Frank: A Life in Politics from the Great Society to Same-Sex Marriage (48 page)

Electorally, I was becoming a clich
é
—the long-serving politician who has not had a tough campaign for many years and is organizationally and emotionally unready to wage one. In my partial defense, I was heavily occupied until July with getting the bill passed. But when I did enter campaign mode, I did it badly. I waited too long to put an organization together, and when I did, I made some unwise choices. I had trouble keeping my focus, and I revived the tendency to self-pity that had marred my first congressional campaign and my reaction to the 1981 redistricting.

While my personal funk was a problem in our internal deliberations, I at least had learned not to let it show on the trail. This somewhat unusual exercise of emotional self-discipline enabled me to take full advantage of one of my campaign strengths—debating my opponent.

The conventional wisdom dictates that incumbents should avoid debates with challengers. From my first primary race, I rejected that principle as a violation of democratic norms. I accepted every debate offer from every opponent in all twenty of my campaigns. Of course, I also realized that debates played to my strength. I was good at political argument, I had a sense of humor, and I usually had the benefit of a wide knowledge gap.

That was certainly so with Bielat. He came to our debates prepared to utter nice phrases but had trouble when pressed on their implications. Repeating slogans about the need to control entitlements is easy. Declaring how much you will reduce Social Security benefits, how high you will raise the retirement age, and how you will actually cut medical costs is hard. Bielat’s fumbles on these questions gave us material for broadcast ads and undercut his image as a man in control of the facts.

The debates proved especially valuable to me given the media’s stance in the race. The right-wing outlets went all out in a bid to upset a liberal leader. Fox News, for example, repeatedly aired footage of a confrontation I’d had with a supporter of the fringe conspiracy theorist Lyndon LaRouche. At a public meeting, she’d displayed a picture of President Obama with Hitleresque touches and demanded that I admit to supporting Nazi policies. When she persisted in these accusations, I told her, “It is a tribute to the First Amendment that this kind of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated. Ma’am, trying to have a conversation with you would be like trying to argue with a dining room table. I have no interest in doing it.” When reports of the exchange appeared in the press, they were cheered by liberals and demonized out of context by conservatives—a good example of how I was able to raise money for myself and my opponent simultaneously. I say “out of context” because in Fox News’s presentation, my dining room table line was aired as if it had been unprovoked: They edited out all the ranting about Hitler and the Nazis.

Most outrageously, Fox and the
Boston Herald
decided to go after Jim. At one of our debates, Bielat had blurted out that we should consider raising the Social Security eligibility age to seventy-two—a comment he clearly regretted. After the debate, he interrupted his conversation with the press when he noticed Jim, who is an excellent photographer, taking pictures of him. “Aren’t you with the Frank campaign?” he asked, seriously understating Jim’s connection either from a lack of knowledge or an excess of delicacy. “You don’t have to take photos,” he continued, offering to supply Jim with some. Jim responded that he wanted to take his own, adding that it was a free country. Clearly irritated, Bielat answered, “not till we take back the country,” echoing the Tea Party conceit that the Affordable Care Act and the financial reform bill represented the onset of tyranny. Jim’s answer to this verbal excess was a recommendation. “Quit the jokes, dude,” he said. “You’re not funny at all.” (Jim’s advice was borne out two years later when Bielat belittled the Peace Corps service of his next opponent, Joe Kennedy, by joking, “I’ll take the Marine Corps over the Peace Corps any day.” After the predictable negative response, he had to try to explain it away.)

When Fox News broadcast Jim’s riposte, it left out Bielat’s earlier remarks, giving the false impression that Jim had heckled Bielat at a press conference. But the right wing’s bloodlust was not my only media problem. A lot of reporters think I am not nice enough to them. In their view, it is their job to debunk, expose, and rebut elected officials, and our role is to be very polite in return. Reporters regularly accuse the people they’re interviewing of not telling the truth. If the interviewee expressed equal skepticism about the reporter’s words, the latter’s reaction would be indignation, and possibly a lecture on the First Amendment. I have never encountered a more thin-skinned group.

