Politics is an Art [fourth daily dose of Brand New Artist]

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Meanwhile, while Jim was out getting me my million, I went to the three Democratic Lions of the House – senior legislators known for powerful floor speeches and generally liking to take sides with the little guy, the underdog.  I tell them the deal I hatched and that it was going to have to be up to them to rise and speak against the Sparby motion because my pact with the devil meant I couldn’t be there.  “Whoa!!  You’re pretty good at this politics business – nice job; sure we’ll help you out,” they said.  So later that day, once the House convenes in floor session, Sparby rises and makes the motion to reconsider.  Everyone looks to me because I’d led the fight against the bill the day before – BUT I’M WALKING OFF THE FLOOR.

With all eyes on me, I sure felt like a heel for having gotten the trust of a majority of the legislators the day before but now I’m letting them down as if I hadn’t known what I was doing.  I quick dart up the back stairs and find a place I can peek out to watch what happens next.  After Sparby makes his pitch as to why the bill is good for little guys (because so many poor people default, they need to charge higher interest to make money – or they’ll quit giving loans), Rep. Paul Ogren rises:  “Mr. Speaker, Members – You don’t want to go back to your district and explain why you voted to increase interest rates . . . .”  Then Rep. Joe Quinn rises and speaks against the motion.  Finally, the greatest orator of my time, Rep. Jim Rice, rises and after warming them up with some laughs almost gets fellow legislators crying at how badly the bill treats the poor amongst us.  The bill goes down to a worse defeat than the day before!

Andy & Neighbors at award-winning house

Andy & Neighbors at award-winning house

And that’s how some good lawyers got rich, some of the poor in my district came to be homeowners, and nobody was facing higher interest rates.   In fact, the housing program my volunteers had designed ended up winning a national award.  As Plato said, politics is an art.

Things Get Worse [third daily dose of Brand New Artist]

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I go home totally despondent, little knowing how things were going to get even worse.  The next morning I get to my office and Jim the lobbyist is waiting for me:  “Say,” he says, “we got Wally Sparby [another legislator] willing to move to reconsider the vote on the consumer loan bill; is there anything we can do to get your support?”  [Because Rep. Sparby had voted with me on the prevailing side to defeat the bill, the Rules of the House allowed him to move to reconsider at the next session.]  “No,” I said, “There’s nothing you can do to buy me off  – out of my office!”  Then I go to the Speaker’s office to see what can be done, but the news just gets worse.  The Speaker tells me that Jim has been writing $200 campaign donation checks to all the legislators who voted with me telling them to vote with Sparby today.  In those days it was legal to give and receive campaign donations during a session.  You had to have the moxie to be wined and dined by the lobbyists and still vote against them.

The only thing the Speaker can suggest is prepare for a floor fight.

Herges Bar minutes after the results -- it's on to the Legislature!

Herges Bar minutes after the results — it’s on to the Legislature!

Walking back from the Speaker’s office I run into an old poker-playing friend who is now the Commissioner of the Human Rights Department.  I tell him the whole sad story.  He happens to be a very savvy guy and says to me:  “You know, the Senate Majority Leader and Jim are very good friends.  Think about the poor folks in your district:  Might they be better off with the million dollar housing program even if they have to pay higher interest rates on their small loans?”  “Wow, I getcha,” I said.  So I call Jim and tell him I’ve decided there is something he can do to get my help on the Sparby motion and ask him to meet back in my office.  When Jim shows up I tell him that if he can get the Senate Majority Leader to give me back my million dollars, then I’ll walk off the floor when Sparby offers his motion.  Sure enough, an hour later Jim comes back and says “You’ve got your million dollars back.”

Tomorrow:  Politics is an Art

Killer Amendments [second daily dose of Brand New Artist]

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Well, just a couple days before the session is over, I see that the bill is on the “special orders calendar” scheduled for a floor vote and I race over to the Majority Leader to see what’s up.  She tells me that because the bill is being authored by a fellow Democrat and because there is such a powerful lobby behind the bill, she has to allow it to be voted upon.  So I race back to my office to tell the class-action lawyers that this bill coming up for a vote basically eliminates the grounds for our law suit.  Together we devise two amendments I can offer on the House Floor that on the surface appear innocuous and just designed to make the bill slightly better for the little guys; but in actuality they were “killer amendments” that would totally gut the bill.  Because consumer finance law is so highly technical, unless you’re an expert consumer finance lawyer, the killer nature of the amendments wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else.

Killer amendments in disguise

Killer amendments in disguise

Of course, on the House Floor, I just explained the “makes the bill better for the little guys” part, and, as I hoped, the author of the bill didn’t recognize their killer nature.  Great!  The amendments pass even though I’m just a freshman legislator going up against a seasoned veteran.  Then I rise to speak again and tell my colleagues that even with these amendments, it’s still a bad bill and should be voted down – which is what happened.  When the afternoon floor session ends, as I’m walking out the Chambers door, there’s the lobbyist for the loan industry really mad:  “You G—Damn S.O.B.” he says, “You killed my bill and made it impossible for any of your poor constituents to ever get a loan again!”  “Well Joe,” I said, “you know I told you I didn’t like your bill, but you never came to visit me about it.”

