The city where I'm living is represented in Congress by a Republican. Not just any Republican, but a particularly hypocritical, anti-intellectual, lockstep-walking, fringe-indulging backbencher, Rep. Don Manzullo. I've diaried about how I attended one of his town hall meetings, was called on to speak and was cut off as soon as he realized that I was airing an opposing view, then treated just minutes later to a shout-out to "people exercising their Constitutional rights" (of which I, evidently, was not one).
Like you, dear reader, I get half a dozen e-mail messages a day from progressive groups urging me to write to my representative and urge him to do this or that. I've stopped bothering. Why should I? No flaming omen from the heavens would ever be enough to make this meathead change his mind or deviate a quarter-inch from the party line. Effectively, I am not represented in Congress.
Would I like to see him gone? More than anything. Well, almost.
The trouble is, I can't support his opponent. Not yet.
Manzullo's Democratic opponent this November is George Gaulrapp, the mayor of Freeport. Freeport is a struggling blue-collar city. Its unemployment rate is second in the state only to Rockford's. It has a few things to recommend it: an outstanding public library and a beautiful system of parks, to name two. It also has a paralyzing lack of imagination when it comes to, well, almost anything.
To judge from Gaulrapp's administration of the city, you'd never know he was a Democrat. He could be mistaken for any other small-city mayor held hostage by the Chamber of Commerce. He talks about "bringing jobs" to town with financial inducements, never about creating them from the resources and people already present. His planning department feeds sprawl on the state highway leading out of town to the south, even though the area is already full of vacant commercial space. His "downtown redevelopment" plans have less to do with seeking out latent demand for products and services unavailable to area residents and more to do with installing new wrought-iron benches and removing, then replacing, traffic-calming curbs. Or maybe it's replacing, then removing them. It's hard to keep track when the city keeps reversing itself.
So anyway, Freeport also has a small-city newspaper with the same commitment to quality as a fly-by-night vendor of fashion label knockoffs, which regularly prints the most incoherent of right-wing fantasies sent in as letters to the editor. It also, however, occasionally publishes a well-thought out letter or essay from a liberal perspective, most of these written by a couple of retired English teachers living in a nearby rural community.
This is relevant because Gaulrapp apparently heard, somehow, that I know these people, and he wants their support, so he asked someone to ask me to put him in touch with them.
This shows how much he doesn't know me.
When I received the request, I sent a message to his campaign e-mail address:
. . . Before I pass your information on to them, there are a few questions I'd like to have answered for myself:
- What is your opinion on the causes and seriousness of climate change, and what response by the U.S. government, if any, is called for?
- Do you believe it's important to reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil? If so, which of the following do you support: increased domestic exploration and drilling, increased use of solar and wind power, increased use of nuclear power, decreased household energy consumption, decreased automobile gasoline consumption, increased gasoline tax, increased density of urban/suburban development, increased funding of mass transit and/or passenger rail, some other approach?
- Do you believe the Elementary and Secondary Education Act ("No Child Left Behind") should be reauthorized in its current form? If not, what changes do you think are necessary?
- Do you believe that regulation of the finance, insurance and real estate sector needs reform? If so, what do you believe are the most critical reform elements that Congress must pass? Is there an existing bill before Congress that you believe is appropriate?
- Do you support the Employee Free Choice Act?
- Do you believe the federal budget needs to be balanced in the short term? Do you support an increase in the top marginal tax rate?
- Leading economists have declared that the recession is over. Do you believe that the U.S. economic downturn has, in fact, come to an end? If not, assuming continued adherence to current economic policy, do you believe that it will end? Describe what you believe is the most likely scenario.
Reasonable questions, I thought, and still think. Nothing outrageously controversial or potentially embarrassing there. Nothing too fringy.
Well, that was two and a half weeks ago. I have not yet received a response, nor has any information appeared on his website about his positions on these or, really, any other issue -- just the predictable handful of intelligence-insulting platitudes. Nor has Gaulrapp been publicly saying anything about any issue at all. He's been invisible. You'd think he'd at least be staking out some position or another in order to raise campaign cash.
I'm a purist. I have never been a "strategic" voter. I've always considered my vote to be an expression of my personal political will, and I reserve it for those whom I can vote for. In the past, it's been my practice, when I can't support any candidate in a race, to write in a name (in House races, I've usually written in my own!). However, the state of Illinois, in its (cough) wisdom, has changed its balloting rules so that voters can only write in names of people who have previously petitioned to be write-in candidates. If no one has done so, a write-in line isn't even provided.
So I'm torn. On the one hand, Manzullo is awful. As I've said, I feel as though I have no representation in Congress at all. On the other hand, I haven't seen any evidence yet that Gaulrapp isn't awful as well. I've asked him to give me some, and as far as I'm concerned, he's given me the opposite. If he's elected, it seems, I'll still have no representation in Congress. But I can't follow my usual opt-out strategy. (Unless, it occurs to me, I file an Intent to Be a Write-In Candidate myself. Which I may do, now that I've thought of it.)
I'm sure I'm not the only red-district liberal voter to face a conundrum like this. How are others responding to the campaigns of lackluster maybe-Democrats?