WEBVTT 00:00:02.289 --> 00:00:04.289 Yes, today is September 29th. Uh 2011. I'm David Berman, Professor 00:00:07.629 --> 00:00:12.576 Emeritus of Political Science at A SU. Today, we're interviewing Robby 00:00:12.609 --> 00:00:17.506 Sherwood who is district director for Harry Mitchell. Uh He is offices in 00:00:17.539 --> 00:00:22.567 Scottsdale. Uh This is part of a collection that we're doing for the Harry 00:00:22.600 --> 00:00:27.706 Mitchell papers at A SU I know that you were uh born in Springerville. 00:00:27.739 --> 00:00:32.536 You're a native born Arizonan and you were educated at a SU to catch B A 00:00:32.569 --> 00:00:39.256 and MA there and communications and creative writing. And that you uh I 00:00:39.289 --> 00:00:43.896 used to an adjunct professor there too in the W uh Cronkite School for I 00:00:43.929 --> 00:00:49.335 did, I did for 11 project. Uh And yeah, and it did very well, won a lot of 00:00:49.368 --> 00:00:51.906 awards and so I've just been resting on my Laurels since then. So I just 00:00:51.939 --> 00:00:58.426 did it once. Yeah, you were a reporter for 17 years starting off in NASA 00:00:58.459 --> 00:01:02.576 and he fairly tribute and with the Arizona Republic. And I think most of 00:01:02.609 --> 00:01:06.587 us remember you pretty much, I, I do remember the authors of, of journal 00:01:06.620 --> 00:01:11.087 of articles and papers. And uh of course, I remember you as many people do 00:01:11.120 --> 00:01:14.867 as a member of the Horizon panel for many years. And Michael Grant, uh 00:01:14.900 --> 00:01:19.846 every Friday, we could talk about the issues and happenings in Arizona 00:01:19.879 --> 00:01:24.617 politics and you're award winning journalist. And uh you had a great 00:01:24.650 --> 00:01:30.867 career there. And then 2006, was it? She decided to go to public relations 00:01:30.900 --> 00:01:37.286 firm and uh spent a year there. And then uh in November of 2007, you wound 00:01:37.319 --> 00:01:42.876 up on working for Harry me, got a phone call. What was your first contact 00:01:42.909 --> 00:01:47.626 with her? Did you know him when you were a reporter? I had occasional 00:01:47.659 --> 00:01:51.257 contact with him even in the Tribune because he was mayor of Tempe at the 00:01:51.290 --> 00:01:56.635 time and then was elected to the legislature. So of course, I knew who he 00:01:56.668 --> 00:02:03.245 was and I would occasionally pull shifts in our Tempe bureau. 00:02:03.278 --> 00:02:06.906 So you got to meet him a couple of times, but I didn't really have 00:02:06.939 --> 00:02:13.696 extended interaction with the Mattel after 1999 near the end of 1999. And 00:02:13.729 --> 00:02:19.916 into the 2000 legislative session, I was tabbed to, to join the Republic's 00:02:19.949 --> 00:02:24.475 Capital Press Corps team. And so I was moved down there to the Capitol 00:02:24.508 --> 00:02:27.967 press room and began covering the legislature on a day to day basis. And 00:02:28.000 --> 00:02:32.896 Harry was there in the Democratic caucus and in leadership there and was 00:02:32.929 --> 00:02:37.525 someone who, while he was in leadership, he was never the leader. And so 00:02:37.558 --> 00:02:40.967 the people you get the quotes from, you know, for an official story would 00:02:41.000 --> 00:02:45.467 be the leader, but Harry was a place where Harry's office was a place 00:02:45.500 --> 00:02:50.876 where you could find out what was going on. It was a scene there, 00:02:50.909 --> 00:02:56.036 it was a good atmosphere. There would always be a good collection of 00:02:56.069 --> 00:03:01.975 lobbyists or lawmakers or people who knew what was happening. So you could 00:03:02.008 --> 00:03:07.362 , if you knew you were smart enough to in his office, you could get a very 00:03:07.395 --> 00:03:11.600 good lay of the land. So I just began interacting with him on a regular 00:03:11.633 --> 00:03:15.342 basis. 00:03:15.375 --> 00:03:22.221 Absolutely. I say this a lot about Harry, that he is the most unassuming 00:03:22.254 --> 00:03:26.321 important person that I've ever met. And you understand what I mean by 00:03:26.354 --> 00:03:32.281 that, he's clearly been an elected official member of Congress, a very 00:03:32.314 --> 00:03:37.207 high level important person, but he is the most down to earth 00:03:37.240 --> 00:03:39.297 conversational 00:03:39.330 --> 00:03:44.085 congenial person makes you feel welcome. He's really, you've become a 00:03:44.118 --> 00:03:49.066 member of his family and I've come to see him sort of almost like a father 00:03:49.099 --> 00:03:54.335 figure because he's given me a lot of wise and very sage advice about 00:03:54.368 --> 00:03:59.896 things. My father died when I was 15. And so I just naturally gravitated 00:03:59.929 --> 00:04:04.047 to him in that manner. 00:04:04.080 --> 00:04:11.505 There was not so much then because there was a wall, I was a journalist, 00:04:11.538 --> 00:04:16.356 they were careful, they knew that if they said something outrageous or 00:04:16.389 --> 00:04:20.426 something like that, I was bound to put it in the paper. But I was growing 00:04:20.459 --> 00:04:25.166 to like him and admire him as a person as I got to know him. But where I 00:04:25.199 --> 00:04:27.895 really 00:04:27.928 --> 00:04:33.377 got to, where I really, really admired him and saw him as a father figure 00:04:33.410 --> 00:04:40.236 was when I was working for him, you got the job, you're telling me as 00:04:40.269 --> 00:04:45.075 being recommended by someone else that Harry knew there was a vacancy. 00:04:45.108 --> 00:04:47.356 There was 00:04:47.389 --> 00:04:51.805 some of the DC staffers who were there probably have given you the how it 00:04:51.838 --> 00:04:55.877 all went down. But when Harry was elected, 00:04:55.910 --> 00:05:01.046 no one really expected him to win at least of all himself or his campaign 00:05:01.079 --> 00:05:05.217 staff. And so suddenly you end up and you're there in Washington DC and 00:05:05.250 --> 00:05:09.036 you can't even find the bathroom. So a lot of very inexperienced people 00:05:09.069 --> 00:05:13.265 who had to quickly get up to speed. And so he hired a chief of staff who 00:05:13.298 --> 00:05:19.346 was a Hill veteran, Gene. I'm sorry, I'm forgetting his name, but 00:05:19.379 --> 00:05:23.926 he kind of came out of semi retirement to get the office up and running 00:05:23.959 --> 00:05:27.846 and he stayed in that position for a year until all the babies could walk. 00:05:27.879 --> 00:05:33.007 And then he went ahead and took his retirement and they promoted Alexis 00:05:33.040 --> 00:05:36.825 Tamron to go to Washington DC from district director. So that created a 00:05:36.858 --> 00:05:42.055 vacancy and they were looking around for someone who they felt could fill 00:05:42.088 --> 00:05:48.286 the job who had a good handle of local politics, knew a lot of people and 00:05:48.319 --> 00:05:51.967 could deal with the local media. I wasn't the press secretary, but they 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:56.166 were looking for someone who could have relationships with local media and 00:05:56.199 --> 00:06:00.205 Elizabeth Higgins, who was Harry's assistant in the Senate. And then I was 00:06:00.238 --> 00:06:04.906 also his scheduler and threw my name in it out, I guess. And they was like 00:06:04.939 --> 00:06:09.217 , I wonder if he would do it? And they called it a very good time because 00:06:09.250 --> 00:06:14.026 I think I had been 11 months in public relations and long enough to know 00:06:14.059 --> 00:06:17.447 that I didn't really like it if there was a possible ability to do 00:06:17.480 --> 00:06:20.317 something else. I mean, I was ok at it. I thought I was successful at it 00:06:20.350 --> 00:06:24.336 but I, I was, uh, looking to be something, you know, for something with a 00:06:24.369 --> 00:06:28.846 little more significance and meaning and, and this just fell in my lap. 00:06:28.879 --> 00:06:32.226 Did you, did