Shortly after Bielat announced that America would be a free country only if the Republicans won,
The Boston Globe
’s Brian McGrory called me about a column he was writing about Bielat’s exchange with Jim. At that time, McGrory didn’t know that Bielat had spoken first, but finding this out did not deter him from a nasty attack on Jim, which began by complaining that Jim had called Bielat “Dude.” This, McGrory lamented, was disrespectful of a U.S. Marine: Jim should have addressed him by his title. I explained that Jim is a surfer and calls many people Dude, including me at times. I also could not recall the rule that said that political candidates who had been in the military, or were in the reserves and not on active duty, were supposed to be addressed as Lieutenant, Captain, Major,
etc.

While the public mood was unfavorable, and journalists often unfriendly, I had a strong base of support through the constituency work I had done. Leaders of the fishing industry in the southern part of the district pitched in. A full-page newspaper ad from the mayors of Fall River, New Bedford, and Taunton also helped greatly. Bielat himself later explained that he would do better when I was not his opponent because many voters disagreed with my views but had received my help. (He didn’t. He was defeated by a larger margin next time, running against Joe Kennedy III.)

In the end, my rule of thumb that congressional leaders should be ready to lose fifteen points turned out to be more precise than expected. I had won with 68 percent of the vote in 2008. That dropped to 54 percent in 2010. (Minor candidates received 7 percent in 2008 and 3 percent in 2010.) Democrats did terribly everywhere in 2010, and I did no worse than most. In fact, my results were comparable to those for Governor Deval Patrick, who was reelected. He ran slightly ahead of me in the more conservative areas, while I did a little better in the liberal ones.

On election night, my duel with the media continued. In accord with my ongoing conviction that a deep belief in the First Amendment does not preclude criticism of journalists, I said what I thought—and felt.

I had been the major target of the
Boston Herald
, but not their only one. They had run a multipronged attack on Democratic candidates and had campaigned vigorously for the conservative side of three referenda. In every case, they lost. “One of the things we can acknowledge tonight,” I enthusiastically said, “is that Massachusetts has reaffirmed the complete political irrelevance of the
Boston Herald.
” I was prepared for the
Herald
’s howl of outrage, but I was surprised when
The Globe
deemed my remarks improper as well.

When I retired, I was the subject of many stories in the press. Typically they were very generous, but they also reproached me for failing to show proper reverence for journalists and disregarding their feelings. The sensitivity of those who pride themselves on discomforting others continues to bemuse me.

*

In 2009 and 2010, my involuntary absorption in the world of derivatives, securitization, and bank leverage ratios was almost total. Even so, my promise to myself when I first ran for state rep was still binding. With a Democratic House, Senate, and president for the first time since 1994, and the favorable shift in public opinion, I was determined to advance LGBT equality.

Of all our goals in Obama’s first years, expanding hate crimes protections was clearly the easiest to achieve, and Nancy Pelosi quickly put it on the 2009 House agenda. Reprising an old tactic, we attached the protections to the all-important annual military-spending bill. Since Democrats on the Armed Services Committee knew that President Obama, unlike President Bush, would not veto the bill because of a pro-LGBT provision, they did not fear its inclusion. The measure passed and was signed into law in October 2009—over the continued objections of most Republicans.

Our next priority was to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, the vital bill that had failed so many times. This time we kept transgender people within its purview. The legislation was of great importance to me. In many states, it remained entirely legal to fire, demote, or refuse to hire us. And it is the LGBT residents of those states who most needed the help of those of us who lived in more protective jurisdictions. I was eager to do my part and also to rebut the lingering accusation from the 2007 fight that I was unsympathetic to the transgender community. Indeed, my newest legislative assistant, Diego Sanchez, brought both commitment and political sophistication to his job as the first transgender staff member on Capitol Hill.

