Michael Flanagan’s challenge when he went to Washington as a freshly minted Republican hero was to erase two impressions:
– A beached carp could have beaten troubled U.S. Rep. Dan Rostenkowski.
– You can’t be a big-city pol at home and, at the same time, a GOP revolutionary in Washington.
Two years after he upset Rostenkowski and became the darling of the Washington-based Republican Right, Flanagan faces exactly the same challenge Nov. 5.
The lingering assumption is that the prison-bound Rostenkowski mostly defeated himself by getting caught tiptoeing all over the boundaries that separate politics from felonies.
And Flanagan frequently has found himself serving two masters, one in Newt Gingrich, the ideological commander and speaker of the House, the other his Chicago and suburban constituents, accustomed to hearing all about what their congressman can squeeze from the federal government.
It’s an unusual spot.
Flanagan can be the loyal Republican winning warm support from the National Rifle Association. But then he must play big-city pol, more a Democratic role, in announcing projects he has snagged for his district, which runs across Chicago’s North Side from the Gold Coast to the blue-collar suburbs south of O’Hare International Airport.
Flanagan is squeezed between armies of Democratic constituents, who are accustomed to being well taken care of, and platoons of very demanding conservative Republicans in Washington.
In the beginning, it was not a bad place to be. But now it is not so good to be closely associated with Gingrich, and not good at all to be one of the rare Republican conservatives representing an urban congressional district.
Flanagan, 33, sits uncomfortably between those two realities.
He is still sensitive when the Rostenkowski defeat comes up, and he is very defensive about the “accidental congressman” label derisively given him by Democrats.
“I came here to work for people in the district. I didn’t come here to celebrate the fact that somebody was here before me and I knocked them off,” said a chain-smoking Flanagan at a recent interview in his cramped congressional office in Washington.
“People voted for me.”
On a personal level, Flanagan, who was on unemployment insurance just before his 1994 campaign–his first race for any elected office–is still paying back old student loans. He is hard-pressed to make ends meet.
He is frequently referred to in terms of the shoes he wears, his often re-soled Army issue Brogans–black, practical and obviously long-lasting at 15 years old. (Flanagan did two stints in the Army, the first after college at Loyola University Chicago and the second after Loyola Law School, rising to captain before leaving in 1992.)
If Washington is the feeding place of the top-dollar lobbyist, there is no Gucci component at all to Flanagan.
“I still live like a pauper, and I have to maintain two households,” he said.
It’s a persona that fits well in the 5th District, but not so comfortably in Washington.
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Unlike his predecessor, Flanagan is not part of the Washington power elite. He isn’t much of a backslapper and said he has not cultivated many friends in Washington, though the Republican Party power structure has circled around him during his first term.
But Flanagan has become a lightning rod for everyone from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee to organized labor, an array of Democratic interests who see the 5th District as first on the list of places they want to return to the party’s fold.
And a lot more people will be voting this time around than in 1994–maybe 100,000 more in the 5th District–because of the presidential contest.
In a district where 48 percent of voters call themselves Democrats and only 17 percent identify themselves as Republicans, that could give Flanagan’s well-financed and well-connected challenger, Democrat Rod Blagojevich, a strong advantage.
Still, Flanagan isn’t about to give up.
He might have surprised even himself in defeating Rostenkowski two years ago. This time around, it’s a different contest, one that plays out on Chicago’s streets and Washington’s corridors.
Flanagan recently climbed the steps to the Fullerton Avenue “L” stop and prepared to participate in one of the city’s grand political rituals: Bearing Gifts. He had collected $23 million from the federal budget, most of it for the Chicago Transit Authority’s “L” renovation efforts.
Two years ago, Flanagan branded Rostenkowski a porkmeister for bringing home so much money to Chicago at a time of federal cutbacks. But he has rethought the subject and found a new definition for what members of Congress send home from Washington: Good Federal Monies.
“There is quite a difference between pork and good federal monies,” he says.
Pork would be money sent home to a friendly contractor for something useless, such as another boat ramp in West Virginia named after U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.). This, Flanagan says, is money for a worthwhile project. The $8 million he claimed for protecting Chicago’s Lake Michigan shoreline fits into the same category, he said.
