The People's House

by David Pepper

“Shocking.”

  Going into election night, Democrats held a seventeen-seat majority, and no one from D.C. to California doubted that they would keep it. But with that Tucson outcome, sixteen of the twenty closest districts had swung the GOP’s way. And most of the other close districts had done the same.

  “The Republicans just took over the House. And Washington. I’ll take the check.”

  Twenty minutes later, I stumbled into my dingy motel room. Despite the long day, sleep didn’t come quickly.

  The drinks didn’t help. I should have stuck with my initial decline.

  And of course, Kelly’s loss surprised me, along with the national results. There had been so much talk before Election Day. Buckets of ink wasted on column after column of commentary. And they all had gotten it wrong. I sure had, and I’m supposed to be an expert. How had we all been so off base?

  But what kept me stewing came from deeper within. The sudden silence of the party, the look in Lee Kelly’s wide eyes, the pained tone of his voice, even Gibbs’ hollow rhetoric. They all brought me back decades. To a similar moment. A similar look. An equally long silence. And even greater heartbreak. Not for others, but for me and those I loved.

  It was something I hadn’t discussed in years. It helped that few who would remember it all so vividly were still alive.

  The raw memory of a long-ago election night gnawed at me for hours.

  Chapter 2

  WASHINGTON, DC: 56 days after the election

  Tom Stanton paced in the back of the stately chamber. Head down, he looked at his watch, then fiddled with his phone.

  He so wanted to leave the room. He hated wasting time, and this meeting was sure to consume a lot of it. But, as his staff reminded him, he was the new majority leader. Walking out now would create front-page news of the worst kind—public treason on the first day of the new era.

  So he shook every hand he could as colleagues entered, then fidgeted in the rear as newly sworn-in House Speaker Irwin Marshall rallied the troops.

  “We’ve waited a long time for this moment. It’s time to get to work—for our friends, for ourselves, for the American people.” The room of mostly white men, in their fifties or older, strained to hear the stately Southern accent that spelled out their marching orders. Not all members of the House of Representatives were in the room. Just the Republican Conference—the new majority. The only group that now mattered.

  “We must work together. We must be united. We must . . .”

  While the group cheered almost every sentence Marshall uttered, Stanton didn’t applaud once. The new Speaker’s words offered neither energy nor eloquence. They never did.

  Though uninspired by Marshall, Stanton fully agreed with his core message. This moment marked a dramatic shift from a few months back. It presented the potential for big movement on major issues. Years mired in the minority were finally over.

  And for Stanton, it presented opportunity. As the new majority leader, his time to shine had arrived. If he eclipsed Marshall in the process, all the better. His ambition went way beyond majority leader.

  * * *

  Sixty minutes later, Stanton sat at the end of a long oak table in a private dining room three blocks from the Capitol. Fifteen of his colleagues, eight of them newly elected, occupied the other seats. From Peoria to Pueblo, Minneapolis to Milwaukee, the group represented a cross-section of the country.

  Now this meeting was a gathering worthy of his time. Stanton knew Marshall well and wanted to make sure this group did too. More importantly, he wanted them to know who was in charge.

  “The guy ran a funeral home for decades in rural Georgia,” he explained. “He operates slowly, deliberatively. The media may like that he’s a statesman, but that won’t work for what we need to do.”

  He paused for five seconds to underscore his next point.

  “Just like I did in the elections last fall, we’re going to set a different pace.”

  His guests looked up from their half-eaten steaks as Stanton reminded them of his active barnstorming on their behalf. Most of them had eked out narrow victories, and the media credited Stanton’s spirited visits as a significant reason for their wins. Even those who won handily owed Stanton, who orchestrated their new, plum committee assignments, secured some of their largest donations, or both. Whatever the reason, he knew each person at his table would follow his orders. This dinner signaled that he expected it.

  “Election night was a referendum, the clarifying breakthrough when voters approved everything we and our friends have wanted for years. And we are going to ram it all through. Each of you is here because you have a key role to play.”

  The new budget committee chair sat two seats from Stanton. He’d won his re-election in Tucson by two points, surviving an ugly sex scandal. Stanton visited his district four times and sent half a million dollars in contributions his way. Pulled from the brink of extinction, this dinosaur now occupied one of the most powerful thrones on Capitol Hill.

  “Tom, what comes first?”

  “We’ll start with the tax cuts and the spending reductions, along with the pipeline plan. That’ll thrill those who put us here. Then we’ll pass the election law reforms. Those’ll guarantee we stay here.”

  He knew better than anyone that the House could easily flip back in two years. So by tightening up voting rules, his planned Clean Election Law would lock in their new majority.

  Stanton soon excused himself from the table, leaving his chief of staff to explain the details of their legislative game plan.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, the majority leader was seated on a stool in a nearly empty room. Barren white walls surrounded him. He sat ramrod straight, stretching his already broad shoulders as widely as he could. Before sitting down, he had carefully re-combed his famous jet-black hair, a mane that his colleagues and the media compared to Reagan’s.

