BetweentheBookends

A Blog about Connecticut libraries and librarians

Wednesday, June 14, 2006

Tip was Right. All Politics should be Local.

There I was, in the Greenblatt's living room, listening to the kid who would be a congressman. Thirty-two year old Chris Murphy, who was just another kid from the neighborhood a few years ago, was talking about changing the world, starting with the fifth congressional district. He wasn't haranguing like sometimes even our local pols do. He was talking in a clear, earnest voice, with his Mom and Dad and grandfather looking on, to a houseful of people who are the parents and teachers of his boyhood. He was telling stories the way all politicians, even the young, are expected to--about how his first political activity was handing out leaflets--for the Republicans! (This one getting a big laugh in this room packed with the flower of the local Democratic Party.) Chris went on with his story to tell about how he saw the (Democratic) light as early as high school when he got involved with the Young Dems, led by a remarkable Wethersfield High School teacher (Physics, no less,) who is a district captain in our local party apparatus. Wethersfield is not in the fifth Congressional district; Chris was hitting up the hometown crowd for much needed money to challenge a well funded ($3 million already!) incumbent, and that was fine by us. You never saw checkbooks come out so fast. Except for one of the lawyers who thought she might be able to use some of her firm's PAC money for Chris, I'm sure most of the figures written on those checks were two rather than four.

This scene is politics at its best. A kid whose parents are not even Democrats has been working his way through the party system to get to the Greenblatt's living room, a space last used politically for the likes of Joe Lieberman, (which is so another story!) Although Chris is a comer by any standards--incredibly good-looking, smart, articulate, Williams' grad--he has not gotten, nor did he expect, a free ride to being a Congressional candidate. He didn’t even get to start his career in his hometown in the very Democratic first district, (a place where if Dracula were on the Democratic ticket, he would be elected.) Chris moved to Southington, where he won the nod to run for state rep, then state senator, and now, with Diane Farrell in the fourth and Joe Courtney in the second, the right to challenge an entrenched, well-funded incumbent for a seat in Congress.

I have always felt comfortable with local politics. We have a devoted, tenacious town chairman, a teacher and an Episcopalian. Party workers like myself, while fiercely partisan, are totally incorruptible. The party is to me like church, a place where everybody knows your name, but no one is familiar enough to breed contempt. We rarely discuss issues because we probably don’t agree on many, but we do agree on people.

While we were all in the living room listening to Chris' speech, some of the current WHS Young Dems were hanging in the Greenblatt's den, creating there a latter day smoke-free smoke filled room. Hanging with them were some slightly older, but still decades younger than we, workers from the Malloy campaign, (showing the kids how it is done?) This entire tableau, with the young candidate, the teenagers, the mayor, mayor's wife, state rep, would-be state senator, grandfather and the $25 checks, is what politics means to me. I'd like to think that this is what Tip O'Neill was talking about when he said that all politics is local. I know that this is all good, and who knows? The kid just might win.