How Many Members of Congress Does Hoover Need?

It is amazing what facts get lost in the hustle and bustle leading up to an election.

Geography, for instance.

Come with me, if you will, to the quiet, suburban streets of Hoover, Alabama. There, we find street after street of cookie-cutter homes, and manicured lawns. We find none of the problems one has to encounter if one lives in the 7th Congressional District, in places like Ensley, Bessemer, Greensboro, or Eutaw. No poverty. No unsightly substandard homes. No unemployed men and women hanging around on the corner, because there are no jobs to look for. We find nice homes, here, like this one:

This nice home, located at 6053 Waterside Drive in Hoover, is just the sort of home respectable people live in. They live there to have respectable neighbors, not the riffraff you'd be living next to in other parts of the county. In fact, Waterside Drive is in an exclusive gated community, so that all that riffraff can't just wander in off the street and do all the things we know they want to do in nice neighborhoods. For the most part, the nice neighbors here are respectable Republican neighbors. After all, this nice house at 6053 Waterside Drive is represented in the U.S. House of Representatives by Republican Spence Bachus, since it's in his 6th District. It's represented in the Alabama House of Representatives by Republican Paul DeMarco. In the Alabama Senate, it is currently represented by GOP Senator Hank Erwin, but fellow Republican Cam Ward will take over that seat in January. And of course, since it's in Hoover, the mayor is former Republican legislator Tony Petelos. Let's look at these fine, Republican gentlemen:










Yes, they all look like nice, safe neighbors. Not like "those people" you'd have to live next to in, say, the 7th Congressional District. Well, maybe Spence looks like he needs a Rolaids, and that Petelos guy looks a little too Greek, but, hey, he's Republican, so he must be OK. So who owns this nice, safe, gated house in Hoover? Well, the nice lady who does is trying not to be seen there these days. She has an apartment over on Third Avenue North in Birmingham, in the 7th Congressional District. Why on earth, you ask, does she need an apartment in such a dangerous part of town (close to them!), when she owns this nice, safe suburban home behind a gate? Well, it seems she's running for Congress from that 7th Congressional District. Yes, boys and girls, 6053 Waterside Drive in Hoover is the home of Congressional candidate Terri Sewell.

Now, I know what you are going to say. It is clearly set out in U.S. Const., Art. I § 2, that:

No person shall be a Representative who shall not have attained to the age of twenty five years, and been seven years a citizen of the United States, and who shall not, when elected, be an inhabitant of that state in which he shall be chosen.

I know. Nothing in there about residing in the district. And I know Sewell claims to be a resident of the 7th District, in her downtown apartment. But let's see, who does the whole I-live-in-an-apartment-downtown shtick remind us of? Oh, yeah. Him. Funny, when Larry Langford was running for mayor, The Birmingham News ran any number of stories on whether Langford's apartment was his bona fide residence. We read about his multi-room NFL cable package in his Fairfield home, and about the lack of basic amenities in his Birmingham apartment. But, a search conducted for any articles at www.al.com containing the words "Sewell," "apartment," and "residence," turns up no articles on Sewell's home in Hoover. Of course, the News has endorsed Sewell, and it opposed Langford at almost every step of his political career. While it appears that history will be none too kind to Langford, what's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose.

Neither is Ms. Sewell apparently ready to burn her gated community bridges behind her. She continues to own her home in Hoover, and while several homes on her street are listed in the Birmingham MLS as for sale, hers is not among them. Of course, in 2008, when Ms. Sewell wanted to be a delegate to the Democratic National Convention, she claimed 6053 Waterside Drive in Hoover, in the GOP 6th Congressional District, as her residence. I can understand that; there weren't nearly as many people in Republican Country who wanted to be Democratic Convention delegates, so the running was easier. Is Ms. Sewell legally a resident of the 6th or the 7th Congressional District? I don't know. Only a court can make that determination. And, as I noted above, district residency is not a requirement for election to Congress; the only way a court could become involved would be if she were prosecuted for illegally voting in the wrong precinct (including, presumably, for herself). Let's hope it doesn't come to that, but if it does, let's hope a high powered former Wall Street lawyer like her knew not to keep a toothbrush in Hoover.