  Only one man stood in the room with him. Stanton knew him only as Peewee, and tonight he sported a Maryland sweatshirt, blue jeans, and some old sneakers. But that casual attire belied the critical role he was playing at this moment, because Peewee operated the camera into which Stanton was now speaking. With eight million viewers on the other side of the lens, this studio was hosting the most important appointment of Stanton’s day.

  A baritone voice bellowed through an earpiece in his left ear—Rob Stone, of FOX News.

  “Leader Stanton, what did you think of the Speaker’s remarks today?”

  “Rob, as always, he inspired us all. The Speaker is a visionary. He’s why we’re now in the position that we’re in. And he will spearhead positive changes for our country over the coming months. I’m honored to work with him. For him.”

  “Many are speculating that you’re the guy actually running the show. That you guided the Republican Party to last year’s big wins, and now you’re the wizard behind the curtain.”

  Good. Staff had successfully planted this question with the show’s producer.

  “That’s nonsense. Inside-the-beltway nonsense,” Stanton replied, shaking his head. “But I am proud that in the coming months, I will work with the Speaker to enact tax cuts, spending cuts, and clean up our broken system of elections. And we’ve got to get those pipelines approved.”

  Another win. Dictating the national agenda, not the Speaker. Not even the president.

  “Congressman, that’s a bold agenda. Are you using it all to build momentum to run for president?”

  Stanton’s favorite question, triggering his rehearsed response: a slight pause and a mild raise of the eyebrows, as if the question came as a surprise, followed by a trace of a frown, as if he was disappointed.

  “Rob, I’m focused on passing these important reforms through the House and getting them to the president’s desk. There is so much to do before we start speculating on the next campaign.”

  “
Would you rule out running?”

  “As I said, I’m focused on getting this important work done.”

  His response left exactly the impression he wanted. Iowa was less than a year away. Of course he was running for president.

  Chapter 3

  YOUNGSTOWN, OHIO: One day after the election

  With the exception of a splitting headache, my drive into work Wednesday morning was the same I’d taken for years. Fifteen quick minutes that rehash a decades-long story.

  The city of Youngstown is defined by stark math: a city built for 170,000 people now houses 65,000. When the city’s steel mills closed in the ‘70s and ‘80s, tens of thousands of jobs disappeared, along with the middle class families that had relied on them. The pockmarks left by those missing 100,000 people, those missing jobs, remain everywhere.

  According to the old timers, even the smell of the place has changed. When the mills were going strong, the odor of burning sulfur permeated the Valley. Now, nothing. No doubt today’s air is healthier, but they’d trade it any day to get the smell of that old economy back.

  As for my morning commute, the 10-mile trip into town tours all phases of the loss. It starts with the drive through a few city neighborhoods. These residential streets offer a smattering of houses, new and old, oddly separated by empty lots and acres of grass where other homes used to sit. After years of attempts to repopulate, city leaders waved the white flag and razed vacant homes by the thousands.

  Closer to town, along the Mahoning River, sit enormous tracts of scarred industrial land. The urban planners call these sites brownfields, but they’re more a rusty gray than brown, dotted with building shells and fields of concrete. These are the gravesites of the mills themselves. Rail spurs leading to nowhere are the best evidence that something substantial once took place here.

  Entering downtown, not far from Vindicator Square, come the storefronts. Not all are empty, but far too many are. The most intact buildings still post signs begging for new tenants. Others are too run down to make a credible case for commerce.

  Don’t get me wrong. The proud people of “the Valley”—as they refer to the Mahoning Valley region—are fighting back as fiercely as any community. I’m not a native, so I can tell you without hometown bias that there is a gusto and resilience in this town that’s kept them going through the tough times. When 2008 hit, and communities struggled nationwide, Youngstown’s response was: what are you complaining about? We’ve dealt with worse for decades. Onward.

  And their grit and energy have sparked growth of late. Ohio’s natural gas industry spurred a wave of activity, symbolized best by a hulking new plant assembling steel pipes where Youngstown Sheet and Tube once rolled steel. An auto plant not far from town now churns out 1,000 cars a day. Pockets of commerce are sprouting up downtown, leading to more occupied storefronts and dining options than anytime since I arrived here for college.

  But 100,000 people gone? There’s just no way to paper over that.

  I even see it each morning as my commute ends, when I walk into the once teeming Vindicator newsroom, which now sits half empty. Declining revenue first eliminated columnists, features writers, and our long-time cartoonist, wiping out much of the personality of our daily product. Investigative reporters were the next to go—too expensive for anything but daily output. As departures continued, management finally removed the rows of empty cubicles altogether. They preferred the awkward aesthetic of open space over the jarring image of individual workspaces devoid of actual workers.

  We survivors are tasked with covering more than we ever did, which means the paper covers less than we ever have. In my world, politics, we used to have three writers and a columnist. Now I do it all, from the Presidency to the school board.

  Even back in my productive days, that would have been an impossible task.

  * * *

  “I want an analysis of Kelly’s loss.”

