Sherrod Brown, Rob Portman find common ground in U.S. Senate despite party differences

WASHINGTON — You wouldn't think they like each other or have anything in common: the soft-spoken, button-down conservative Republican from Cincinnati who served as U.S. trade representative under President George W. Bush, and the gravel-voiced, rumpled Democrat from Cleveland who wrote a book called “The Myths of Free Trade.” Yet even as Sen. Rob Portman faces a re-election battle against former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland this year, and Sen. Sherrod Brown has been mentioned