You can still hear the GOP muttering over Sen. Sherrod Brown labeling Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump's former chief strategist, a "white supremacist" on a CNN talk show a week ago today. White House senior policy adviser Stephen Miller was similarly singled out by the Ohio Democrat, as were other unnamed staffers.

Brown's likely re-election opponent next year, Republican state Treasurer Josh Mandel said Brown embarrassed himself, calling the senator's remarks “desperate, false and beneath the dignity of his office.”

Who got those quotes from Mandel? None other than Bannon's past and current employer, Breitbart News, which bragged that it got them "exclusively."

Brown's remarks also drew the ire of Trump press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Senator Brown’s comments are outrageous and slanderous,” she said in a statement. "Senator Brown needs to understand that when he calls out public servants who are part of the Trump administration, he is indicting the voters in Ohio themselves who overwhelmingly voted for the president’s agenda."

So, for the record, on what did Brown base his pejorative label?

His office said one factor was the characterization by John Weaver, Ohio Gov. John Kasich's top political strategist, who said in November 2016, “The racist, fascist extreme right is represented footsteps from the Oval Office.” Another was the "white supremacist" label put on Bannon by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's former chief of staff.

Brown spokeswoman Jennifer Donohue said “Senator Brown doesn’t believe we should enable those who want to divide the country. Instead, he is focused on his efforts to work together on renegotiating NAFTA and passing tax cuts that put money in the pockets of Ohioans.”

Washington Post likes Kasich's chances

Kasich was ranked second — just ahead of Texas Sen. Ted Cruz — as most-likely-to-succeed in a GOP 2020 challenge of Trump by The Fix in Friday's Washington Post.

A strong point for the Ohio governor is that his criticism of Trump's administration hasn't significantly hurt his popularity with the folks at home, the column notes. The negative, of course, is that he won only Ohio in his 2016 presidential effort.

The conclusion: "So the environment — or the candidate himself — would need to be quite different."

Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse was dubbed the top potential Trump GOP opponent.

Cruising down the ethics highway

Ohio's first inspector general, David Sturtz, got a 22-mile stretch of highway named after him near his hometown of Coshocton last Sunday.

A 31-year veteran of the State Highway Patrol, Sturtz was tapped for the newly created position in 1988 by Gov. Richard F. Celeste, and reappointed by Gov. George V. Voinovich. But Sturtz began investigating Voinovich's chief of staff, Paul Mifsud, and Voinovich dismissed Sturtz in 1994.

In one of the classic retorts in recent state history, Sturtz wrote a letter to Voinovich saying, "You preached ethics, you promised more, but in the end you failed to deliver. For a politician, I cannot think of anything more damaging than not keeping your word to the people who entrusted you with their vote to make you the state's leader."

Sturtz later became assistant safety director in Columbus, where he helped lead an investigation into then-Columbus Police Chief James G. Jackson.

The longtime Pickerington resident died in September 2015 at the age of 78.

drowland@dispatch.com

@darrelrowland