Commentary—

Do You Know Where

Your Congressman Stands?

By William A. Collins

Congressmen,

Are so remote;

It’s a mystery,

How they vote.

Politics is dirty work. Most of us wouldn’t care for it, especially Congress. There’s the money-grubbing and the pressure groups and the ill will and all those tiresome dinners. It consumes all of the members’ time and energy, and a good part of their souls. There are so many compromises to make that one may forget what, if anything, one believed in to start with. Committee assignments and chairmanships can depend on how you vote, and how many bucks you raise for the party. What a mess!

But there is one delightful advantage. Once in, you needn’t worry too much about staying. Easy money flows to incumbents, district lines are gerrymandered to protect them, and voters back home have little clue what they’re up to. Even when they hold a local forum or visit the local newspaper office, reporters can’t think what to ask them. They’ve been too focused covering school board battles or truck accidents on I-95.

A few larger Nutmeg papers do station newshounds in Washington, presumably to keep a sharp eye on our delegates. Fat chance. From them we learn mostly superficial stuff, much of it from congressional press releases. Very little analysis appears, and virtually nothing judgmental. Instead, if we’re interested, we have to piece together voting records from impenetrable roll call reports that some papers thoughtfully bury in their back pages.

But luckily there are a few outside report cards. Environmentalists, gun owners, pro-choice, pro-life, and scores of other interest groups publish them. One arrived here the other day from the Drum Major Institute (who?), purporting to measure how our delegation (and others) voted on an array of matters important to the middle class. That was a new one. Clearly not Republican, it rated Rosa DeLauro and John Larson at 100, Nancy Johnson at 67, Chris Shays at 50, and Rob Simmons at 33.

That seemed more useful (and perhaps more accurate) than ratings on environment or women’s issues alone. Connecticut voters clearly support those groups, they have pretty high visibility, and even conservative congressmen around here tend to swallow hard and play along. For instance the League of Conservation Voters doesn’t rate any of our guys under 70. They all do OK with women’s groups too.

It’s the less obvious stuff where insight lurks. As when both Chris Dodd and Joe Lieberman voted with the Republicans to authorize more US troops for Colombia, thus to extend the American oil empire there. Or when Chris Shays cast the only Connecticut vote to support John Ashcroft’s jihad against state laws legalizing medical marijuana.

Following the money too, could tell us lots about our delegation, were the members reported on in any organized way. Some folk, for example, may not realize that Rob Simmons’ biggest contributor is Pfizer, or that Nancy Johnson gets big bucks from HMOs. Or that Dodd and Lieberman, while sound on the environment, are bosom buddies of Wall Street. But then, most senators are.

Rarely, worse luck, do individual votes become controversial enough to be publicized. Thus our two senators and our Republican congressmen are only now being called to task for voting to invade Iraq. A bit late. And in the Fourth District, Chris Shays is now taking heat for supporting John Ashcroft again (on a 210-210 vote) with his crusade to gain access to our personal library and book purchase records.

To sum up about our somewhat murky delegation, DeLauro is the most loyal Democrat in all of Congress, with Larson not far behind. Shays has morphed from a moderate to a conservative Republican, thus joining ranks with Simmons. Johnson is not quite that far to the right. Dodd is more liberal than Lieberman, but both feed at the ample trough of multinational corporations. That’s democracy for you.

(Columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk.)