Where that residence can, and does, make a difference is in Sewell's image of herself, and that has a lot to tell us about her ability to empathize with, and relate to, the residents of the 7th Congressional District. Ms. Sewell did not grow up in poverty. Her parents were both public schoolteachers (as were mine). While not wealthy, schoolteachers in Alabama were no longer skipping meals by the time Ms. Sewell came along. (Thank you, AEA.) She spent several years as a partner in a Wall Street law firm where per-partner profits were well over a million dollars a year. She is now a partner in one of the most elite law firms in Alabama - perhaps the most elite. Her choice of home was certainly not constrained by her income. No longer married to anyone with an interesting history, she need not worry about the size of the home or yard.

Now, I realize that Birmingham has not reached the critical mass of a black upper class, so as to have historic black upper-class neighborhoods, like Atlanta's Collier Heights, or newer such areas in other parts of that city. But it does have decent neighborhoods in predominantly black areas, and it certainly has excellent housing available in more urban settings. My issues with Artur Davis, the departing Congressman from this district, are well known. His choice of residence - currently on Fifth Avenue South in the heart of Birmingham's Southside, his only residence in Alabama - is not one of them. Barack Obama, though his wife's income could have made a mortgage payment anywhere in Chicago, moved onto the South Side.

Sewell's first instinct was to move into a home where her next door neighbor could be - and likely listens to - Glenn Beck. That simply doesn't communicate to me care or concern for the sort of folks she will be called on to represent if she is lucky enough to win election. Should a person of color be precluded from living anywhere he or she can meet the mortgage payment? Of course not. They should even have the right to remove themselves behind gated fences. But representative democracy has at its root a presumption of a community of interest between constituent and representative. Spencer Bachus has a lot in common with the residents of Waterside Drive in Hoover, and his voting record shows that he reflects those interests well. If and when Sewell has to cast votes on financial reform and job creation, will her instincts be those of Tuxedo Junction, or those of the brokers and bankers on Waterside Drive? Hoover has one of its own in Congress. It doesn't need another.

Random Thoughts Before the Runoff

There's less than a week to go before the July 13 runoff, and a few recent developments in the news have caught my eye. Normally, I prefer providing perspective to reporting developments, but these new facts do have places in analyses I have previously made. The fact that they all bear on runoff races mean they won't be timely after next Tuesday, so here goes.

The GOP Gubernatorial Runoff. As I predicted - and ironically suggested - Byrne has pulled out the stops, hitting Bentley with attack ads based on Bentley's alleged links to AEA. There are two such ads up, and both seem to be getting a pretty decent GRP buy:

It is amusing the way the Byrne ads gratuitously toss in Dr. Reed's photo to make sure Bubba knows that Bentley is in cahoots with "them." This is straight out of the Guy Hunt 1990 playbook, where GOP ads also liberally showed Dr. Reed. I wonder how Republican admakers will telegraph race when Dr. Reed retires at AEA? In any event, Bentley is now feeling the sting of negative for the first time, and that will have to have some impact. AEA doesn't get a strong reaction from mainstream voters, but it is loathed by party activists, who will constitute a larger portion of the runoff electorate. The Riley quote, in case you hadn't yet heard it, underscores how heavily the GOP establishment is rallying behind Byrne. Bentley also suffered a minor self-inflicted wound from his own ad, which arguably exaggerated his Vietnam-era war record.

[SEE CORRECTION AT END OF POST] On the other hand, there has been an interesting development out of Tuscaloosa County, as reported this week by The Tuscaloosa News. It seems that, since the June 1 primary, the voter rolls in Tuscaloosa County have been fattened by over 10,000 new names, an increase of roughly 10% in just a few weeks. This is an astronomical registration surge in such a short time. The most logical explanation is that Bentley's strong primary showing created a sensation of viability, that has awakened favorite-son interest in his candidacy. If there is that kind of excitement on the ground in the Druid City, Bentley can only benefit, as the GOP primary turnout in Tuscaloosa was an anemic 16.2%. While there is some conflicting data and analysis in the literature, it seems to be the better view that recent registrants turn out at higher levels than typical voters, particularly when their registration is keyed to a particular event or current election. This, of course, would be the case with any new voters drawn to Bentley as Tuscaloosa's favorite son. One key question, not addressed in the News article, is whether this is the result of a spontaneous groundswell of Bentley support, or of a concerted GOTV field operation. If the former, it's a truly remarkable phenomenon. If the latter, less so, but still significant. It's not that difficult to register voters; all you need is some basic information on a postcard. Even if this is the result of a field operation, it's still a good sign for Bentley. The low turnout in Tuscaloosa in the primary indicates that Bentley did not have a good GOTV op there in the first round. Just the outreach necessary to get 10,000 postcards filled out is going to create a buzz, and that can boost turnout Tuesday. Maybe the Doc got something more for his money (paid to Huckabee's son in law) than just the endorsement.