That night the Housing Conference Committee which I am on (5 Senators and 5 Reps.) met for the last time and “buttoned-up” the Housing Bill which had my million dollars in it.  (To “button-up” means to take the last committee vote and nothing is suppose to change between then and the floor votes.)  I am in TOTAL JUBLIATION for the day’s successes! and go to the Holiday Inn next to the Capitol to hoist a cold one with any other legislators who happen to be around.   After an hour I go back to the Capitol wanting to prolong the euphoria by soaking up the action in the other conference committees that hadn’t buttoned-up yet.  I run into the Chairman of the Housing Conference Committee:  “Say, I’ve got some bad news for you, the Senate Majority Leader needed a million dollars for a program in his district, and since you’re just a freshman, we took your million and gave it to him.”  “You can’t do that!” I protested, “The bill’s been buttoned-up.”  But apparently they can.

Tomorrow:  Things Get Worse

 

A Brand New Artist [1988]

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Is there anything we can do to get your support?

In 1986 I had a client who borrowed money from a “fly-by-night” loan company to buy a new washer and dryer.  She had lousy credit and a minimum wage job, so the only place she could get credit was from a fly-by-night outfit which charged her the maximum interest allowed by the State’s usury law.  But before they loaned her the money they also required that she borrow the money to buy their disability insurance product – something she didn’t necessarily want.  I was arguing that the money she borrowed to buy the insurance was an add-on to the interest part of the loan rather than the principal, and thus violated the usury law.  Eventually I learned that the fly-by-night was a subsidiary of a Fortune 500 company and my law suit became part of the largest attorney fees award in the history of the State up to that time for a consumer class-action law suit.

Judge Ed Wilson swearing me in

Judge Ed Wilson swearing me in

In 1987, a year later, I was running for the State Legislature and asked all my campaign volunteers to help me write a legislative agenda in case we won.  One of the ideas my volunteers came up with was similar to Habitat for Humanity and would allow renters to buy an abandoned house and fix it up with the help of neighborhood volunteers.  We won the election (despite my being the underdog) mostly because we had the most volunteers, worked the hardest, and had created a lot of excitement as to what the Andy Dawkins team would do to get things done to make the world a better place.  After being sworn-in, I introduced the bill setting up the housing program.  The idea caught on and near the end of the session I had a million dollars “buttoned-up” for the program.

Meanwhile, it had become clear that I couldn’t be both a litigating attorney and a state legislator at the same time, so I gave up my role in the class action law suit (unfortunately before I had any idea there would be such a large attorney fees award).  Also meanwhile, the lobbyist for the loan industry had found a legislator to introduce a bill that, among other things, eliminated the usury ceiling for the first $1,000 of any loan (like the one my ex-client had entered into).  Although I wasn’t on the Commerce Committee and couldn’t fight the bill in the committee process, I did go to the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives (a Democrat), and explained what a bad bill it was for the “little guys” of the world.  She assured me she knew that and would never let the bill come up for a floor vote.

Tomorrow:  Killer Amendments

 

Weighing the Scales of Justice [second daily dose of Keep It Zipped]

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scales of justiceMy client told me he absolutely positively never had sexual intercourse with the nurse, but the genetic DNA test said he absolutely positively was the father.  My research informed me that it is possible to father a child without intercourse, such as by artificial insemination, but the nurse was insisting it happened by intercourse.  I was willing to concede that if there had been intercourse, then a man loses his right to choose.  Even if it was a leaky rubber, sex partners take on a known risk by having intercourse and need to accept the unintended consequences.  However, in a case like this, assuming the jury believed my guy’s version, a man retains the right to choose to be a parent or not up to the time he parts with his semen, and if he parts with his semen without intercourse (or without consent to artificial insemination) then he has chosen not to be a father.

I thought we had a good chance of winning because this conception was clearly by trickery.  If necessary, we would argue all the way to the United States Supreme Court that a stranger who scoops up sperm and artificially inseminates herself violates this constitutional right to choose to be a parent.  Sounds like a reasonable argument, right boys?  But where would you draw the line?  What if the woman tricked the man by saying she was on the pill?  Or that her ovaries had been removed?  Or what if you donated your sperm to a lesbian gay couple and they made an agreement to not come after you for child support?

These are questions I actually asked Jack & Nick (and their friends), and you know what Jack said?!:  “What about a child’s right to have two parents?  After all, there is an innocent child here who had nothing to say about how she came into the world.”  After some discussion (one time on the school bus carrying the junior high football team), most of the kids understood the balancing test the U.S. Supreme Court would have to apply in deciding this case:  Does a parent’s right to choose outweigh a child’s right to two parents who support him/her?

Every kid who weighed in on the question decided the child’s right was superior.  And when I told my client the bad news that the junior high kids were unanimously predicting defeat for us, even if the Jury believed his version of how conception occurred (not a sure thing either), we decided to settle the case with a one-time payment of a considerable sum in return for Mom’s dropping the paternity case.

Of course there’s a moral to this story.  Boys, Be Very Careful about parting with your sperm.  Even if the girl you’re with says she can’t get pregnant, you don’t have the right to choose if it turns out she was wrong.

P.S.  Some things never change.  Later on I learned from Nick that some of the boys on the bus got ribbed because they didn’t get it:  “Dad, some of the kids didn’t know what you were talking about.”  On the one hand I am so glad that 7th Graders can still be innocent about sex, even in today’s modern morality.  On the other hand, pretty quick now would be the time to learn.

 

 

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