Last week I did something I’ve never done before: I gave money to a political candidate. Oh, wait. I take that back. In 1978, I gave twenty-five bucks to someone running for the House of Representatives in Alabama’s 7th district. His name was Richard Shelby.
What interest, you might justifiably ask, did I have in who represents Tuscaloosa in the United States Congress? The answer is absolutely none. My friend Nancy dragged me along to an Upper East Side cocktail party she was attending. Only when we arrived did I discover that it was a political fundraiser, the price of admission twenty-five smackers.
I came to grieve the decision. Shelby, who was a conservative Democrat at the time, served three terms in the House before he was elected to the Senate in 1986. He switched parties in 1994, and ended up serving six terms as one of the Senate’s most conservative Republican members.
But my error isn’t why I’ve waited forty-four years to dig into my pockets again. One of my first jobs out of college was working at NBC News as a researcher in its Presidential election unit. That was the year Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford.
My boss at the time, Roan Conrad, warned me and my fellow researchers that journalists must remain neutral. They don’t give money to political candidates they may end up covering. And they surely don’t wear campaign buttons. His admonition has guided me ever since.
Another, more selfish reason for remaining above the political fray, is that my wife, who does make contributions to candidates both locally and nationally, is inundated with dire daily, if not hourly warnings, to give more. I’ve got my hands full deleting junk mail for CBD gummies, new knees and erectile dysfunction remedies without having to suffer the guilt of expunging desperate solicitations from the Democratic National Campaign Committee.
But I can no longer sit on the sidelines. Despite the histrionic headlines on those emails that I’ve strenuously been avoiding, the state of our democracy does seem to be hanging by a fraying thread. So putting my money where my mouth is, I transferred some cash to Democratic representative Elissa Slotkin’s reelection committee.
Elissa who? Fair question. Ms. Slotkin is a former CIA analyst who has represented southeast Michigan’s swing 8th Congressional District – it includes the capitol Lansing, if that’s any help – since 2019. The congresswoman, 46 years old, specializes in national security issues.
It was probably as she was speaking authoritatively about that subject that I first spotted her on TV and became smitten by her no nonsense style; it’s what her congressional website describes as her “mission-focus” in areas such as bringing down the price of prescription drugs and protecting the Great Lakes, while radiating an old-fashioned sense of integrity. I’m reluctant to quote from politicians’ websites but the military “mission-focus” descriptor nails it.
Don’t take my word for it. In her first endorsement of a Democrat ever, soon-to-be-former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney threw her support to Slotkin this week and joined her on the campaign trail. That’s in Michigan’s newly drawn 7th Congressional district. The Cook Political Report rates the race a toss-up.
When I shared the news of my largesse with my friend Bruce – I’ll say only that my contribution was in the triple digits, the very low triple digits – he logically asked why I didn’t bet my money closer to home? We’ve got worthy candidates in our backyard.
He’s got a point, even though I might observe that Elissa Slotkin was born in New York City and graduated from Cornell University and Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. And here’s a fun fact: her grandfather founded the meatpacking company behind Ball Park Franks.
But contrary to Tip O’Neill’s observation that all politics is local, it seems to me that all politics has become national. The composition of the House and Senate, not to mention far-flung state legislatures and attorneys general offices, can affect the outcome of presidential elections, a woman’s right to control her own body, and whether we remain a democracy or slide into autocracy.
There may have been a time when, to quote Paul Simon in “Mrs. Robinson,” “Laugh about it, shout about it, when you’ve got to choose, every way you look at this, you loose.”
No longer. The stakes couldn’t be higher, the choice starker. Democrats don’t have a monopoly on virtue, by any means. But only one party promotes conspiracy theories, demonizes immigrants, sees a lot to like in Vladimir Putin, and offers no guarantees it will abide by the results of fair elections.
What you hear is that people are worried about inflation and gas prices. Or that they can’t take the verbal fisticuffs and tune out. I get it. They may also feel it doesn’t make much difference whether they vote or not in a country increasingly controlled by billionaires and lobbyists. There’s more than a little truth to that. The campaign finance system is broken. Big money in politics is the root of all evil.
But inflation and even dark money become less of a big deal if you don’t live in a democracy anymore. There are no excuses. Just ask the people of Ukraine. Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. Voting remains the last, best way to protect it.
Ralph Gardner, Jr. is a journalist who divides his time between New York City and Columbia County. More of his work can be found at ralphgardner.com
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