you have any qualms about getting involved in partisan 00:06:32.259 --> 00:06:38.661 politics after having been a journalist for so many years? You know, uh, 00:06:38.694 --> 00:06:44.991 maybe just a little, but I was out of journalism and I didn't see myself 00:06:45.024 --> 00:06:50.692 necessarily going back. I really enjoyed that career. It was maybe the 00:06:50.725 --> 00:06:57.512 most fun I've ever had at work covering politics, but I had moved on and I 00:06:57.545 --> 00:07:04.046 wasn't ashamed of my party affiliation. I'm a lifelong, a democrat from 00:07:04.079 --> 00:07:08.026 rural Arizona. Uh, which means that you have a fair amount of conservative 00:07:08.059 --> 00:07:11.086 lean. So, like, you know, my family are probably the most well armed 00:07:11.119 --> 00:07:16.046 democrats. You'll, you'll find, you know, we grew up on a ranch and, and, 00:07:16.079 --> 00:07:20.395 and II, I felt that the, the, that Harry was representing a district in 00:07:20.428 --> 00:07:26.166 which was very kind of moderate leaning centrist district that was not 00:07:26.199 --> 00:07:31.046 aligned with how I grew up. And so ultimately, it was just a minor concern 00:07:31.079 --> 00:07:35.906 and not one that I really worried about journalists have gone into 00:07:35.939 --> 00:07:43.276 politics, political positions and, and it's a very common thing because if 00:07:43.309 --> 00:07:46.426 you're good at, as a journalist or a media specialist, you're very 00:07:46.459 --> 00:07:50.877 valuable to the congress person or the group of people that are hiring you. 00:07:50.910 --> 00:07:55.567 Right. Yeah. If, yeah, there, there's, you can be for sure. And, and, uh 00:07:55.600 --> 00:07:59.166 , it's a little controversial, I think that, uh, and I kind of draw a line 00:07:59.199 --> 00:08:04.687 where, you know, it's, it's fair to raise questions if you're covering a 00:08:04.720 --> 00:08:08.705 politician one day and then you turn around and take a job from them the 00:08:08.738 --> 00:08:15.947 next day. I always felt that that was a fair game to criticize you pulling 00:08:15.980 --> 00:08:20.286 punches as a reporter. And I covered Harry in the legislature, but I 00:08:20.319 --> 00:08:23.856 didn't cover his congressional race. I covered Kyle and Peterson. So I 00:08:23.889 --> 00:08:28.366 sort of just watched this whole thing with JD Hayworth from a distance and 00:08:28.399 --> 00:08:32.866 , uh, and then I laundered myself for 11 months in public relations. So, 00:08:32.899 --> 00:08:36.557 yeah, I felt like that, uh, that I could make that transition in good 00:08:36.590 --> 00:08:41.316 conscience, you know. Yeah, it was, I guess there was some flack that came 00:08:41.349 --> 00:08:45.726 down as I remember going back to the paper, some of the Tribune wrote a 00:08:45.759 --> 00:08:51.255 front page story about it. Iiii I thought so. 00:08:51.288 --> 00:08:54.856 I looked at, I was like, well, I won't always be in this job and I'll 00:08:54.889 --> 00:08:57.996 probably have to go back and be a consultant some day. And so as long as I 00:08:58.029 --> 00:09:02.375 spelled my name, right, I guess I was all right. 00:09:02.408 --> 00:09:06.736 All those years you covered politics. Did you have an idea of what you 00:09:06.769 --> 00:09:11.525 were getting into? Did you have a vision of what the world would be like, 00:09:11.558 --> 00:09:15.125 the political world would be? Like, once you become 00:09:15.158 --> 00:09:17.895 part of my language, I have honestly fallen ass backwards through my whole 00:09:17.928 --> 00:09:24.177 career. I have every job I've, I've, I've wanted really bad and try to get 00:09:24.210 --> 00:09:29.167 , you know, or, or, or, or sought after just didn't really work out or I, 00:09:29.200 --> 00:09:32.826 I didn't get it, you know, it's, it's more these sort of opportunities 00:09:32.859 --> 00:09:36.765 that, that, that just sort of appear and you sort of step through them and 00:09:36.798 --> 00:09:40.576 , and, and covering politics was the same thing. I was a general 00:09:40.609 --> 00:09:43.436 assignment reporter and crime and general assignment reporter at the 00:09:43.469 --> 00:09:48.015 Tribune. And I wrote mostly big stories of the day. Sometimes it was 00:09:48.048 --> 00:09:52.196 politics, sometimes it could be anything. And I like that, it appealed to 00:09:52.229 --> 00:09:57.196 my short attention span. But at some point, the Tribune in those days was 00:09:57.229 --> 00:10:01.086 like playing for a AAA ball club and you were hoping to get noticed by the 00:10:01.119 --> 00:10:04.566 major league team, which is the Republic. And eventually I got lucky 00:10:04.599 --> 00:10:08.307 enough I did and, and, but they are going to offer you a job that's more 00:10:08.340 --> 00:10:11.446 or less at the lowest level of their totem pole. Front page of the Tribune 00:10:11.479 --> 00:10:14.787 equals covering city of Chandler for the Republic. You know, which was my 00:10:14.820 --> 00:10:18.186 first job and I just took it because I wanted to be at the Republic. I 00:10:18.219 --> 00:10:22.417 didn't know about local politics like that. I never covered a city or a 00:10:22.450 --> 00:10:26.265 meeting or, you know, a board meeting or anything like that. And I just 00:10:26.298 --> 00:10:31.297 sort of fake it till you make it type of attitude. And over time my beats 00:10:31.330 --> 00:10:33.986 progressed, I started covering the city of Mesa. And then ultimately the 00:10:34.019 --> 00:10:38.456 legislature, I think the work I did covering the city of Mesa, maybe got 00:10:38.489 --> 00:10:41.196 enough attention to someone to give me a try at the legislature. And I 00:10:41.229 --> 00:10:44.496 just slowly fell in love with the political process in politics in general 00:10:44.529 --> 00:10:48.696 and just learned on the go. It wasn't something that I grew up or always 00:10:48.729 --> 00:10:53.525 knew that I wanted to do. It just evolved, seeing it through the eyes of a 00:10:53.558 --> 00:10:57.476 reporter and then all of a sudden being the one that other reporters are 00:10:57.509 --> 00:11:04.096 looking at now you're in it rather than just, is it, is it, is it what you 00:11:04.129 --> 00:11:08.275 expected it to be or was it more combative? Did you, did you, do you think 00:11:08.308 --> 00:11:11.986 you could change the world or was it an inspiration? You know, when I was 00:11:12.019 --> 00:11:16.037 , when, I mean, when I was a reporter? Yeah. Um, I mean, I, I had a fair 00:11:16.070 --> 00:11:20.537 amount of idealism as, as a reporter and, and, and there were stories that 00:11:20.570 --> 00:11:23.066 literally did change people's lives, you know, for the better, or 00:11:23.099 --> 00:11:27.336 sometimes for the worse, you know. Uh, uh, when you, when you hooked up 00:11:27.369 --> 00:11:31.217 with Harry, do you think? Well, this is gonna be my chance to do something 00:11:31.250 --> 00:11:34.336 good or to do 00:11:34.369 --> 00:11:36.826 something with meaning something that's important to the country? 