DemFromCT's front page post about integrity, especially vis-a-vis the Clinton campaign, struck a chord for me.
I campaigned for the Minnesota House of Representatives twice before winning. I poured myself into the campaign, working much less than full time, knowing that this effort was needed to defeat a fairly popular incumbent.
I was the challenger. It was fairly easy to take positions I believed in, knowing that my challenge was to connect with voters based on my values and my basic core issues: First, putting people's needs ahead of political posturing; Second, on the issues, focus on roads, schools, health care, property tax reform, and the environment.
My opponent was a two-termer, who had been Mayor and City Councilor for a total of 8 years before that. He had been a fairly popular moderate as a local politician, but increasingly voted the party line as a State Rep.
Bear with me, on the flip...
While I talked a lot about several of my opponent's votes in 2004, I only focused on one vote in 2006. I wanted to communicate to my future constituents my background, my basic philosophy and attitude, and to connect with their needs. Basically, I wanted them to know me as an earnest man, wanting to serve the public in a thoughtful but passionate way.
By the way, the one vote I did talk about was the bipartisan Transportation Bill. My county, Chisago County, is an exurban county at the edge of the Twin Cities metro area. In mid-06, we were found to have the worst county roads in those counties surveyed, largely due to two decades of flat-line funding from the State. The 2005 Transportation Bill would have provided, through a 10 cent gas tax increase that was just 24% of what is really needed, Chisago County $17 Million to fix our roads. Because the bill was vetoed and not overridden by the legislature, the county had to borrow $14 Million on property taxes to make up for the state money. The GOP House Caucus pressured members, like my opponent, very hard to vote for the bill. One moderate who voted for the bill said that he was putting his constituents' needs ahead of the party's pressure.
Now, as my campaign team and I look toward this November and my first re-election campaign, I've thought a great deal about that word raised by DemFromCT: Integrity.
Serving in the House, or any other elected position I suppose, presents some anxious moments as votes approach. In the words of President Kennedy in Profiles in Courage:
Few [in other professions] face the same dread finality of decision that confronts a Senator facing an important call of the roll.
Those are the moments where our integrity is tested. A case in point...
I am pretty libertarian. I lean against excessive governmental regulation unless the public interests significantly outweigh the loss of privacy or personal control. That's why I support hunting and fishing rights, and the right to own firearms. That's why I oppose warrantless wiretapping. That's why I trust doctors and patients to make medical decisions, and patients to make moral decisions, regardless of my own personal feelings.
I knew that the proposed state-wide smoking ban in Minnesota would be a very difficult issue for me. I didn't realize it'd be among the toughest. I was comfortable banning smoking from all restaurants, for children are exposed to 2nd-hand smoke there, and the public interest overwhelming outweighed basic privacy concerns. But, going to ban it from all bars made me queasy. I heard dozens of times from the lobbyists, and hundreds of times from constituents, on both sides. I thought long and hard about the issue, and I talked it through with all parties. I told them my concerns. I asked for data. I looked at other states' successes and challenges. I talked to my business owners on the Wisconsin border.
The bill was going to pass. The question was whether it would allow a few reasonable exceptions to not be unworkable for small bars, especially in my border district. When the House passed a bill that allowed only isolated smoking rooms in bars, with a separate entrance and no service required at all, I voted for it. I would have preferred a border cities delayed implementation provision I advocated on the House Floor, but it was a good bill, regardless.
But the bill came back from conference committee without the smoking rooms, and banning smoking from all bars. Period.
I was just as queasy at that point as I was at the beginning of the session. I just did not know that the public interest outweighed how deeply the state would interfere in people's individual business, and in small businesses, too. So, I watched the board carefully, and I voted against it. It was one of the toughest votes all session.
The American Cancer Society was the most vocal advocate for the bill. At this summer's Relay for Life in my district - an all night-fundraiser for the Society that I attend regularly - they awarded my Senator with a nice plaque and lots of attention. For a moment, I just sat there stewing. "If I had voted for it, all of my neighbors here would be clapping for me, too, and I'd get all that love..." I thought.
But that thought didn't last too long. I voted my conscience. I voted as I said I would. And the conversations that night - late into the twilight and into starlight - helped me understand that my neighbors respect me for it, even if they didn't like my vote. I know that I may have lost a vote or two, and I can understand that. But I also believe that I can point to a time of conscience, a vote of principle.
What is the point of this diary? I guess it's to point out that during a campaign, one is forced to massage this past move, vote, or statement for a current political gain. The point, perhaps, is that by trying to do what is right in the moment, based on one's inner principles and guiding light, makes the future campaign contentions easier to deflect.
In the heat of the moment, a candidate or staffer might feel they would like to have made a different vote - maybe because it would be better politics, or maybe because they have legitimately come to a different position. I am sure at some point I'll be there myself, in this campaign or another.
Sometimes, the best thing to say might be, "I was wrong. I have learned from that mistake. This is how I will vote today. This is why." Maybe, the other path is to try to change the circumstances of that vote, to change that action. I can understand that base instinct, but the truth - and acting on it - can set us free.
Perhaps Senator Clinton is feeling it now. Perhaps Mark Penn is. Maybe it's Iran. Maybe it's a different strategic move they'd like to change. Maybe there's things we don't understand.
We've all made mistakes, and hopefully we've learned from them, too. In the end, what we have is our integrity.
I close with John F. Kennedy:
The voters selected us, in short, because they had confidence in our judgment and our ability to exercise that judgment from a position where we could determine what were their own best interests, as a part of the nation's interest. This may mean that we must on occasion lead, inform, correct and sometimes even ignore constituent opinion, if we are to exercise fully that judgment for which we were elected. But acting without selfish motive or private bias, those who follow the dictates on an intelligent conscience are not aristocrats, demagogues, eccentrics or callous politicians insensitive to the feelings of the public. They expect - and not without considerable trepidation - their constituents to be the final judges of the wisdom of their course; but they have faith that those constituents - today, tomorrow, or even in another generation - will at least respect the principles that motivated their independent stand.