But to my disappointment and frustration, I could not get the necessary cooperation from George Miller, who remained chair of the Education and Labor Committee, or the Speaker. The main reasons for this were entirely valid. Their highest priority, like President Obama’s, was the passage of universal health care. The memory of our intramural quarrels over transgender inclusion in 2007 didn’t help either.

Pelosi’s position was also strongly influenced by a meeting she had with LGBT political leaders—a meeting to which I was not invited, I believe at their request. As she understood it, they argued that repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was the higher priority. Ending the military ban was a more visible issue as well as a less controversial one. I pushed for acting on all fronts, but I realized that many colleagues who supported LGBT rights worried that passing so many measures in the same session would be an overreach. It would risk the charge that we Democrats were elevating LGBT equality over other concerns. In the face of these realities, I accepted the fact that ENDA would have to wait and decided to focus all of my nonfinancial reform legislative efforts on ending the military ban.

*

My narrowed focus turned out to be necessary. While I was at first optimistic, by the fall of 2010 it was clear that the repeal of DADT was in trouble. Both houses included repeal in their versions of the annual defense authorization. It passed as an amendment on a very partisan vote in the House—229 Democrats voted for it; 26 were opposed. Republican opposition remained overwhelming: Only 5 supported repeal, while 168 voted no. The Republican opposition to allowing LGBT people to serve openly was essentially as strong as it had been in 1993, and yet the nature of that opposition had changed. In 1993 we heard over and over that the presence of LGBT people in the armed forces would destroy morale. Now we heard more about uncertainty—we don’t know what effect this change will have, we should not be conducting social experiments in the military, and so on. Anyone who compares the debates of 1993 and 2010 will see that the case for LGBT legal equality had been firmly established in the intervening years—both intellectually and morally.

In the Senate, repeal won the support of the Armed Services Committee but was then stopped in its tracks by a Republican filibuster. Not a single Republican broke ranks. This was very bad news. The filibuster occurred on September 21, 2010, shortly before adjournment for the midterm elections. This meant that the issue would have to be decided in a lame-duck session, after an election in which Republicans were expected to do well.

I was very distressed, substantively and politically. Our success on hate crimes was a good thing but of limited practical impact. Failing to end discrimination in both the workplace and the military was morally unacceptable. And it would dash the LGBT community’s assumption that Democratic control of government was worth its while.

I knew we would need the active support of the president as well. Senate Democrats had tried to end the Republican filibuster, and would try again. But if they did not succeed, the Senate leadership, especially the leaders of the Armed Services Committee, would tell us that DADT repeal was dead and it was now imperative to pass an important defense bill without it. Any suggestion that the Obama Defense Department was thinking that way would be fatal, and so I was determined to make the contrary case directly to the president. When he came to Massachusetts in October to campaign for the reelection of his close friend and ally, Governor Deval Patrick, Jim and I attended the event. I was then in the midst of my tough race against Bielat, and my time would have been better spent with voters in my district. But I could not let any chance to press our case go by. When Jim and I spoke to Obama during the backstage photo op, I annoyed some of his handlers by using the opportunity to impress on him how important it was that we do everything possible to repeal DADT when Congress reconvened. I was reassured by his promise, which I knew was sincere, to make it a priority.

Of course, Election Day turned out to be a calamity for the party, even as I held on to my seat. In January, Republicans would take control of the House with a forty-nine-seat majority, and so repealing the ban in the upcoming lame-duck session became an even more urgent matter. As soon as the election was over, I called every high-ranking Democratic decision maker in the Senate I could reach and several top White House aides. I insisted that from both the moral and political standpoint, no defense bill at all was far better than one that perpetuated bigotry.

The news got worse when we reconvened. Senate Republicans stood firm, and the effort to achieve cloture—ending the filibuster and sending the whole bill to the floor—failed again. But there was one ray of hope. Susan Collins of Maine became the first Republican senator to support bringing the defense bill to the floor with repeal attached. Even better, she and semi-Democrat Joe Lieberman of Connecticut began lobbying other Republicans to join her. Lieberman was especially valuable because his support for John McCain against Obama in the 2008 election gave him considerable credibility on the Republican side.