Just how important is a bloc of votes that size? Well, considering that Byrne's margin over Bentley in the primary was only 13,772 votes, and overall turnout is usually lower in runoffs, it's potentially significant. From another perspective, extrapolating the most recent GOP gubernatorial runoff turnout (15.4% from 1998) to current active registration figures, produces a potential turnout of about 388,000. Since you would only need half of that to win, or about 194,000, that could be a big block. In any event, the polarity of the break, and the turnout, of the former James and Moore vote, will probably have a more decisive impact than the Tuscaloosa surge. But if the race becomes close, everyone will be waiting on the AP report from Greensboro Avenue.

Considering the potential impact of the Moore and James votes, the two runoff candidates seem to be focusing most of their face time in the closing weeks in counties in which they led in the primary, apparently placing a premium on turnout over persuasion.

One poll released late this week, and being touted by the Bentley camp, shows him with a 20% lead over Byrne. I have frequently cautioned about the reliability of primary polls, and this one has more problems than most. It doesn't specify the contact method (robocall vs. live caller), and they are using data from recent primaries in 2008 and 2006 to adjust for turnout. This is not a sound practice, as neither of those primaries was a runoff, and neither featured a contested gubernatorial race. Finally, the poll admits that it outsources its sample list. This is the polling equivalent of buying a car from a maker that admits it buys its engines from an outside supplier. I still think it comes down to turnout. If turnout is low, party insiders deliver it to Byrne. If enough non-insiders show up, it breaks to Bentley. For what it is worth in that department, Tuesday's forecast for Birmingham, which seems to be typical for the state:

Tuesday
July 13

Scattered T-Storms

High 90°
Low 74°

Precipitation 40%

7th Congressional District Runoff. One of the rules of being a candidate is, that when an organization has endorsed you, and set up a debate between you and your opponent, it's not a good idea to stand up the event, and let it be turned into a rally for your opponent, in front of your endorsers. As Terri Sewell did last week at a Birmingham New South debate. For a campaign that dropped a money bomb on the district for a first place finish in the primary, the Sewell team is doing some strange things this close to the runoff. For one thing, the candidate was working the canapé circuit in Mountain Brook as recently as Tuesday night of this week. Normally, a slower finance event like this, this close to D-Day, would indicate a campaign with an empty piggy bank. If not that, one with a strange sense of candidate time utilization. With so little time left to connect to voters, a candidate's time is normally better spent working a Piggly Wiggly parking lot or a Little League crowd. Sewell strikes me as the sort of candidate who would much prefer canapés in Mountain Brook to pressing the flesh (think John Kerry), and it may be that her staff simply didn't get its druthers. Look for some second guessing if Smoot's frenzied crowd-working pays off and she edges Sewell.

Attorney General Democratic Runoff. This has been a relatively quiet campaign, with both candidates making interesting and progressive statements about the death penalty. Perkins's more forceful call for a moratorium hasn't gotten a lot of play in the mainstream media, but there are rumblings that it's been noted - and appreciated - in the black community. Anderson, for his part, has not gone full throttle for the runoff, apparently wanting to save cash on hand and untapped donors for a fall contest with "Big Oil" Luther Strange. Given that the Business Council will finance Strange handsomely, this is not an irrational strategy. Perkins will doubtless close the substantial gap between himself and Anderson, but Anderson should emerge the winner, with his campaign treasury undepleted by runoff expenses.

The deadlines for registration and non-emergency absentee voting are past, so all that remains to remember is 7A to 7 P, and show up and vote.

