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Challenging the Status Quo — Part 1
By Phil Steele, Hartford
Mr. Steele is Republican candidate for Congress in the 1st Congressional District.
I want to change Congress and change politics in America, starting right here in Connecticut's 1st District. For too long we've sent men and women to Washington who never come back, who become addicted to power, to corporate money, to the corrupting influence of lobbyists—and most of all, to staying in Washington. Their overriding goal becomes their own re-election. They become career politicians who learn less how to do what's best for America than how to re-elect themselves again and again and again.
Why would I be any different? I'm 58 years old. I want to be a public servant, not a career politician. I will run for re-election only once, then return to private life the way our Founding Fathers did, or move on to some other form of public service. I'll support term limits for Congress and I'll set an example by adopting them for myself.
I'll work for you 100% of the time. I won't spend half the time you're paying me to work for you working for myself instead. I won't spend any time raising money. Some say I'd never get re-elected if I don't spend my time raising money and don't accept contributions from corporations and PACs. These experts don't give you, the voters, much credit.
The incumbents in Washington spend half the time you're paying them working not for you but for themselves, for their own re-election, raising hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. The only way to change that is to vote for someone who doesn't take that kind of money, who instead will work for you, and will be free of the corrupting influence of big money and big corporations.
After JFK was sworn in as President, Richard Nixon ran into Ted Sorenson, Kennedy's speechwriter. Nixon told him there were words in Kennedy's inaugural address that he wished he had said. "Which ones?" Sorenson asked. "‘Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country’?" "No," Nixon replied: "I solemnly swear."
Politics is about power, about winning. The story illustrates what is and always will be that premier fact of politics. And it shows there is still a larger dimension as well, one that says issues and ideas are important whether or not you get elected, because they shape the debate, they shape the public agenda, and they are the only way that a party that's been unsuccessful can become successful.
Connecticut has a healthy and competitive political rivalry for some offices, but not in the 1st District. Politics in the 1st District are less competitive, less democratic, and more an example of a single-party system than what you might find in Russia or Afghanistan. I entered this race to ask everyone who cares about the public good to think about why that is and what can be done to change it—not for the benefit of any political party, but for the common good.
Nationwide, commentators are predicting that more than 400 of the 435 House races are already over. In all but some two dozen districts, voters will have little reason to pay attention and the press will barely be watching these "safe" seats. Here in Connecticut, the 3rd and 4th Districts have been safe seats for decades, but there are few districts in the country as one-sided as the 1st District.
If voters are to be given a real choice, the candidates must be taken seriously both for what they have to say and because they have a genuine chance to win. Yet it would be hard to find a voter in the 1st District who believes any challenger has a real chance to win.
On top of nearly half a century of one-party rule, instead of trying to make the 1st District even slightly more competitive, career politicians have engineered one of the biggest political kidnappings in Connecticut history. In the recent redistricting they added, among other towns, Bristol, Southington, Winsted, most of Torrington and part of Middletown to the district, thereby increasing the Democratic registration advantage even further and creating one of the most embarrassingly gerrymandered districts in the country.
The net effect of the latest reapportionment has been to further entrench three safe congressional seats, allowing only two competitive districts. This arrangement is grossly unfair to Democratic, Republican and Independent voters in the three safe districts, and does enormous damage to the political process. It means that your vote is unlikely to make a difference. It means that the congressional race will be of little interest to the public or the press. It means that critical issues will not get the attention they deserve. It means that your representative will not be held accountable to the extent he or she should be.
The emphasis on creating safe seats instead of competitive seats is discouraging capable people from running for Congress here and across the nation, and, as a result, is de-energizing our political life at exactly the time we should be doing everything possible to find the best possible men and women to lead us through the post-9/11 world.
It is simply unacceptable in America that it be considered foolish to challenge the status quo, and that the contest to determine the one person who will speak for us in the House should effectively be over before it begins. I'm running to try to change that. The odds of winning this year are slim at best—we all know that—but if we let those odds discourage us, we'll only continue the pattern of the past half century.
Even if the challenger doesn't get to say "I solemnly swear" this year, he can still engage the incumbent in a debate, he can still raise issues that need to be heard. It's still just as important to inspire Americans to ask not what their country can do for them, but what they can do for their country, as it is to win. In fact, it's the only way we eventually can win.
To be continued …
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