It almost makes him sound like Rostenkowski, who was reduced to announcing the impending arrival of a reconstructed old federal helicopter for the Chicago Fire Department when he was scrambling for gifts to announce two years ago.
Flanagan said he has worked hard over the last two years to stay connected to his district.
“I never stopped walking door-to-door,” said Flanagan, adding that he personally telephones 10 constituents a night to chat about their concerns. “I’ve worked hard for the folks in the district, and they know it.”
The freshman has learned some other political lessons too.
He is not the king of campaign contributions and pales in a fundraising comparison with Rostenkowski, the former House Ways and Means Committee chairman. This time, Flanagan also is being heavily outspent by his Democratic opponent.
But he’s not doing that badly.
Flanagan has raised $394,000 this year. As of Sept. 30, his campaign accounts were in the red by about $6,000. He isn’t shy about collecting money from political action committees.
As they had with Rostenkowski, various Chicago trading exchanges have anted up thousands of dollars for Flanagan. The National Association of Home Builders gave him $10,000.
In all, about 40 percent of his funds has come from PACs. But a lot of them gave only token amounts, apparently covering their bets all around. A good deal of support came from other Republican lawmakers and luminaries. And the National Republican Congressional Committee chipped in $60,000.
Flanagan seems to have found his niche in Congress. He turned down two plums, offers of seats on the Ways and Means Committee and the Commerce Committee, in order to pursue his lawyerly interests on the Judiciary Committee.
He has been a reliable Republican on almost all party-line votes, according to Congressional Quarterly, which said he votes with party leaders 92 percent of the time.
But he also has bucked his own leadership in some high-profile ways, signs that he recognized the importance of keeping faith with the people who sent him to Washington.
Last year, for example, Flanagan was the only Republican to vote against the GOP’s first balanced budget proposal, saying its spending cuts would hurt Chicago. He also sided with Democratic Mayor Richard Daley against Republican Gov. Jim Edgar, arguing that the federal government should stay out of the city-state spat over the closing of Meigs Field.
He has developed a reputation for being frank, and that is no small accomplishment in Washington, a town where talk comes thick, fast and cheap.
“I always know where he will be on an issue,” said House Republican Whip Tom DeLay of Texas. “He is always honest with the Republican leadership. He always thinks first about his constituents in the Chicago area.”
He gets good marks from his fellow Republicans for working hard to learn how Congress actually functions.
“I don’t know why I’m surprised, but he’s been a most pleasant surprise,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Hyde, the Judiciary Committee chairman from suburban Wood Dale and a mentor for many Capitol Hill freshmen. “The Democrats will make a mistake if they underestimate him.”
Flanagan has had his moments too. He teamed up with liberal U.S. Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.) to expose a dirty lobbying trick that he discovered during last year’s debate over the telecommunications bill. AT&T and other long-distance companies had flooded Capitol Hill with telegrams opposing the legislation, which ultimately opened up long-distance competition.
Flanagan ordered his staff to investigate. They found out that a lot of the names on the telegrams belonged to dead people. Others who were contacted reported knowing nothing at all about the legislation, even though their names had appeared on postcards received in Congress.
“The whole thing was a sham,” Flanagan said.
He has had his share of embarrassing moments too.
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The NRA backs him because of his support in its bid to roll back the Clinton administration’s ban on assault weapons. But carrying that connection, once considered so valuable for the new Republicans, has caused troubles back home in the crime-sensitive big city.
The Blagojevich campaign also has lambasted Flanagan for two committee votes on the emotional issue of so-called “cop killer” armor-piercing ammunition.
Blagojevich charges that Flanagan, influenced by the NRA, flip-flopped when the matter came before the Judiciary Committee, effectively consigning the bill to studyland.
Flanagan counters that such ammunition was illegal well before he arrived in Congress and his votes simply addressed who would have the future authority–the Justice Department or Congress–to ban the next generation of lethal bullets.
Flanagan hasn’t sponsored any big pieces of legislation, although two of his efforts have been signed into law. One made Mother Teresa an honorary American, and the other renamed the Dunning post office on the Northwest Side after former state Rep. Roger P. McAuliffe, who died in a summer boating accident.