00:11:36.859 --> 00:11:42.186 Absolutely. Yes. And compared to a no knock on what I was doing right 00:11:42.219 --> 00:11:45.775 before. But compared to trying to get people to show up at a press 00:11:45.808 --> 00:11:49.856 conference or a shopping mall or something like that, you know, it was no 00:11:49.889 --> 00:11:52.907 comparison 00:11:52.940 --> 00:11:58.186 and particularly in the district office, which is, I think if you're just 00:11:58.219 --> 00:12:04.025 one small office in the house on Capitol Hill, your relative 00:12:04.058 --> 00:12:08.907 insignificance probably shows a lot more than you'd like. But in a 00:12:08.940 --> 00:12:12.375 district office you have people coming in every day for help. They're 00:12:12.408 --> 00:12:18.287 seeking, they're caught in some sort of bureaucratic mess or red tape and 00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:21.336 through casework or they have an issue that they want to get in front of 00:12:21.369 --> 00:12:27.275 the congressman that maybe you can't fix with a law. You're limited in 00:12:27.308 --> 00:12:30.096 your ability to do that, but you might fix with a phone call to the right 00:12:30.129 --> 00:12:33.616 person and get this person out of a jam. People like that walked in all 00:12:33.649 --> 00:12:39.316 day, every day and, and you did feel a sense of, of accomplishment when 00:12:39.349 --> 00:12:42.236 you help people like that. How was the, what was the relationship between 00:12:42.269 --> 00:12:46.316 the Washington office in the district office? Did you? I know you, you 00:12:46.349 --> 00:12:51.936 were the eyes and ears of the, of the, of Harry in the district. So it was 00:12:51.969 --> 00:12:55.576 sort of a two way flow of communication there, I suppose. But in terms of 00:12:55.609 --> 00:13:02.275 staff supervision, where did, were you relatively autonomous? Or I think I 00:13:02.308 --> 00:13:05.907 had a fair amount of autonomy, 00:13:05.940 --> 00:13:10.557 the way it's structured is the chief of staff is below a member of 00:13:10.590 --> 00:13:14.946 Congress. And then the legislative director and the press secretary is 00:13:14.979 --> 00:13:19.686 relatively anonymous, but doesn't have direct supervision. And then the 00:13:19.719 --> 00:13:24.645 district director are below the chief of staff. So I was the ranking staff 00:13:24.678 --> 00:13:28.706 member in the district. I had day to day responsibilities for those staff 00:13:28.739 --> 00:13:34.186 members and could direct them and was free to come up with our own ideas 00:13:34.219 --> 00:13:39.326 about how we wanted to do things. But I think the essence of your question 00:13:39.359 --> 00:13:43.706 is the relationship between DC and the district office. And I would say 00:13:43.739 --> 00:13:48.297 that it's probably the same story in every congressional office that they 00:13:48.330 --> 00:13:53.907 , you don't always see eye to eye. You ultimately create a very productive 00:13:53.940 --> 00:13:58.576 relationship or you don't. But I think ours was quite productive. But 00:13:58.609 --> 00:14:02.265 there's a natural 00:14:02.298 --> 00:14:06.427 feeling if you're in DC, everything is seen through a very political lens 00:14:06.460 --> 00:14:11.366 , through a very DC lens. It's very policy orientated in the district. 00:14:11.399 --> 00:14:15.586 You're, you're talking to your constituents and it's more of kind of a 00:14:15.619 --> 00:14:21.116 gut feeling of how your member is doing and how things are going and 00:14:21.149 --> 00:14:24.346 there's going to be times where, what DC wants to do and what the district 00:14:24.379 --> 00:14:32.379 thinks they got to do are not going to mesh on any particular issue. So, 00:14:34.649 --> 00:14:38.606 yeah, I think that, 00:14:38.639 --> 00:14:43.446 well, I think ultimately we're all on the same page for 00:14:43.479 --> 00:14:48.135 health care, but I think that there might have been some folks who thought 00:14:48.168 --> 00:14:52.255 that because of the makeup of the district that the congressman should 00:14:52.288 --> 00:14:59.686 have voted. No. And, uh, my advice was to, you know, vote your conscience 00:14:59.719 --> 00:15:04.557 , vote for what you think is right. And, and the political consequences 00:15:04.590 --> 00:15:09.846 just be what they are. And that's a risky thing to do because some people 00:15:09.879 --> 00:15:14.657 might say that the issue that maybe sunk us was, was health care. I 00:15:14.690 --> 00:15:19.907 disagree. I think the way was so large that we could have voted against 00:15:19.940 --> 00:15:22.167 health care. They just would have said we voted for it and they would 00:15:22.200 --> 00:15:24.677 believe 00:15:24.710 --> 00:15:28.936 that the district was sort of divided in health care and that's one of the 00:15:28.969 --> 00:15:33.635 problems that you had a district that was not one way. 00:15:33.668 --> 00:15:37.436 I think if you pulled the district it was probably maybe, you know, 5050 00:15:37.469 --> 00:15:43.515 but the newspaper had decided they didn't like the, they pulled their 00:15:43.548 --> 00:15:47.936 endorsement of Harry basically on one issue, the Republic did because he 00:15:47.969 --> 00:15:51.557 agreed with them on every other stance and then, but they turned their 00:15:51.590 --> 00:15:55.476 back on him and went with Schweer in the last election and it was about 00:15:55.509 --> 00:16:01.956 the health of the editorial, they changed their endorsement but they 00:16:01.989 --> 00:16:06.927 changed it. There was only one issue of any substance that Harry disagreed 00:16:06.960 --> 00:16:12.816 with that. Uh, uh, there's other, some, some of the finance reform and 00:16:12.849 --> 00:16:20.775 banking, uh, uh, you know, I think there was a worry that, uh, 00:16:20.808 --> 00:16:25.917 in Scottsdale with the banks and the relative income in there that if you 00:16:25.950 --> 00:16:31.417 went too hard on the banks that it would be unpopular in the district. I 00:16:31.450 --> 00:16:37.375 don't think I agreed with that. I felt that they needed more oversight. 00:16:37.408 --> 00:16:41.927 And, uh, so we went, we went back and forth on issues like that. Um, how 00:16:41.960 --> 00:16:45.606 was Harry's style leadership? Was he a hands on manager or did he just 00:16:45.639 --> 00:16:50.196 sort of set the tone and, and let you do your own thing or, uh, uh, yeah, 00:16:50.229 --> 00:16:56.496 hands on. Wouldn't be accurate. I think, I think he's, he's, uh, more of a 00:16:56.529 --> 00:17:03.086 , uh, an issue that presents itself, he might say in general what he 00:17:03.119 --> 00:17:08.206 thinks of it, but he also wants the staff to analyze it, put in your two 00:17:08.239 --> 00:17:12.877 cents, have a conversation about it. It's better if there is a consensus 00:17:12.910 --> 00:17:19.936 among the staff, like everybody feels that this is the right direction and 00:17:19.969 --> 00:17:25.865 here's our detailed reasons why if there is disagreement, he wants to hear 00:17:25.898 --> 00:17:31.384 , like, replay your argument for me. You give me your views and you give 00:17:31.417 --> 00:17:36.155 me yours and then he sort of just soaks it all in and ultimately he goes 00:17:36.188 --> 00:17:39.435 like, well, here's what I think I'm going to do on this. Here's what I'm 00:17:39.468 --> 00:17:43.884 doing, but he'll want to hear all the various sides of the argument. He's 00:17:43.917 --> 00:17:48.015 not someone who wants to just hear what you think he wants to hear. He 00:17:48.048 --> 00:17:52.835 wants a warts and all. And then ultimately, he will come to a decision on 00:17:52.868 --> 00:17:55.976 that. 00:17:56.009 --> 00:17:59.956 Alexis was saying that he liked to think of himself as the mayor of the 00:17:59.989 --> 00:18:02.045 district. 00:18:02.078 --> 00:18:07.647 He was sort of a mayor at heart and he looked at this is his new city 00:18:07.680 --> 00:18:11.825 district five. And I think that was an effective approach. I wouldn't have 00:18:11.858 --> 00:18:15.686 counseled him to do anything different. And being a mayor, I think that 00:18:15.719 --> 00:18:19.647 Harry Hotel himself was the job that he is most nostalgic about and enjoy 00:18:19.680 --> 00:18:24.315 the most. It's a job in which, you know, someone will come to you with a 00:18:24.348 --> 00:18:26.706 problem and it might be a pothole or something like that and you can make 00:18:26.739 --> 00:18:30.666 one phone call and that afternoon somebody will have fixed that problem. 