A diamond in the congressional rough

mai 01, 2015

A diamond in the congressional rough

555

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that some members of Congress today are worth every penny in salary and health benefits the nation’s taxpayers pay them.

One of these good public servants is Mark Pocan, representative of Wisconsin’s 2nd district. Although Pocan is a pretty liberal Democrat who shares most of my values, and a gay man, like me, this is not why I’m nominating him for this hall of virtue.

The 2nd district includes not only the notoriously liberal city of Madison (often described as “78 square miles surrounded by reality”), but also many suburban communities and rural townships. In fact, most of its voters live outside of Madison. From 1991 to 1999 it was represented by a Republican.

Pocan is not content to dawdle away his time in Congress, passively accruing Social Security dollars that he wants to deny his fellow Americans, while making the occasional thrilling run for the Vice Presidency; no, he actually seems to take his role as lawmaker seriously. He has drafted a bill to guarantee voting rights to all citizens (not currently spelled out in the US Constitution), with help from Keith Ellison (D-MN). This Earth Day, along with Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), he proposed a total ban on fracking on public lands.

At a time when there is intense pressure on Democrats to toe the line on “free trade” and adopt a milquetoast centrist approach to corporate crime, Pocan does otherwise. His stance on the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is splitting the Democratic coalition right now, is an example. He opposes the “fast-track” Trade Promotion Authority Bill, saying, “With still too many questions left unanswered and a history of broken trade promises, Congress should not give away its constitutional authority to the President – regardless of party.”

Why should Pocan care about these issues? I think it would be pretty easy for him to follow the lead of, say, Senator Chuck Schumer and cultivate ties to large corporations while ignoring his most underprivileged constituents. The Democratic Party, after all, still rewards this behavior with promotion and honors.

The answer probably lies in his background in small business — he once owned a printing company — and his roots in Kenosha, a Rust Belt town on Lake Michigan hollowed out by the loss of middle-class manufacturing jobs. The word “grassroots” means something more to you if your neighborhood is peppered with empty and decaying lots overrun by wild grass. (Even Madison, relatively prosperous as it is, has one such big hole in its urban fabric.)

As former Rep. Barney Frank told the New Yorker, “It’s the smaller businesses that have natural grassroots networks: Realtors, mortgage brokers, auto dealers, community banks. They’re in everybody’s district.”

I am convinced that if all Democrats in Congress had half of Mark Pocan’s passion for justice and public service, they would not have lost their majority in 2010. Pocan, having won his congressional seat twice with 68 percent of the vote, shows us that liberal convictions are hardly a disqualification for office in purple America.