Politics

Democrat ‘Working Class’ Group Run By Lefty Who Said Taking Husband’s Last Name Would Stop Her From Voting

Sen. Sherrod Brown (Screenshot YouTube/WTOL11)

The woman running former Democratic Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s nonprofit targeting working-class voters has espoused far-left views on a host of issues, including an apparent focus on racial politics.

Brown, who served in the Senate for 18 years before losing reelection in 2024, launched his Dignity of Work Institute in March 2025 five months before he announced he was running for his old job and challenging Republican Ohio Sen. Jon Husted. Months later in March, Brown’s Institute, which The Marietta Times described as a “nonprofit think tank,” introduced lawyer Kayla Griffin Green as its first-ever executive director.

Green — then known as Kayla Griffin — in April 2025 penned an op-ed for Cleveland.com stating that she did not take her husband’s last name, whom she had married a year earlier, because she feared it would jeopardize her right to vote, echoing a dubious Democratic talking point that women who change their names have difficulty proving their identity at the ballot box. Ohio requires photo ID to vote.

“At the last minute, I chose not to change my last name, and now it is clear that my decision was right,” she wrote in the op-ed. “And for many women in our state, that decision may no longer be a choice afforded to them.”

“Between the assaults on my reproductive rights, this is yet another stripping away of my rights because I am not only a woman, but a Black woman, and the first Black woman born with all of my rights in my family,” she wrote later in the op-ed.

Green has since used her married name Kayla Griffin Green in professional contexts.

Neither Brown’s office nor the Dignity of Work Institute responded to Daily Caller News Foundation requests for comment regarding the senator’s specific working relationship with the activist. Green also did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.

The activist made other racially-charged comments about hot button political issues during the same year.

Less than a year before she took the reins of Brown’s nonprofit, Green conducted an interview with author Alencia Johnson hosted by ThirdSpace Action Lab, a Cleveland based “racial equity” group whose website states that it was “created to disrupt the vicious cycle of disinvestment and displacement that exploit low-income communities of color.”

When the topic of the July 2025 conversation moved to abortion, Green told Johnson that she believed Ohio over the last few years had become “like a mix between ‘Hunger Games’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,'” naming two popular dystopian media franchises.

Green then clarified that she was referring to Ohio’s law allowing permitless carry of firearms in the state as well as a pro-life bill introduced by Republicans in the state legislature.

Then, on a November 2025 episode of the NAACP Cleveland Branch’s Cleveland Pulse Podcast, Green suggested that black women were not born with the right to vote before the 1960s. Green had previously served as the branch’s president per her biography on Collaborate Cleveland’s website.

“My mother was born before 1964, so she was born before the Voting Rights Act, so that means I, as her eldest daughter, I’m the first generation on my momma’s side to be born with the right to vote,” she said during the episode.

“My mom knew her grandmother, her great, great grandmother … back five generations, right? Of all of them, none of them were born with the right to vote. Not even my mother, right? And, so I’m the first generation with born with the right to vote,” Green added. “And they’re trying to reverse that, particularly for women, and extremely for black women.” 

During the NAACP podcast, Green called her fellow black women “the 92% who are voting, trying to show up for everybody,” appearing to refer to the percentage of the demographic group who cast their ballot for failed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.

“We put everybody on our backs. Our vote often, is the way that you see how the moral shift is happening in our community,” she added.

As of Wednesday, ThirdSpace Action Lab’s YouTube channel had only 73 subscribers and its video had just 88 views. The Cleveland Pulse Podcast’s YouTube channel had 67 subscribers and its video of the episode featuring Green had 66 views.

“We are institutional and community organizers turning evidence-based strategies into action and co-creating liberated ‘third spaces’ for people of color,” the group’s website adds.

Green has shared other insights into her views on voting through her past writings. In a 2020 op-ed for Cleveland.com, she advocated for making it easier for people to apply to vote by mail online, asking, “Why should anyone have to download a document from a state website, print it, pay for a stamp and then mail it off?” 

“It’s shameful that our voting system seems designed to make it difficult for many of our citizens to cast a ballot,” she added.

In her Instagram bio, Green — who had singled out the “assault” on her “reproductive rights” — describes herself as a “Black Christian Author,” and includes the words “Jesus & Justice.” She also indicates that her preferred pronouns are “she/her.”

She is also active on TikTok where she also includes the phrase “Jesus and Justice” in her bio. Several of her posts show her public displays of religion. Additionally, in one video she highlights a speech she made staunchly opposing an August 2023 Ohio ballot initiative that was championed by the pro-life movement as it would have raised the threshold required to approve the state’s abortion referendum.

Another issue Green has weighed in on in recent years is the role of police and law enforcement — an area where Brown has recently come under fire for appearing to adopt more left-wing rhetoric.

On Facebook, Green shared a video from an account called “America’s Police Problem” and promoted an event titled “Reimagining Policing in the Wake of Continued Police Violence,” both in June 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s death.

Two years later while speaking at the United Nations Permanent Forum on People of African Descent in Switzerland, the attorney and activist discussed “unarmed black people killed the the state sanctioned police violence,” a video she posted to Facebook expressing how “proud” she is of herself for addressing the forum shows.

“One indicator of a person is also who they hang with, who their friends are,” Central Ohio Sgt. Eric Delbert told the DCNF regarding Brown’s professional connection to Green.

“I went back and looked at some of the posts that I remember at the time. And I mean, she’s [Green is] not very law enforcement friendly, you know, law enforcement doesn’t believe that we are perfect,” Delbert continued. “And if there is a bad apple amongst other officers, we are the first ones to not want them amongst us.”

“But these things, I mean … ‘policing needs reimagine,’ it comes from people who don’t know anything about it [law enforcement],” the sergeant added, saying that he would encourage her to participate in a ride-along with a police officer.

Brown changed the name of his primary campaign committee from Friends of Sherrod Brown to Dignity of Work PAC to match the nonprofit’s name just one week after its launch, Cleveland.com reported and Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show.

“The Dignity of Work is the idea that hard work should pay off for everyone, no matter who you are, where you live, or what kind of work you do,” the About Us section of the group’s website reads. “When work has dignity, people have power over their lives and their schedules, and can afford to raise a family.”