00:18:30.699 --> 00:18:33.555 So there's a sense of satisfaction. There's a sense of being very close to 00:18:33.588 --> 00:18:38.397 your constituents. He would run into people at Costco or his usual haunts 00:18:38.430 --> 00:18:44.107 and see his constituents all the time. And he wanted to do that as much as 00:18:44.140 --> 00:18:51.565 possible as a congressman. There's 700,000 people in our district. And so 00:18:51.598 --> 00:18:55.627 it's much more of a challenge, but it was something that was a priority 00:18:55.660 --> 00:19:00.085 for him. And it became a part of my job in the district as the eyes and 00:19:00.118 --> 00:19:02.545 ears to 00:19:02.578 --> 00:19:08.055 even down to little things like scanning the obituaries every day because 00:19:08.088 --> 00:19:12.627 there is more than once. The member has to spend five days a week in 00:19:12.660 --> 00:19:17.097 Washington DC during the session and come back every weekend. But, you 00:19:17.130 --> 00:19:23.016 know, there were colleagues of his or old teachers or professors or people 00:19:23.049 --> 00:19:27.416 who were in his life who passed on. And more than once I had to, I see 00:19:27.449 --> 00:19:29.756 somebody from Tempe says, Harry, did you know this person? Oh my goodness 00:19:29.789 --> 00:19:36.795 . I had heard that and he literally in Washington DC. When you're there, 00:19:36.828 --> 00:19:40.555 you're scheduled almost five minute increments. So he's not going to have 00:19:40.588 --> 00:19:44.627 time to sit down and write a letter of condolence. And you know, I don't 00:19:44.660 --> 00:19:48.486 want you hope I find somebody that might have got a letter of condolence 00:19:48.519 --> 00:19:50.916 from Harry Mitchell that was originally drafted by me, but that became a 00:19:50.949 --> 00:19:55.035 part of something that I would do to try to write a very well done, very, 00:19:55.068 --> 00:19:59.347 very hairy letter of condolence and then he would approve it or make a 00:19:59.380 --> 00:20:02.406 couple of changes or I wouldn't say this or that. But he was, you know, 00:20:02.439 --> 00:20:07.226 you have to save a member of Congress time like that. And then a lot of 00:20:07.259 --> 00:20:11.085 different things like looking through newspaper articles to find, uh you 00:20:11.118 --> 00:20:15.315 know, as a mayor, if somebody had had a significant academic achievement 00:20:15.348 --> 00:20:19.825 or something like that, as a newspaper, he dashed off a letter to him. He 00:20:19.858 --> 00:20:23.416 still wanted that done because that was his style. So there's a lot of 00:20:23.449 --> 00:20:26.696 kids out there that would get a personal, 00:20:26.729 --> 00:20:32.575 I always wrote things. So I imagine that this would be in a frame for 00:20:32.608 --> 00:20:39.347 somebody from the member and there's obvious political benefit to doing 00:20:39.380 --> 00:20:44.035 that. But I don't think it was done. He wanted it done because this person 00:20:44.068 --> 00:20:49.426 might vote for me. That was just his style from going back decades. A 00:20:49.459 --> 00:20:53.805 casework would be important too, helping them out with something they 00:20:53.838 --> 00:20:57.575 wanted from the federal government. Or, you know, Harry was very proud of 00:20:57.608 --> 00:21:00.397 the, of the, of the case work we did in our office. And I think you're 00:21:00.430 --> 00:21:04.766 gonna interview Elizabeth Higgins who was one of our case workers. And, 00:21:04.799 --> 00:21:09.246 and it could be any number of things people get stuck in the system. The 00:21:09.279 --> 00:21:14.545 federal government is so huge and the bureaucracies can be very dense and 00:21:14.578 --> 00:21:20.147 somebody might just lose your piece of paper in your file that proved you 00:21:20.180 --> 00:21:22.726 were in Vietnam and got dosed with Agent Orange and suddenly you're not 00:21:22.759 --> 00:21:25.196 getting benefits, 00:21:25.229 --> 00:21:33.229 things like that. So this is a sad commentary on the bureaucracy. But 00:21:34.019 --> 00:21:37.226 sometimes those folks working, there are not going to prioritize that 00:21:37.259 --> 00:21:40.147 person even though they've called a million times until a member of 00:21:40.180 --> 00:21:44.607 Congress calls them. And then suddenly the light of the fire gets lit and 00:21:44.640 --> 00:21:47.815 they try to find this piece of paper that they're missing and they're 00:21:47.848 --> 00:21:52.045 messing over this person. Were the people who asked you for help, largely 00:21:52.078 --> 00:22:00.078 Democrats or no, they were from across the spectrum there. It was not, 00:22:00.239 --> 00:22:05.956 there is not a political aspect to casework. I think that your 00:22:05.989 --> 00:22:09.196 expectations should be as a constituent of a member of congress that if 00:22:09.229 --> 00:22:14.217 you have an issue that requires groups, casework that the level of service 00:22:14.250 --> 00:22:17.397 you get should not vary from office to office, depending on the member's 00:22:17.430 --> 00:22:21.137 party or your party. I don't know if that's always true, but that was our 00:22:21.170 --> 00:22:24.967 attitude of it. You know, we never asked, we never knew, you know, it was 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:28.516 more about like whether or not we have the ability to help you. And if we 00:22:28.549 --> 00:22:34.847 did, we did, we started shaping your image and how people perceived their 00:22:34.880 --> 00:22:39.506 congressman, right? This is, I guess they expected this people who seem to 00:22:39.539 --> 00:22:43.226 service. Sure. Yeah, they did. So sometimes we were their last resort 00:22:43.259 --> 00:22:47.436 though. And so they were very cynical about whether or not they might be 00:22:47.469 --> 00:22:51.916 able to be helped. So it was always very satisfactory to finally get some 00:22:51.949 --> 00:22:56.367 help from them. Some you tried everything you could and there was still 00:22:56.400 --> 00:23:02.397 nothing you could do. And those people, you know, through some very 00:23:02.430 --> 00:23:06.766 understandable anger might lash out. Or there's one instance I can think 00:23:06.799 --> 00:23:11.127 of, of a gentleman who 00:23:11.160 --> 00:23:14.117 thought he owned, he wasn't really the owner of a cabin way out in the 00:23:14.150 --> 00:23:17.847 very northern end of our district. It was actually on forest service land. 00:23:17.880 --> 00:23:21.545 The forest service was going to repossess the cabin because of a variety 00:23:21.578 --> 00:23:26.075 of reasons on which it is safe to say they were on very solid legal ground. 00:23:26.108 --> 00:23:29.946 It still doesn't mean this guy wasn't getting kind of, you know, what end 00:23:29.979 --> 00:23:33.696 of the stick, but there was nothing we could do. And we tried and he 00:23:33.729 --> 00:23:38.897 wasn't even a constituent of ours, but he was very politically active and 00:23:38.930 --> 00:23:44.476 had a lot of friends in politics and would consistently threaten to hurt 00:23:44.509 --> 00:23:49.127 Harry politically if he didn't get his way. And at the end of the day when 00:23:49.160 --> 00:23:53.785 we couldn't help him, even though we have tried and tried and tried, he 00:23:53.818 --> 00:23:58.276 cut a campaign video for David Schweiker, you know, and it was a youtube 00:23:58.309 --> 00:24:02.686 video and, you know, I don't think it helped David at all. But, but, you 00:24:02.719 --> 00:24:05.825 know, he was, he was, you know, he didn't get his way. And so he, you know 00:24:05.858 --> 00:24:08.656 , I'm going to try to help you get unelected, you know, he wasn't 00:24:08.689 --> 00:24:12.206 satisfied with what we did. So so sometimes it doesn't, you know, it's not 00:24:12.239 --> 00:24:16.117 all, 00:24:16.150 --> 00:24:21.676 sometimes we fight your best. You had a, it was a, as a journalist, a lot 00:24:21.709 --> 00:24:26.357 of contacts with the people in the community, uh businessmen and community 00:24:26.390 --> 00:24:30.857 leaders. And I assume this was something that was a positive part of your 00:24:30.890 --> 00:24:34.776 meet up when you were hired that, that you had this contact. Yeah, I think 00:24:34.809 --> 00:24:38.986 that that was, it was very helpful that those contacts transfer from a 00:24:39.019 --> 00:24:44.196 journalistic context to a political context very easily. I found it was 00:24:44.229 --> 00:24:51.766 very helpful. So if you were needed to call somebody to maybe 00:24:51.799 --> 00:24:55.295 host a town hall or something like that, maybe it was somebody you knew 00:24:55.328 --> 00:25:03.217 from having known either me or the congressman, but having some level of 00:25:03.250 --> 00:25:07.736 contact with them in the past was always very helpful 00:25:07.769 --> 00:25:11.176 groups that did you regularly see? I mean, mayors would come in. I was 00:25:11.209 --> 00:25:14.516 thinking of some of Harry's clientele to groups that he knew maybe 00:25:14.549 --> 00:25:21.676 environmental union people. We get, we get visits from, from, from labor 00:25:21.709 --> 00:25:28.276 organizations. We from environmental organizations. City leaders would 00:25:28.309 --> 00:25:32.206 typically, you know, meet one on one like coffee with every once in a 00:25:32.239 --> 00:25:35.696 while. He formed a very good relationship with Scott Smith from me. 00:25:35.729 --> 00:25:39.726 They'll be glad to tell you about that. I, I was really impressed with 00:25:39.759 --> 00:25:44.266 Scott Smith because he reached out to Harry 00:25:44.299 --> 00:25:48.276 knowing that Harry had supported his opponent because they were just 00:25:48.309 --> 00:25:55.555 really long time friends. But I think Mayor Smith was admired the way that 00:25:55.588 --> 00:25:59.055 Harry had run Tempe and just wanted to pick his brain about a couple of 00:25:59.088 --> 00:26:02.085 things. So they scheduled a coffee and I was staffing Harry that day. So I 00:26:02.118 --> 00:26:08.647 got to sit in on it and they just sort of instantly bonded and he became a 00:26:08.680 --> 00:26:13.217 good friend. He's doing town halls with our opponent now. But that's ok. 00:26:13.250 --> 00:26:18.016 I'll forgive. Well, that's, uh, yeah, I think so, a brotherhood of mayor. 00:26:18.049 --> 00:26:21.717 So that, uh, yeah, I really respected him for, for wanting to reach out 00:26:21.750 --> 00:26:25.597 and, and, and he was asking just very, uh, you know, mayoral stuff, you 00:26:25.630 --> 00:26:30.285 know, like nuts and bolts, things of what you should do once you get the 00:26:30.318 --> 00:26:33.516 office. You know, now I've won this thing. Now what, you know, and Harry 00:26:33.549 --> 00:26:36.887 was glad to tell him it's just a personal thing, but the mayors are 00:26:36.920 --> 00:26:42.236 interested in what Washington do, aren't they? They were, of course cities 00:26:42.269 --> 00:26:45.617 need federal funding for a lot of things. They do, transit, transportation 00:26:45.650 --> 00:26:50.575 , parking. And so we had very strong relationships with the cities that 00:26:50.608 --> 00:26:55.785 were seeking help from us to secure funding. There is any number of 00:26:55.818 --> 00:27:02.045 interest groups in business, just business organizations or business CEO 00:27:02.078 --> 00:27:04.967 types who would come into the district to try to schedule time with Harry 00:27:05.000 --> 00:27:07.887 if they couldn't get back to DC. So keeping your ear to the ground, you 00:27:07.920 --> 00:27:12.996 talk to a lot of people, you went to obituaries 00:27:13.029 --> 00:27:18.196 do polling too. No, not from the official side. No, I mean, it wasn't 00:27:18.229 --> 00:27:24.217 something that we would do. It's hardly empirical polling. But when we 00:27:24.250 --> 00:27:28.456 would send out mailers or frank mail pieces, there would typically be a 00:27:28.489 --> 00:27:33.016 little questionnaire that one or two questions on there to get a sense of 00:27:33.049 --> 00:27:38.262 the district and how we would read what people wrote on there. Sometimes 00:27:38.295 --> 00:27:42.502 there was not a health issue. That was more of a concern you had from the 00:27:42.535 --> 00:27:48.472 position of the paper from various elites. And in the context of August 00:27:48.505 --> 00:27:53.960 2009, you saw a huge tea party presidents who they were making a lot of 00:27:53.993 --> 00:27:57.601 noise. Were they representative of what the district was? It was hard to 00:27:57.634 --> 00:28:02.930 tell, but they were outside our office all the time or camping out in our 00:28:02.963 --> 00:28:05.847 foyer there, 00:28:05.880 --> 00:28:10.446 phone calling and saying very rude things to staff members and interns all 00:28:10.479 --> 00:28:17.785 day long. So you knew that that was an extremely contentious issue one way 00:28:17.818 --> 00:28:20.357 or the other. 00:28:20.390 --> 00:28:28.190 There wasn't a good political move on that. No, Harry's base, the 00:28:28.223 --> 00:28:30.871 democrats would have been, their disappointment, would have been palpable. 00:28:30.904 --> 00:28:38.670 Plus he wouldn't have agreed. It's not what he wanted to do and 00:28:38.703 --> 00:28:43.210 it was the right thing to do. I was very proud of him, proud to have 00:28:43.243 --> 00:28:47.781 supported that. And I honestly think that when it's fully online, a lot of 00:28:47.814 --> 00:28:51.811 the people who were screaming about it will be the first ones to take 00:28:51.844 --> 00:28:58.666 advantage of it. But I, I had a very emotional personal uh, reason that, 00:28:58.699 --> 00:29:02.746 that I was going through at the time. Um, it wasn't when the house passed 00:29:02.779 --> 00:29:06.397 health care, but when the Senate finally got closer. So you knew that it 00:29:06.430 --> 00:29:14.430 was going to pass my son. He was six at the time. He's eight now and had 00:29:14.890 --> 00:29:20.137 gotten sick and he was a disease called Kawasaki's Disease. It's a rare 00:29:20.170 --> 00:29:22.246 lymphatic 00:29:22.279 --> 00:29:27.996 disorder. They don't really know how, how it comes about, but he was 00:29:28.029 --> 00:29:33.815 hospitalized for nine days. And so when they took that culture vote, I was 00:29:33.848 --> 00:29:40.127 in the hospital with him and I was researching Kawasaki's disease and he 00:29:40.160 --> 00:29:45.065 would, he would be tagged with a pre existing condition for the rest of 00:29:45.098 --> 00:29:48.647 his life with this disease, even though he's recovered and he has no after 00:29:48.680 --> 00:29:52.256 effects. The fact that he had it would give him a pre existing condition 00:29:52.289 --> 00:29:57.785 and it really burned me that an insurance company, some actuary or some 00:29:57.818 --> 00:30:01.656 bureaucrat in an insurance company could decide for my son the course of 00:30:01.689 --> 00:30:05.617 his life, what kind of career he could have, what kind of, what he could 00:30:05.650 --> 00:30:09.877 do as an adult when he's six years old, he didn't do anything wrong. And 00:30:09.910 --> 00:30:16.156 so I had a really strong emotional reaction to that to this day. We, yeah 00:30:16.189 --> 00:30:19.347 , we my sleeve them fight anybody that thinks it was the wrong thing to do. 00:30:19.380 --> 00:30:24.726 Yeah. Yeah, that Harry had that kind of commitment too. Some of the 00:30:24.759 --> 00:30:28.266 issues that may have been popular in his district, like the veterans stand 00:30:28.299 --> 00:30:32.946 , which I think he sort of adopted once he got out there, he sort of, it 00:30:32.979 --> 00:30:37.055 wasn't something he campaigned on that. It was something that, you know, I 00:30:37.088 --> 00:30:40.526 didn't time you were there. He had already established, right. He had been 00:30:40.559 --> 00:30:44.166 appointed to the Veterans Committee. He asked to be on it because of the 00:30:44.199 --> 00:30:49.416 heavy veterans presence in the district was not a military veteran, but he 00:30:49.449 --> 00:30:54.506 became very passionate about that issue. And it was a good, it was a good 00:30:54.539 --> 00:31:01.486 issue too for the district. Sure. There's 65,000 veterans in district five 00:31:01.519 --> 00:31:07.276 and a lot of them are retirees or young people, a good mix of people. And 00:31:07.309 --> 00:31:11.996 yeah, so it was, it was quite a good issue and Harry was very committed to 00:31:12.029 --> 00:31:18.026 it and you could see that through his sponsorship and passage of the G I 00:31:18.059 --> 00:31:23.226 Bill, which I think is going to be transformative for veterans and for the 00:31:23.259 --> 00:31:27.575 economy. If we can help dig ourselves out of this, the G I Bill is going 00:31:27.608 --> 00:31:31.746 to transform a lot of people's lives, people who join the army, probably 00:31:31.779 --> 00:31:35.835 with no prospects of seeing themselves in a higher education environment 00:31:35.868 --> 00:31:40.825 or in a professional environment. And they come out of that and they take 00:31:40.858 --> 00:31:45.196 that maturity and military experience and maybe some serious technical 00:31:45.229 --> 00:31:50.335 skills that they picked up in the military add to that, a degree or 00:31:50.368 --> 00:31:54.016 technical training, something like that. That person is much more able to 00:31:54.049 --> 00:31:59.217 cope with the new economy than just a veteran who didn't get an education. 