The Brown piece makes Tim Ryan's decision to remain in the House much more understandable - if Brown is elected nationwide in 2020 he gets the Senate appointment, and if Brown isn't on the ticket/loses nationwide then he challenges Portman in a Trump six-year midterm in 2022.
Or he's a young guy in a safe seat on the right side of a massive generational bottleneck in the House...
I don't see why anything in that piece indicates a Brown 2020 run any more than any of the various other pieces on Brown have. He's a nice guy, he has the right bio if he wants to do it.
But he doesn't want to do it. He's never wanted to do it. We could pretty transparently *see * if he wanted to do it (he'd pop up in this thread a lot more, that's for sure), and he's not doing any of the things that would indicate he wants to.
He doesn't want to do it.
I mostly agree but he's candid about wanting the VP job once he was a finalist and about regretting not being able to campaign across the Midwest. That doesn't mean he's insincere now when he expresses a lack of desire to run for president. But presumably, if he's re-elected in one of the handful of states Democrats need to flip to take back the White House, the buzz about him running will grow and possibly affect him a way similar to being in VP contention did.
As for Tim Ryan, sounds like he may be eyeing running in 2020 himself and being elected governor in 2018 is too fast to turn around and run for president. (At least, it has been for a few decades.)