CORRECTION: Just a few minutes ago, I got an email response to an inquiry I made about the extent of the Brantley ground effort in Tuscaloosa County. It seems The Tuscaloosa News printed a correction this morning, acknowledging that the report of 10,000 new voters there since the primary was an error. I can't find the correction on their website, but I did snag a visual from their front page at newseum.org:

Now, I don't want to make accusations while the facts are out, but that's a pretty big "error." More importantly, the original story, linked above, quoted this Viselli person responding to why there was such a huge increase. Now, even if the reporter made an honest mistake (as the correction claims), surely Ms. Viselli knew the 10,000 figure was wrong. I think I'd notice the difference in processing one application every other day, and about 330 every working day. This report generated a lot of political buzz across Alabama, favorable to Bentley, and the retraction isn't even online. Either Ms. Viselli, the News, or both, need to come forth with a better explanation. As for Bentley's chances, my earlier analysis premised on a better Tuscaloosa turnout is obviously invalid. And if only 24 new voters appeared in Tuscaloosa since Bentley's campaign gained the appearance of viability in the primary, there's no reason to think turnout will be any better in Tuscaloosa than it was in the first round. I don't know if Paul the World Cup Octopus is making a prediction in the GOP runoff, but I think he just swam a few inches further from the Bentley flag.

The 7th Congressional District - Who Shall Represent the Pettus Bridge in Congress?

Winding from the downtown skyline of Birmingham, southward through Selma, and almost to Mobile, is Alabama's 7th Congressional District. This is a district of history, providing Alabama with its first black Congressman since Reconstruction, and again poised to make history this year by electing its first woman to Congress, other than the widow of an incumbent. In terms of this blog, it also occurred to me that if I want to say something about this district, I'd best be typing, as the general election vote in this 63.3% black district promises to be one of the great yawners of November. The action, as it has been from this district's birth in the 1992 cycle, is in the Democratic primary.

This is, of course, an open seat, vacated by Artur Davis in his Quixotic bid to become a triangulating black governor of Alabama. The runoff gives voters a choice between Jefferson County Commissioner Shelia Smoot, and Birmingham lawyer Terri Sewell. Sewell led the primary with 36.8% of the vote, with Smoot getting 28.6%. State Representative Earl Hilliard, Jr., of Birmingham, son of the former Congressman from this district, narrowly missed the runoff with 26.8%, and Martha Bozeman, a former Davis staffer, trailed with 7.8%.

The Horserace. The traditional saw that a primary frontrunner is the presumed favorite in a runoff may have some impact here, but there are a lot of wild cards in this deck. The governor's race is no longer on the ballot, so spontaneous turnout might be limited. This would put a premium on the organization best poised to get its voters to the polls. Hilliard has not, and (I understand) is not expected to make an endorsement in the runoff. However, the Alabama New South Coalition, which endorsed him in the primary, has endorsed Sewell. The New Jefferson County Citizens' Coalition, which also endorsed Hilliard, has not made any statement in this round, but has a scheduled meeting on July 9, just before the runoff. Smoot has picked up the endorsements, which went to Hilliard in the primary, of two of the most influential black members of Congress, Majority Whip Jim Clyburn of South Carolina, and Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi. Smoot remains endorsed, as she was in the primary, by the ADC.

Smoot's advantage is her base in Jefferson County, where she is known from years of television news reporting, and from service on the County Commission since 2002. She split that base with Hilliard in the primary; their districts overlap. With Hilliard out, she should have a clear field to the "Friends and Neighbors" vote in Jefferson County. Sewell's lead in the primary was largely a creature of her 66.9% share of the large turnout in Dallas County, combined with a close second to Smoot in Jefferson with 34.0% there to Smoot's 36.0%. Hilliard ran ahead of his district average in most of the more rural counties in the district, including showings of 41.1% in Wilcox and 37.7% in Choctaw. The key to the runoff may well be which candidate does best in these more rural parts of the district.

Despite being the officeholder remaining in this race, Smoot has struggled, as did Hilliard, to match the money dump wrought by Sewell, which brought her from a struggling third (in some polls I saw) to the lead. Through the May 12 F.E.C. reports, Sewell outraised Smoot, $783,333.00 to $99,723.00. (Though Smoot does have a history of amending statements to adjust upward. One of her reports indicated that the employment of her own campaign treasurer, who has to sign the report, was "unknown.") Of Sewell's total, $295,028.00 came from Alabama, and of that, $58,000.00 came from her present law firm, Maynard, Cooper & Gale. $132,352.00 of Sewell's total came from New York, much of that from the law firm of Davis, Polk & Wardwell, where she formerly practiced. Sewell's reports do not reflect the same focused generosity of the Bush-Cheney-aligned AIPAC (America Israel Public Affairs Committee) that the 2002 campaign of Artur Davis received, but rumors persist that AIPAC has looked for ways to help her off the books. These rumors center on "street money," which has a way of being impossible to prove - or disprove. If AIPAC was in the primary, it is unlikely they will invest in the runoff, as they no longer have to worry about Hilliard, Jr., making an Orestean career in Congress. Regardless of the relative finances of the two, Smoot has shown that she can vastly outperform her bank account at the ballot box. One final note in the "horserace" discussion: beware the Anzalone poll that the Sewell campaign is touting, showing her with a comfortable lead. Just a few weeks ago, that shop was predicting a comfortable Artur Davis win in the gubernatorial primary. Nuff said.