00:31:59.250 --> 00:32:02.285 And well, he got on. But then you had the health care and then he had the 00:32:02.318 --> 00:32:07.946 , uh, well, uh, congressional pay raises was another good shot, I would 00:32:07.979 --> 00:32:13.016 think in the district. Yeah. Yeah, it was very, feel good issue, uh, to, 00:32:13.049 --> 00:32:17.535 you know, and, and it was an easy one for Harry because Harry was retired 00:32:17.568 --> 00:32:22.196 when he got the job, you know. So, you know, it, it was nice. It was a 00:32:22.229 --> 00:32:26.392 nice to, uh, to be making a congressional salary. There's never anything 00:32:26.425 --> 00:32:30.562 he banked on or prepared for, you know, and, and I think there might be 00:32:30.595 --> 00:32:33.763 some members who are, like, what are you doing, Mitchell? I got you, I got 00:32:33.796 --> 00:32:39.642 three kids, you know. But, but it is hard though. It was a, it was a very 00:32:39.675 --> 00:32:44.972 good issue in that you had to be, it was good to be, I guess, to play down 00:32:45.005 --> 00:32:47.579 the fact that you're a democrat or at least play up the fact that you, a 00:32:47.612 --> 00:32:51.918 blue dog, democrat or an independent democrat. It was a populist issue. It 00:32:51.951 --> 00:32:55.819 was one, he, he felt pretty strongly about, you know, and, and, uh, and, 00:32:55.852 --> 00:33:01.838 and it was helpful in 2008, you know, uh, in 2010 there, there was no help 00:33:01.871 --> 00:33:06.497 to be had. But being a, but if you looked around the district, what would 00:33:06.530 --> 00:33:09.717 you, what would you say for the ideal candidate? He had been a fiscal 00:33:09.750 --> 00:33:13.206 conservative. 00:33:13.239 --> 00:33:18.016 You can afford to be pro choice because I think Scott still is like a 00:33:18.049 --> 00:33:25.295 nature preserve for the rare moderate republicans are increasingly rare. 00:33:25.328 --> 00:33:29.825 So, you know, there's pro choice women were always very supportive of 00:33:29.858 --> 00:33:34.916 Harry. But you couldn't be a, a spendaholic type of person. You had to be 00:33:34.949 --> 00:33:39.156 very fiscally frugal, fiscally conservative. 00:33:39.189 --> 00:33:44.887 You had to be pro education. We have a university, we have high tech 00:33:44.920 --> 00:33:48.946 businesses. So you couldn't be perceived as business friendly and he 00:33:48.979 --> 00:33:52.555 really wasn't because he was a mayor. He had been a part of huge economic 00:33:52.588 --> 00:33:57.486 development pushes as a mayor came very naturally to him. So it wasn't, it 00:33:57.519 --> 00:34:03.377 wasn't like he had to like, well, I wish I could be against, you know, 00:34:03.410 --> 00:34:07.236 what are the issues that you would have as apr guy trying to most 00:34:07.269 --> 00:34:11.925 difficult, trying to handle that. Like the health care was 1 00:34:11.958 --> 00:34:19.958 70 70 was, was, was tough because, you know, Harry's immigration where he 00:34:21.800 --> 00:34:26.916 was on immigration, there was very little daylight between him and in most 00:34:26.949 --> 00:34:32.356 Republicans, he was for a very strong presence at the border and helped 00:34:32.389 --> 00:34:35.445 support. There wasn't anything that came before Congress that added 00:34:35.478 --> 00:34:43.478 resources to the border that he voted against, but 1070 became a litmus 00:34:43.909 --> 00:34:48.936 test. And if you weren't absolutely for it. And think it was the best idea 00:34:48.969 --> 00:34:53.606 in the world then you were defined as soft on immigration, despite 00:34:53.639 --> 00:34:58.425 whatever your record was. And Harry had a pretty nuanced stance about it 00:34:58.458 --> 00:35:03.376 where it was essentially like, I wasn't in the legislature. I didn't pass 00:35:03.409 --> 00:35:11.409 it if it's, now it's the law, I suppose that if it will help light a fire 00:35:12.889 --> 00:35:16.456 under the federal government to do its job because it really is the 00:35:16.489 --> 00:35:21.135 federal government's job, then it's a good thing and people are like, well 00:35:21.168 --> 00:35:24.256 then it's against it. 00:35:24.289 --> 00:35:27.666 They heard whatever they wanted to hear that and it was never good. Either 00:35:27.699 --> 00:35:33.526 side to be delicate in the way you phrased it too. So very careful. But, 00:35:33.559 --> 00:35:36.666 but, you know, either both sides, both sides managed to hear what they uh 00:35:36.699 --> 00:35:42.126 what they want, most disliked about it. Because after that, uh you know, 00:35:42.159 --> 00:35:45.566 he, he gave that statement is, this is the way I feel about it. You know, 00:35:45.599 --> 00:35:48.135 we're gonna have to live with it. Maybe it will get the federal government 00:35:48.168 --> 00:35:52.385 to do it. So it's not, it's not a bad thing. And we were at a uh we were 00:35:52.418 --> 00:35:56.456 speaking, he was speaking at a, at an event with uh Latino high school 00:35:56.489 --> 00:36:02.057 kids who were here on campus at risk, kids who had potential when they 00:36:02.090 --> 00:36:06.586 were being shown in a university environment. Their keynote speaker at the 00:36:06.619 --> 00:36:10.517 end of this process was going to be Harry and Ed pastor and we're standing 00:36:10.550 --> 00:36:15.227 outside and Ed pastor rolls up on a golf cart. It's like Mitchell let my 00:36:15.260 --> 00:36:21.206 people go. You know. So he had heard the exact opposite of somebody else 00:36:21.239 --> 00:36:24.095 and, you know, he looked in that same statement and I was like, you know, 00:36:24.128 --> 00:36:27.626 like what happened, you know. No, you didn't draft that statement, did you 00:36:27.659 --> 00:36:32.376 ? I did not, I don't think, I don't, you know, I probably played around 00:36:32.409 --> 00:36:36.952 with it some, but no, I think that that was more, uh, uh, I probably came 00:36:36.985 --> 00:36:40.311 out of DC but I, you know, I have to in, for a penny in, for a pound. I'm 00:36:40.344 --> 00:36:43.990 not running from it. That's just where he was. Harry. Harry was, at the 00:36:44.023 --> 00:36:49.711 time we met him was a seasoned politician who had, had an image and had a 00:36:49.744 --> 00:36:54.425 style and, and, uh, was he a pretty good guy to handle? He didn't make a 00:36:54.458 --> 00:36:59.727 lot of mistakes, did he or did you have to follow up on misstatements or 00:36:59.760 --> 00:37:03.086 policy? I, I never had to make a phone call. Like I used to get as a 00:37:03.119 --> 00:37:07.756 reporter with, uh, like Governor Hall where, you know, Franci noise calls 00:37:07.789 --> 00:37:11.307 up and says, yeah, what the governor meant to say. Yeah. Right. Yeah. 00:37:11.340 --> 00:37:17.095 Right. Yeah, I know. He, he, he was, he was always on message and knew 00:37:17.128 --> 00:37:24.057 what he wanted to say and he handled himself well, but he's 00:37:24.090 --> 00:37:28.436 that sort of down to earth quality. He's a terrific one on one 00:37:28.469 --> 00:37:32.086 communicator. So if you sit down and over a beer with Harry Mitchell, you 00:37:32.119 --> 00:37:36.566 , you can't help but come away liking him and wanting to help him and 00:37:36.599 --> 00:37:42.017 support him in any way in front of large crowds. 