(cross-posted at Progressive Wave and Daily Kos)
Yesterday, the 110th Congress began its work in Washington, D.C. After 12 years in the oft-oppressed minority at the Capitol, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid became the leaders of the House and the Senate, promising to work in bipartisan fashion. Although I wish there was a victory party for Ned Lamont (another candidate I had volunteered for this election cycle) to visit, I was able to attend one for Rep. Patrick Murphy, who won his congressional race by a slim margin of 1,518 votes. If the reception he received today from his constituents and other fans of his is any indication, he has a bright future ahead of him in the House of Representatives. I decided to catch a train down from New York to partake in the festivities.
On the train ride down, I had the pleasure of chatting a little bit with a woman and her husband (I believe) from Chester County to visit Rep. Joe Sestak from Pennsylvania’s 7th District, along with Sen. Bob Casey. It’s nice to get background as to why some people became Democrats; this lady became one because of her female relatives – the Democratic Party had hired them when it was difficult to get a job elsewhere. We also chatted about Lois Murphy’s failed campaign in the 6th District. I’ve heard from other sources that her campaign was run entirely by the DCCC and other outsiders, which pissed off local Democrats. Additionally, it seems that their GOTV operation relied entirely on piggybacking off the efforts of Gov. Ed Rendell. While the strategy worked for Casey, who blew away former Sen. Rick Santorum by 18 percentage points, it meant that there was no local operation dedicated to doing GOTV solely for Lois Murphy. Patrick Murphy, on the other hand, had a dedicated volunteer staff of over 1,000 people on Election Day – quite possibly the explanation why we fell short in the 6th District by a few thousand votes but triumphed in the 8th by a similarly narrow margin.
Once I arrived at Union Station, I headed over to the National Democratic Club with some of my fellow Penn College Democrats. Our organization knocked on over 10,000 doors this fall in support of Patrick, and it was nice to see some of the people I had volunteered with from Penn showing up to greet Congressman Murphy on his first day on the job. Before I headed inside to the gathering, I had the great honor of speaking with well-known Kossack and grassroots activist teacherken. He has an excellent knowledge on educational issues and of the political situation in Virginia. We had an excellent chat about Virgil Goode and his recent bout of insanity, the results of the recent election, and what the prospects in the upcoming years were like in Virginia and around the country. Although he had to go soon to other events for Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) and Rep. Nick Lampson (TX-22), it was great to meet one of the most well-respected members of the blogosphere. I also ran into blogosphere legal expert Adam B, whom I had previously met at a fundraiser with Sen. Hillary Clinton and at the victory party for Patrick Murphy.
Inside, the building that Patrick’s supporters were in was packed in. A few buses had brought down some of his constituents and supporters from Bucks County, which comprises 95% of his district. There were many new faces that I didn’t recognize, but there were also many of his former campaign staff at the event, along with some of the volunteers I had canvassed with personally, along with others I had met at the campaign office. It was a reunion of sorts, and it was great to see others who had made the trip to see the result of their efforts. Watching the proceedings was somewhat painful, in the literal sense; I had no idea that establishing a quorum and doing a voice roll call of the individual members for the speakership would take so long, so I ended up standing in one place for nearly 3 hours straight. Nevertheless, everyone had a good time. When outgoing speaker Denny Hastert appeared on the screen, he got laughed at due to the visible lack of enthusiasm he displayed while ‘clapping’. The room broke into loud cheers each time Patrick was shown onscreen; one time, he was giving what appeared to be a thumbs-up to the C-Span camera, but I later overheard that he was making the motion to a local reporter who was in the balcony above him.
After John Boehner finally stopped talking at the podium and spewing barely-subliminal conservative orthodoxy, Speaker Pelosi took the podium. The room particularly applauded her comments on Iraq, which was the biggest reason why Patrick was elected to (currently, he is the only veteran of the current conflict to serve in Congress). We then made the short trip over to the Longworth House Building, which is where Patrick’s offices are located. It was, to put it in the words of someone I spoke to there, a bit surreal to see Patrick’s plaque outside the House. It was the first ‘hard’ evidence, so to speak, that all the hard work in the fall had paid off. We had no idea when the Congressman would be arriving, as the debate on the ethics package the House Democrats wanted to pass, so while some folks went on a tour of the Capitol (I couldn’t go, as I was informed at the security checkpoint that my bookbag – a standard-sized one – was too big to be allowed through), I checked out Patrick’s new digs:
Of the bit of the tour I did listen to, I was told that many of the freshmen representatives end up in Longworth. If that’s true, perhaps Boehner had been shafted out of good office space; his office is 2 offices up the hall from Patrick. It looked a bit bigger, but it didn’t seem to be the kind that the leader of the minority would have. Too bad for him!
When news came that Patrick was heading back from the Capitol, an already-crowded hallway became even more crowded. The office was already full of people, and I would say there were close to 100 people, if not more, by the time Patrick arrived. The rock star applause he got was amazing. Earlier in the day, Representative Sestak had been walking through the halls with his family, and only a few of us had called out our congratulations to him. But when Patrick came back, there was a wild amount of cheering for him. He quickly thanked all of us for showing up, and he choked up a little from the sheer emotion of the moment. We had all worked as a team to get him to Congress, he said, and he planned on continuing to work with us as a team now that he was here. Slowly but surely, he began making his way through the crush of people who had been waiting to greet him and get their picture taken with him. There were so many people that the crowd had spilled over to the front of the office of Patrick’s neighbor, Rep. John Larson (D CT-01). Shortly thereafter, though, he told us all that he had to run back to the floor for some votes, so there were still a good many of us, including myself, who didn’t have the chance to talk with him. In the meantime, I had a chance to catch up with other volunteers and staffers from the campaign who had come down for the occasion. The team he had this time around was truly amazing, and hopefully they’ll be available in some capacity to help him out in what is sure to be one of the closest races in the 2008 election.
Some of the people who had been hanging around eventually filtered out, as the voting in the House ended up taking longer as expected. Around this time, a couple of camera crews came around to Patrick’s office. One of them was from HDNet, a station started by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, while another was from Japan. I’m not quite sure why a foreign news service would be covering Patrick…perhaps his striking good looks have made a name for him across the world. 😛 Nevertheless, the HDNet crew interviewed a few veterans who had come down to greet Patrick; they had been involved in previous conflicts, and their gear clearly stated that they didn’t believe in what we were doing now. When Patrick came back, they walked up to him and gave him an enthusiastic greeting.
As always, it was great to chat with Patrick once again. He pointed us out as Penn Democrats (our vice president was wearing a nifty pin on her suit that identified us), and he said without us even bringing it up that he’d be glad to appear at a fundraiser that we’d hosted in April and that he had attended. I asked about how he was enjoying his first day. “It’s gone okay so far,” Patrick replied. At that point, they’d had 4 votes (presumably all on the ethics package), and he’d voted the Democratic position on all of them. He thanked us for all of our volunteering our group had done for him in the fall. While we had to head out to grab a bite before catching a train back, we stayed a little longer to watch Patrick chat with other supporters. For those of us who had been waiting several hours for his appearance, it was worth it. He’s got a hugely devoted following, and it’s hard not to support a man who’s got such a bright future ahead of him. It’s the rare candidate such as Patrick Murphy that makes you truly believe in the political process again.
Just before I left, I had the opportunity to take a picture of the Murphy family – Patrick, his wife Jenni, and his newly-born daughter Maggie. What a great way for the Congressman to start a new journey in his life.
It was a great day to kick off the 110th Congress – when the House is no longer just that which belongs to the majority party. It belongs to all of us.