  I knew it was coming. The morning after the election, my managing editor, Mary Andres, was all over me. The short, plump, and cranky Andres always wanted more—more details, more analysis, more scoops. And she barked for it like a drill sergeant. As if she didn’t know what a hangover was.

  “He lost, just like a lot of other Democrats. Not too much to say but that.”

  I sipped at a piping hot cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. But it hadn’t yet kicked in, adding a snippy edge to my reply. An edge that didn’t go over well.

  “Jack, you didn’t expect it, and no one else did either. Readers want to know what happened, where and why he underperformed, and how some no-name wrestling champ with a ho-hum campaign beat an experienced congressman. So do I. Especially given what happened across the country.”

  “Fine. I’ll get you something.”

  “Don’t act like you’re doing me a favor, Jack. It’s your job!”

  “10-4.”

  I was fried on politics. Had been burned out for years. Hell, I’d given up on politics long before becoming a political journalist. It had only gone downhill from there.

  My front-row seat had made it clear—when it comes to Congress, little matters but the drawing of legislative districts every ten years. That’s the whole ballgame. And what a sad game it’s become.

  The irony is that when they designed the House of Representatives, America’s Founding Fathers carefully constructed it to be the “People’s House.” They insisted on two-year terms and a large number of smaller districts. They wanted the House to remain the closest to the people, especially since neither the United States Senate nor the president was directly elected back then.

  Almost 250 years later, while their formal House structure remains intact, I can’t imagine the Founding Fathers would be impressed by the body’s actual operation. Through a process called “gerrymandering,” guided by precise modeling and mapping, today’s politicians design House district boundaries in a way that predetermines the outcome of almost every election. The net effect? Modern-day elections to the People’s House have almost nothing to do with the people.

  On the ground, this reality plays out in two ways. Across the country, many House members face no opponent whatsoever. Even for those that do, the demographically lopsided district usually ends the race before it begins. Either way, voters across the country watch their representatives waltz back to Capitol Hill unchallenged.

  Outside of a wave year, maybe twenty or thirty seats are legitimately up for grabs. These elections take place in the rare districts, scattered randomly around the country, that are not gerrymandered,. The ones where Republicans and Democrats possess about the same number of voters—the swing districts.

  So, amid the 435 House elections that take place every two years, the future of the country hinges on the less than 10 percent of races that occur in swing districts. More precisely, it depends on the 50 percent of citizens who vote in those swing district elections.

  The People’s House? Hardly.

  Like I said, our forefathers would not be impressed.

  This is the real story of modern-day politics. But every time I try to write about the grim consequences of gerrymandering, my editors nix it. The readers don’t care, they tell me.

  So no, I don’t get excited about surface-level analysis that overlooks what really drives politics. But that was exactly what Andres wanted: A ward-by-ward analysis that the paper could present with a fancy graphic, liberating readers from actually reading a story. This was USA Today journalism at its worst, replacing real writing with cartoonish graphics and, in the process, making my job a much bigger pain in the ass.

  There was no way out of the assignment, so I set off to find something profound to say. The caffeine kicked in just in time. I spent the morning making calls to political watchers across the district.

  My first stop? Spending. Federal reports showed that Kelly had raised and spent more than three times as much money as Gibbs had. On th
e surface, spending didn’t explain his loss. The Democratic and Republican Parties had each spent about the same amount to support their respective candidates, so no difference there either.

  But after Citizens United, direct spending was only half the story—less than half. Now, all sorts of groups can swoop into any district and change the outcome of any race by dumping millions in “dark money” against a targeted candidate. Every election season, a Citizens United trapdoor springs open below an unsuspecting incumbent or two.

  “Pamela, it’s Jack Sharpe calling from the Vindicator. Can I ask you a few questions about Lee Kelly’s loss yesterday?”

  “Sure. Still can’t believe he went down.”

  Pamela Solomon was a respected political science professor at Marietta College. She paid close attention to the congressional races in Ohio, and was always a good source. A few choice quotes from her would get this useless story off my plate.

  “Tell me about it. Trying to figure out how to explain it to our readers. I’m checking to see if you guys saw any independent ads on television or radio attacking Kelly down there. Or even mail, for that matter.”

  “We definitely didn’t,” she said. “I was wondering the same thing myself, so I checked local station logs yesterday. Nothing. And Kelly far outspent Gibbs in direct ads.”

  “Nothing up here either. Any issues that might have snuck up on Kelly? Caught him off guard?”

  In the Internet age, political controversies erupt overnight from brush fires into wildfires, and the less astute politicians get fried before they even see the smoke. Health care did that in 2010, wiping out Ohio’s bench of fresh-faced Democratic congressmen, and many others throughout the country.

  “Not at all,” she said. “Kelly was rarely out of step with the district. He was for coal, fracking and gun rights and against health care, so conservative Democrats, independents, and Republicans liked him. His party caucus let him vote that way, knowing his re-election depended on it.”

  “Yep. That was my read too. Let me know if you think of anything else.”