00:37:42.050 --> 00:37:46.945 I'm not saying that he's a bad speaker. He's a good speaker, but he, he's 00:37:46.978 --> 00:37:53.686 no Barack Obama. He's not someone who electrifies a large room. So I was 00:37:53.719 --> 00:37:58.956 trying to write speeches for that and try to, because more and more people 00:37:58.989 --> 00:38:02.675 wanted to see you had to speak in front of some very large crowds, 00:38:02.708 --> 00:38:08.467 commencement and things like that. But for someone who was in elected 00:38:08.500 --> 00:38:11.945 public office since 1974 00:38:11.978 --> 00:38:15.307 I don't think his speaking child had really changed and wasn't going to 00:38:15.340 --> 00:38:21.095 now just because I wanted him to know when you write a speech, did you try 00:38:21.128 --> 00:38:27.155 to write something? You know, he would like to say, get that style down 00:38:27.188 --> 00:38:34.546 and to mimic what his cadence would be and use his terms of phrase or to 00:38:34.579 --> 00:38:37.706 leave a marker in there 00:38:37.739 --> 00:38:41.566 because Harry is at his best as a speaker. When he's relaying in anecdotes 00:38:41.599 --> 00:38:47.425 , he communicates and speaks in anecdotes stories that, that illustrate a 00:38:47.458 --> 00:38:52.267 point from his life and all his experiences. And so sometimes you would 00:38:52.300 --> 00:38:56.787 just queue up like your story about 00:38:56.820 --> 00:39:00.006 being at the bottom of the Po Toto Pole as a school teacher. And at the 00:39:00.039 --> 00:39:04.760 mayor after lunch would work here in the setting have to write a story for 00:39:04.793 --> 00:39:09.452 him. I just had to tell that story and then he's communicating, looking at 00:39:09.485 --> 00:39:12.361 the audience and he's just telling, memory is always better than anything 00:39:12.394 --> 00:39:18.050 you could write as a speech when he was just speaking from the heart. 00:39:18.083 --> 00:39:21.666 So he looks friendly open. 00:39:21.699 --> 00:39:25.296 I don't know. It seems like a style like that goes pretty well in Arizona. 00:39:25.329 --> 00:39:29.626 Oh, sure. People approach him all the time. You walk through Costco with 00:39:29.659 --> 00:39:34.345 them and people would just come up and like Harry, you know, and people 00:39:34.378 --> 00:39:36.916 maybe never met him. I just recognize him from a TV ad or something like 00:39:36.949 --> 00:39:44.949 that. He's extremely gracious to people and loves just chatting with folks. 00:39:46.239 --> 00:39:50.695 Was he media savvy too? Did he pick that up from you or did you work that 00:39:50.728 --> 00:39:58.066 through for him? I don't think that he had too much to learn from me. I 00:39:58.099 --> 00:40:03.635 think he was good speaking to TV, reporters and things like that. It was 00:40:03.668 --> 00:40:07.115 just more of 00:40:07.148 --> 00:40:11.467 maybe run them through a mock interview or have a sense of what this 00:40:11.500 --> 00:40:15.296 reporter might be trying to get from the story based on any information 00:40:15.329 --> 00:40:21.166 they gave me. But he was always pretty smooth, I thought, and the media 00:40:21.199 --> 00:40:23.876 was fairly 00:40:23.909 --> 00:40:29.595 polite, sensitive. He got along with the media pretty well. He did. There 00:40:29.628 --> 00:40:33.287 were maybe a couple of exceptions to that and it was based on things that 00:40:33.320 --> 00:40:36.706 , you know, something a reporter might have done years before my time, you 00:40:36.739 --> 00:40:42.376 know, and I always counseling, I got to forgive and forget. You know, you 00:40:42.409 --> 00:40:45.816 don't want a reporter to think that, you know, you don't want to deal with 00:40:45.849 --> 00:40:50.276 them because, you know, that you, that you ever, that they ever got under 00:40:50.309 --> 00:40:56.856 your skin in any way. So that was very few and far between mostly, 00:40:56.889 --> 00:41:02.236 uh, who could work and deal with anybody. But you had never before you 00:41:02.269 --> 00:41:05.986 joined the staff, a political campaign or part of a political campaign. I 00:41:06.019 --> 00:41:10.175 guess it's a continuous political campaign. Once I had not, I had uh I had 00:41:10.208 --> 00:41:14.595 criticized many of them from afar. 00:41:14.628 --> 00:41:18.566 You come out even more cynical or critical. No, I came out with immense 00:41:18.599 --> 00:41:23.956 respect for the people who do that. Everybody thinks that they can be a 00:41:23.989 --> 00:41:27.327 political adviser and, you know, I just want to be a strategist on a 00:41:27.360 --> 00:41:32.686 campaign. They have no idea what they're talking about. There are, there 00:41:32.719 --> 00:41:37.905 are people who run congressional campaigns who really are political 00:41:37.938 --> 00:41:45.106 scientists. They look at data and spreadsheets and voter models and they 00:41:45.139 --> 00:41:49.095 will analyze this and find out where your path to victory is and which 00:41:49.128 --> 00:41:52.436 voters you need to get and how to get them and how much marry with how 00:41:52.469 --> 00:41:58.106 much money your campaign is bringing in and decide what kind of messages 00:41:58.139 --> 00:42:03.747 you can put out there. I can never be that person. It is a skill that is 00:42:03.780 --> 00:42:10.175 rare and it's a great commodity and people think that they can do it and 00:42:10.208 --> 00:42:14.695 they can't. So we had some very good people on our campaign, Reid Adamson 00:42:14.728 --> 00:42:19.206 and Seth Scott. In the first campaign, Alexis is like that. She's very 00:42:19.239 --> 00:42:24.595 good at these things. It's not my, it's not my swim lane. 00:42:24.628 --> 00:42:29.577 You're more into the speech writing and the message, you know. Yeah, the 00:42:29.610 --> 00:42:33.017 back and forth between you had outreach groups that you were trying to get 00:42:33.050 --> 00:42:38.276 to you in the district, right? People who are working with senior citizen 00:42:38.309 --> 00:42:43.546 or with youth or you have targets that you tried to, I don't know that 00:42:43.579 --> 00:42:47.146 they were defined the way you just said, but you absolutely had targeted 00:42:47.179 --> 00:42:53.537 groups, whether it was seniors, whether it was geographic targets, we knew 00:42:53.570 --> 00:42:58.816 in our district where our support was and where we needed to do a better 00:42:58.849 --> 00:43:03.856 job. So in, in, on the official side, you know, which is not, you know, on 00:43:03.889 --> 00:43:08.026 the campaign I only ever volunteered. I was always the district director 00:43:08.059 --> 00:43:14.175 and I put in a day there and focused on that job. But you certainly uh 00:43:14.208 --> 00:43:20.126 tried to have Harry Tempe may have felt neglected at times because we 00:43:20.159 --> 00:43:24.896 didn't have a problem in Tempe. So when we were doing district events and 00:43:24.929 --> 00:43:28.095 congress on your corners and things like that, we tried to put them in 00:43:28.128 --> 00:43:35.345 areas where support was naturally soft or where we need people who didn't 00:43:35.378 --> 00:43:40.026 know Harry Mitchell, he wasn't their mayor nor Scottsdale. Awai and Tempe 00:43:40.059 --> 00:43:45.445 is, you're not helping things politically to just do stuff in Tempe 00:43:45.478 --> 00:43:49.345 because it's very much a comfort zone for Harry had to take him out of his 00:43:49.378 --> 00:43:53.247 comfort zone to the parts of the district that, that maybe didn't support 00:43:53.280 --> 00:43:57.695 him. I don't know how well you were