Last week I remembered a state legislator I used to know -- he was in the House for most years of his service but in the state Senate for a couple of years anyway, later.
He was tall and thin -- even his face was thin. He was originally from Long Island -- came to this part of the country, I-don't-know-how....He was an elementary school principal and always served on the House Education Committee. He was a Republican, and very much in the style of Pat Moynihan as a Democrat -- a sensible person, middle of the road, no extremes, trying to work the Common Sense And Reason "platform."
I'm going to call him Representative Eleven. He always liked to socialize in the evening -- he would sit and have a cigarette and a drink and a conversation. He liked the legislative process.
Once, in the House Ed. Committee, Representative "19," a Democrat, said in discussion, "Well I don't see where this bill is going to actually accomplish anything, really. It's just something where, if we pass it, we look good, and we feel good, but it has no real effect."
Representative Eleven tapped his microphone on and bent down to speak in it: "Well, we want to look good and we want to feel good, so I move we pass the bill."
---------------------------- One time he talked to me in this dark cocktail lounge they have in a big hotel in the capital: he told me, "I've always admired your tenacity." (I was like, 'Hmm -- I'll have to make sure my tenacity is -- er -- ironed and folded. ...) I don't know...
----------------------- One time Rep. 11 was on my short list of people I needed to touch base with about something -- a bill or an amendment...there was a plan and I wanted to make sure it was set...it was the middle of winter and I saw 11 outside the doors to the capitol's rotunda, smoking a cigarette. (The rules about where you could smoke in the capitol building had been evolving. When I first started lobbying they could smoke in the cafeteria in the basement, and maybe in the lobbies, I can't remember. Then the smokers could only smoke in the back part of the cafeteria; then they couldn't smoke anyplace inside the capitol building -- they had to go outside. And they would go outside in the worst, coldest weather, whatever, and stand there and smoke.)
That always brought home to me how much smokers want to smoke, seeing them standing there in the arctic winds, with no winter coats on.
And the day I needed to speak with Representative 11 and I saw him standing out in the Big Freeze, I thought, "Well, it's too cold to be out there, but it's my chance to take care of this piece of business and go forward with my day," so I went out. Without my coat.
OMG it was So Cold -- like, 80 below, and 140 below with the wind chill factor. I exaggerate only slightly. It was So Cold, and we talked for a minute and we were both glad to get clarity and know what we were doing later in the committee, and that there probably would be no problems. It was So Cold, and he was still talking and it was SO COLD so I jumped up and down a few times to try to warm up. He stood looking down at me -- when I stopped jumping he said, "You big baby."
It sort of confirmed this sneaking suspicion I've always had that people who smoke feel like they're tougher in some way, than the rest of us.
------------------------------- Another time, when he was in the Senate, "Eleven" was talking to me about a bill and he said that legislators were going to have to be "statesmen" and vote for the bill because it was right for everyone, and not be tied down to the particular short-term interests of their own constituencies. I was so happy and impressed to hear him talk about being "statesmen" -- not enough people spoke of that, or upheld that standard, in the later 90s after term limits began to take effect. He was kind of a lone voice for that aspect of legislative work.
They need that voice in Washington now.
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