Sylvia Luke said on Sunday that she would not seek re-election to a second term as Lieutenant Governor. She could not, she said, tolerate the toll her family was paying.
“... [T]he last three months have been difficult, making the rigors of campaigning exceptionally burdensome for my family. While I have always been a fighter, I cannot tolerate the toll they are paying.”
Political statements are carefully crafted, and we need not take politicians at their word. Luke may well have been responding to poor poll numbers or the onslaught of paid ads favoring her opponent. But her statement shows the pressures politicians face.
Minor campaigns take months. Statewide campaigns can take a year or more. The campaign means long hours away from home, knocking on doors, raising money, and showing up at events to press the flesh.
Opponents dig up dirt. Social media helps spread it. Spouses and children are under constant scrutiny.
Once in office, the winner faces more pressure. Special interest groups and angry citizens sometimes lash out. A couple of years ago, a representative in the House killed a bill. Within days she was getting death threats. They named her husband’s workplace and the school her children attended. The price of one vote, in our politics, can be the terror of one’s family.
Who takes on such a job?
A great many are what I suppose we must call true believers. The cause has become their reason for being. They mistake the strength of their passion for its righteousness. This type is in office to fight climate change, to reform the schools, or to shrink the size of government. She’s on a mission, and she cannot see why a person of goodwill would wish to slow her down.
Another type does not mind the threats because he expects to be paid back. He’ll serve a few years, learn the ropes, then take a cushy job in government affairs. All he has to do is vote the right way, and reward will follow. He’s here to stack up a pile of favors that he’ll cash in later.
A third type is paid in attention. He admires himself. He loudly protests, “please, don’t call me Senator.” But he relishes the feeling of importance. He enjoys the visitors to his office bowing and scraping. And in an age of social media, he watches clips of his own speeches in bed at night.
Then there is the quiet type. He has studied the pension schedule. Older colleagues, in kindly tones, told him to keep his head down until the benefits vested, and he means to do just that. He’s not planning to become corrupt. He is planning to become comfortable. Elected office is a pathway to a pension.
Every so often a man of a different sort does come in, the way Mr. Smith came to Washington. For a season or two he acts out the high school civics textbook. Over time, he watches good bills passed over while more task forces are created. He watches members of his own faction whip votes against him on the floor. He sees which kind of lawmaking is rewarded, and which kind is quietly punished. The calluses that grow on him do not feel like calluses. They feel like a mature outlook.
None of this is surprising. Man is a fallen creature. Design an office that rewards what is low in him, and he will supply you with more of it. The rewards on offer here are not secret: a platform for one’s beliefs, a delayed payout for today’s votes, the pleasure of being known on the street, a pension at the end of it all.
Those who would fix this by reforming elections have half the problem. Those who would fix it by electing better people have the other half. A fallen creature requires both a new heart and a government built on the assumption that he has not yet gotten one.
We are told to raise legislators’ pay and move to a full-time body, so that “better people” will run. But a larger salary and a longer session do not attract the quiet neighbor across the way, who has a wife and kids and an honest sense of what he owes them; his reasons for staying out were never about money.
They do, however, advertise the seat more loudly to those who already wanted it.
We ought not be surprised, then, at the government we have. The surprise would have been if, against every incentive we have set, a better sort of person agreed to serve us anyway.
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Author Sterling Higa can be reached at hello@sterlinghiga.com.
