Today Senators Ben Cardin, Chuck Schumer, Sherrod Brown and Debbie Stabenow share a byline on a Politico op-ed piece in defense of the health reform law. If you’re wondering why this dream team has been assembled, it’s because last year Harry Reid decided to hand off Senate messaging to Schumer and Stabenow in the wake of the great shellacking. This is basically a Democratic press release.

Most of it is the sort of vapid boilerplate language we’ve come to expect from Senators:

Hard-working Americans should be able to get the quality medical care they need to stay healthy, prevent illnesses and get the treatment their doctors recommend. As of Jan. 1, the Affordable Care Act makes sure that happens.

Actually, most of the law hasn’t taken effect yet, so that’s a stretch. But one portion of the op-ed did catch my attention:

We’re looking out for business owners like Mark Hodesh, who runs a small home and garden shop in Ann Arbor, Mich. The new law gave a tax cut to help them provide insurance for employees. So Hodesh was able to hire a new employee, expand his business and make 2010 his busiest year ever. If the health care law is repealed, small businesses’ savings and employees could be put in jeopardy.

Mark Hodesh sounds like just a regular businessman who is thrilled with the new law. Just a regular businessman who spoke to a local newspaper about his support for reform back in 2009. A regular guy who was interviewed again about his support for the law ten months ago in a piece that also quotes a spokesman for Sen. Stabenow. Just a coincidence probably.

Let’s not forget the other article nine months ago where businessman Mark Hodesh, after carefully considering the law he had already publicly supported, decided that he supported it. In fact, he wrote a letter to Rep. Dingell about his plan to hire a new worker with the money he was saving. He told essentially the same story to WWJ Newsradio just a few weeks ago. Mark Hodesh seems to get a lot of press for a small businessman with 12 employees.

I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that Mark Hodesh’s name appears prominently in the press release of this liberal lobbying group. And I don’t take anything from the fact that he threw a celebration at his business for Obama staffers after the successful 2008 election, adorning his walls with a sign that read “Make History.” I don’t know, do you think Mark has a little bit of an agenda?

Don’t get me wrong, Mark is entitled to his opinion, but let’s not pretend that he’s a disinterested observer. He’s a partisan plant whose name is being passed around by someone as a go-to small business owner who supports ObamaCare. Perhaps in future, journalists could at least mention Mark’s long history of boosterism for the law and the President to their readers.