funded, but if you had more money 00:43:57.728 --> 00:44:03.017 would you have done that? You didn't get to do enough of the, on the 00:44:03.050 --> 00:44:09.405 campaign television ads? It's what it comes down to. I think up until the 00:44:09.438 --> 00:44:15.135 last few weeks of the campaign was tied. We were inter polling, had him up 00:44:15.168 --> 00:44:19.816 one or two points and then tied in the last four or five days of the game. 00:44:19.849 --> 00:44:24.967 You saw huge amounts of money from people like the club for growth. These 00:44:25.000 --> 00:44:27.686 corporate 00:44:27.719 --> 00:44:31.717 citizens united type of organizations 00:44:31.750 --> 00:44:34.115 that 00:44:34.148 --> 00:44:37.836 are the ie that were spent on our behalf were not nearly as significant 00:44:37.869 --> 00:44:42.655 and I know people was a saturation point, but the dominoes really tipped 00:44:42.688 --> 00:44:46.307 in the last several days of the election where I think independents who 00:44:46.340 --> 00:44:50.977 might have been sitting on the fence or Republicans who had supported 00:44:51.010 --> 00:44:57.227 Harry in the past just decided like we need a change 00:44:57.260 --> 00:45:02.787 and it all fell. We were right there in the game very far into this 00:45:02.820 --> 00:45:05.126 election. I don't know if a lot of people know that, but we really were 00:45:05.159 --> 00:45:12.486 our polls. We had great polling and it was a ball game. 00:45:12.519 --> 00:45:16.166 They scored a couple touchdowns and it was over, he was the guy you beat 00:45:16.199 --> 00:45:21.037 two years earlier. So that I think something changed and it probably was a 00:45:21.070 --> 00:45:26.256 move in the country, or at least in the, it was the country. If we could 00:45:26.289 --> 00:45:31.115 have made it a district race, 00:45:31.148 --> 00:45:35.666 it was a nationalized race. It was a referendum on the Democrats and on 00:45:35.699 --> 00:45:40.086 the president and on the economy. And that was the killer. I tell people 00:45:40.119 --> 00:45:44.546 that as a strategist, if I could have thought of a strategy that would 00:45:44.579 --> 00:45:47.686 have taken the national unemployment rate down to 7% I would have 00:45:47.719 --> 00:45:53.396 suggested it and that would have helped. But I think that all those things 00:45:53.429 --> 00:45:56.155 in Arizona, you also had immigration and other things like that that were 00:45:56.188 --> 00:46:01.345 not helpful. It was going to be a wipe out reading somewhere that you said 00:46:01.378 --> 00:46:04.956 when you got the job and I look forward to working for him for years to 00:46:04.989 --> 00:46:12.989 come and I suspect that that's still true though. Remarks you're still 00:46:13.090 --> 00:46:17.510 working. Yeah. Yeah. But I think you were thinking maybe this, maybe he 00:46:17.543 --> 00:46:22.771 would be around, you get paid for years to come. But, uh, but no, but you 00:46:22.804 --> 00:46:27.550 know, the worker for the, for the Mitchell family is a joker. That's a 00:46:27.583 --> 00:46:32.247 little like the mob. You know, no one gets out alive. 00:46:32.280 --> 00:46:35.945 There's no violence but 00:46:35.978 --> 00:46:40.436 he's the type of person who you want to be friends with the rest of your 00:46:40.469 --> 00:46:44.206 life. You want to help and who will help you, who will do anything for any 00:46:44.239 --> 00:46:49.767 of us. And so I predict that this group of people I worked with in the 00:46:49.800 --> 00:46:53.095 missile will be friends for the rest of my life. And what do you do? You 00:46:53.128 --> 00:46:56.936 think that uh maybe you'll get back together again under another, another 00:46:56.969 --> 00:47:01.925 candidate or Mark Mitchell from May? Perhaps 00:47:01.958 --> 00:47:06.135 I can see that. I pretty sure that's gonna happen and I'm sure that, that 00:47:06.168 --> 00:47:11.017 he will succeed. He's one of my former students that has that going for 00:47:11.050 --> 00:47:14.945 him and he's got that. I don't know if that's a positive or not. But, uh, 00:47:14.978 --> 00:47:18.885 uh, yes. So there is quite a, I get that same kind of sentiment from the 00:47:18.918 --> 00:47:23.247 other people I've been talking to. Uh, is that what, what do you miss most 00:47:23.280 --> 00:47:29.816 about the, the job now that it's gone? I think I miss my co workers seeing 00:47:29.849 --> 00:47:34.876 them on a daily basis and having this challenge, what I really liked about 00:47:34.909 --> 00:47:38.816 journalism for all those years was like I said, I had a short attention 00:47:38.849 --> 00:47:42.037 span and you never knew what was going to come walking through the door. 00:47:42.070 --> 00:47:44.827 You could plan for some things, but it was really just a reaction to what 00:47:44.860 --> 00:47:49.622 was going on in the world. I liked that. It was an adrenaline rush. Well, 00:47:49.655 --> 00:47:52.981 being a district director for a congressman in a district, like this is 00:47:53.014 --> 00:47:57.791 not all that different. I found you, you are planning things out and you 00:47:57.824 --> 00:48:01.061 have things in the head, but there's surprises to walk in every single day 00:48:01.094 --> 00:48:04.352 of something that's going on in DC or something happens in the district 00:48:04.385 --> 00:48:11.736 that you have to react to. And it was, it was a great test of your skills 00:48:11.769 --> 00:48:15.146 all the time and, and you were constantly adding new skills because I 00:48:15.179 --> 00:48:18.287 didn't, I had never supervised staff before. I've never been put in charge 00:48:18.320 --> 00:48:20.945 of anything. 00:48:20.978 --> 00:48:27.436 I had never organized large events. And so I was just always learning. So 00:48:27.469 --> 00:48:31.595 it was a good mix of skills I already had and a constant learning process 00:48:31.628 --> 00:48:34.945 and adding on things and finding out you could do things you didn't think 00:48:34.978 --> 00:48:40.396 you could do. And so I really miss that being sure that that's what it's 00:48:40.429 --> 00:48:46.006 going to be like every single day about Harry, I think his legacy is on 00:48:46.039 --> 00:48:51.425 there. What was the accomplishments there? Well, I think the G I Bill is 00:48:51.458 --> 00:48:56.046 something that's going to be significant. And Senator Webb and Harry 00:48:56.079 --> 00:49:01.727 Mitchell were the quarterbacks of that. So I think he has a very 00:49:01.760 --> 00:49:06.046 significant piece of legislation. I think that he was the best friend that 00:49:06.079 --> 00:49:09.635 veterans in the Western United States had in Congress. They have not 00:49:09.668 --> 00:49:17.668 forgotten. They remember Harry for a long time, I think that people 00:49:17.978 --> 00:49:21.307 will look back with nostalgia on his style because politics is getting 00:49:21.340 --> 00:49:27.166 very, very rough and very, very divided and very angry. And Harry never 00:49:27.199 --> 00:49:30.796 got into politics because he had an ax to gore. He got in, out of a sense 00:49:30.829 --> 00:49:35.037 of public service. His grandfather had been in the legislature. 00:49:35.070 --> 00:49:40.126 He majored in political science, he wanted to serve his community. So he 00:49:40.159 --> 00:49:45.936 didn't come in with an agenda. He just had a desire to help and he took 00:49:45.969 --> 00:49:50.327 that all the way to Congress. And I think that he found that there are 00:49:50.360 --> 00:49:55.717 very few other people who got there that way. So he was a little 00:49:55.750 --> 00:49:59.287 disillusioned by some of the things he saw there and he would have to ask 00:49:59.320 --> 00:50:05.807 him that. But, but I think he was from that sense, maybe an odd duck like 00:50:05.840 --> 00:50:11.885 Mr Smith, you know, people joke about that and the critics of them want to 00:50:11.918 --> 00:50:16.349 think that there is some cynicism to that, but there really wasn't.