, D.C., where she was attending a conference of the National Association of Secretaries of State.

"I only need enough money to win," Brunner said. "And frankly, in this economic environment, it's rather obscene when people start crowing about how many millions they have on hand."

Brunner is very much the outsider in the Democratic primary. Gov. Ted Strickland (D) is backing Fisher, his No. 2. Numerous Democratic senators, including Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nev.), have donated to Fisher's campaign from their leadership political action committees. Brunner has sparred with Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), who oversees the party's Senate race strategy as chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. The DSCC has reported making some "coordinated expenditures" in concert with Fisher's campaign. Portman and Fisher have criticized each other's record but have largely ignored Brunner.

But Brunner said she has enthusiastic supporters. She said her campaign has more than 1,000 volunteers and that "most of my [nominating] signatures were collected in the months of December and January, in the cold, with people going door-to-door as volunteers."

Brunner, a former judge in Franklin County (Columbus) who was elected to her current post in 2006, thinks she appeals more to political independents than Fisher. She noted that Ohio has never elected a woman senator or even nominated a woman for that office in a contested primary election.

Brunner said that Ohio has high unemployment but that there is promising potential for job creation, especially in the "clean energy" and biomedical industries. A cap-and-trade system to limit greenhouse gas emissions "is going to be difficult, but it needs to happen," she said. "It's actually going to create jobs."

She sees the economy and health care as closely linked: "If a small business would be able to get some relief on providing health care, and health care that actually covered enough expenses for employees, they could afford to bring on more workers, even part-time," she said.

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Now, is she the same SOS Of Ohio that we all tried to call during the 2008 primaries - the one who refused to tackle the issue of Illinois voters pouring into Ohio to mangle with the primary??