Senator speaks at Caribou Rotary Club during three-day County visit
CARIBOU, Maine — Former Maine Governor and current U.S. Senator Angus King spoke last week of his experiences in D.C., and his efforts to bring his colleagues together.
King previously served as U.S. Senator William Hathaway’s legislative assistant in 1973, and mentioned that the atmosphere in Washington was much different back then.
“One of the problems I see in the Senate today opposed to 40 years ago,” King told members of the Caribou Rotary Club on July 27, 2016, ”is that nobody lives there anymore. Susan (Collins) and I are on the airplane together either to Bangor or Portland practically every Thursday night. Even senators from Wyoming go home every weekend.”
King added that this is preventing “Washington from working as well as it should.”
To remedy this, King and his wife bought a small house, roughly 950 square feet, six blocks away from his D.C. office and “two blocks away from a really good rib joint.”
Since procuring the home, the senator has been inviting a random group of senators over for dinner once every month to “chat and get to know each other.”
“It’s funny because people will come up to me and say they’ve gotten to know colleagues they’ve worked with for years but have never had talked to. I’ve had everyone over from Chuck Schumer of New York to Ted Cruz of Texas, which is a pretty broad spectrum.”
King also assured the audience that, while some may try to trick others into voting on certain bills, overall allegations of Washington D.C. having a “toxic” or “poisonous” atmosphere are untrue.
“Watch C-Span,” said King. “Everybody votes and then they mill around for a while. If you watch, you can see the conversations going on, and they’re not necessarily partisan groups. The point I’m trying to make is that, while there is literally an aisle, the personal relationships are not that way and I think that’s a good thing.”
In getting to know his fellow lawmakers, King noted that they are just “regular people,” many of which overcame great poverty.
“They’re not giants,” said King. “They are regular people and I find that reassuring. The fascinating thing to me is how virtually none of them came from anything we would call aristocratic or great wealth.”
“Orin Hatch,” the senator continued, “is a tall, distinguished man from Utah, and was born in a house outside of Pittsburgh with dirt floors and no running water. The front wall of his house was a billboard that his father had scrounged and cut windows and doors out of.
King briefly reflected the importance of compromise, and how he believes it is essential to a functioning Senate.
“There are people who think that compromise is a dirty word,” said the former governor, “that even talking to try to solve problems with people on the other side is bad and that you should be punished for that. It’s one thing if people don’t vote for you because they don’t like your position on a certain issue, but if they don’t vote for you because you’re seen as a person who is willing to work out problems, that’s dangerous for the country. No human institution, whether it’s family, Rotary Club, or the United States Senate, can work without some give and take.”
