Thursday, October 28, 2010

"the usual suspects"

"Round up the usual suspects!" was the line used several times in the movie Casablanca -- Louis (pronounced "Loo-ee") Renault is the local police captain in the Moroccan city of Casablanca. He wants to be a good guy, but the Nazis are in control so he pretends to go along with them because he has to.

(I think he generally sent all of "the usual suspects" right on home again after he was through proving to his superiors that he had investigated whatever incident it was.)

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The Independent Democrat running for governor of our state has a Republican running mate, for Lt. Gov. A true hybrid ticket. Also -- the gov. candidate, now an Independent Democrat, used to be a Republican.

(And -- in our Republican primary there was a guy running who used to be a Democrat.)
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Our "I.D." (Independent Democrat) candidate got one of my bills passed, once.
(My memory is searching -- was it Pass our bill, or Kill their bill, or was it Amend something?)
Anyhow, it affected only a small number of local government entities -- failure on our part would have meant some closings and / or local taxes having to be raised in some rural areas.

The Governor candidate, (at that time -- late 90s -- a Republican State Senator) represented one area which would be adversely affected if my effort didn't succeed. During the time when my bill (or amendment, whichever) was being heard in Education Committee, he was in the Senate State Affairs Committee. Our plan was, I would go and let him know when our bill was coming up.

(State Affairs is sort of the most important committee. They handle the Biggest topics. It is the most prestigious. For example, if there's a bill which would affect taxes, it will probably land in the Taxation Committee. But if it's a bill affecting taxes which the governor wants, then it will most likely be assigned to State Affairs.)

So I went to Senate State Affairs and he came with me to Education, walking fast. He strode in and testified standing up. (There's a microphone and a small table and chair, where you can sit to testify.) But our Gov. Candidate told it while standing.

He was energetic, and to-the-point and was telling it to them kind of -- hard.
I recall thinking, "Carefully -- don't scare 'em!"
What he was doing was what I would term "call-their-bluff" testimony.
(Mine would always be gentle / reasonable / giving some examples.)

Gov. Cand.'s brief testimony was along the lines of, "If what we're trying to do is force consolidation, then we need to just say so and not hide that agenda behind pieces of legislation like this." Very firmly.
(I'm thinking, "Don't offend them -- aaauuugghhh!")

But he didn't offend them.
He has more power than me. He can kick some ass if he wants to.

It was short and sweet, and it went our way.
(Phew!)
And he took off back to State Affairs.
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He was like Superman!
He was like Batman.
He was the man.

A few years after that he was no longer in the legislature, and read in one of the papers his answer to the question of whether he was running for governor -- must have been 2002 -- and his answer was something like -- "No I'm not running this time -- I don't know how that rumor got started -- someone just threw my name on the list when they were rounding up the usual suspects."

A reference to Casablanca.
Ni-i-i-ce.

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