The Merits. From my perspective, this is not an ideal runoff. (This is as good a time as any to disclose that I was an unpaid advisor to the Hilliard campaign in the primary.) Hilliard would have provided this district with an able, intelligent, articulate Congressman, without any of the issues provided by the two remaining candidates. Smoot brings with her the baggage of being a member of the Jefferson County Commission, one of the most dysfunctional local governments in America. Even if hers is only guilt by association, being lumped with the indictments, convictions, bond defaults, bankruptcy threats, and litigation beyond measure, would give Mother Teresa an image problem. Smoot has passed on opportunity after opportunity on that Commission to exercise the sort of leadership that would truly make her stand out as a candidate for higher office. It's difficult to be too hard on her, as any systemic reform requires two other votes, but at least some advocacy of tougher measures would have been nice.

And yet. And yet, we come to the compelling life story of Terri Sewell. Raised in Selma, the child of public school teachers. Princeton, Oxford, Harvard Law. So far, the stuff of which movies are made. But at this point, the resume diverges from what one would expect of a woman seeking to represent one of the poorest Congressional districts in the country. After a stopover as law clerk to Judge U.W. Clemon in Birmingham, Sewell took a position with the Wall Street law firm, Davis, Polk & Wardwell. She worked in the firm's securities department, which handles much of the legal work of such firms as Goldman, Sachs and J.P. Morgan Chase. In other words, this firm is one of the handful of Wall Street megafirms which lawyered the maze of derivatives, swaps, securitized debt obligations, mergers, and acquisitions, that allowed Wall Street to spend the 90s and 00s ripping off America, and nearly brought it to its knees in 2008. (And, coincidentally, not unlike the shell game deals that left Jefferson County swimming in red ink.) From Wall Street, Sewell returned to Alabama in 2005 to join the Birmingham firm of Maynard, Cooper & Gale. There, she works in public finance, according to her campaign bio. Politically, Maynard, Cooper is known for being the general counsel of the Business Council of Alabama, the de facto finance arm of the Alabama Republican Party. (Yes, they do keep Democrats on the firm roster, and I know a few. Still.)

In one regard, I can't fault Sewell for her career choices. If someone is going to be paid $700 an hour to engineer the plutocrats' plunder of the rest of us, I think that the gravy train ought to be open to people of every gender, race, creed and orientation. Even Yankees fans. But then I consider what other Harvard Law grads, with even humbler backgrounds, have done with their degrees. For instance, Hank and Rose Sanders came back to Selma, with no stops in New York, London or Birmingham, to help bring justice to the Black Belt. And of course, Barack Obama took his Harvard sheepskin back to the streets of Chicago as a community organizer. It puts a Wall Street career in a whole new perspective.

Then there is one little issue about Sewell's choice of Wall Street firms. As I noted above, she was a partner in the firm of Davis, Polk & Wardwell. That is, Davis, Polk & Wardwell. The "Davis" in that firm name is John W. Davis. (1873-1955, pictured on the right.) Davis founded the firm in large part to serve as the general counsel to the J.P. Morgan banking family. To this day, Davis holds the post-Civil War record for the most cases argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of parties other than the Federal government. What makes Davis's biography relevant to this Congressional race is his participation in his last case before that Court - Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). This is, of course, the famous case in which school segregation was held to be unconstitutional. In a perfect world, Sewell could tell a stemwinder tale about how Davis's fight for equality led her to join the firm. Except for one problem: Davis was the lead counsel at oral argument for the segregationists! Not only was he on the way-wrong side of history on this case, he handled the case for free as a personal favor for the governor of South Carolina. Nor was this stance unusual for Davis. He had opposed antidiscrimination legislation in New York, opposed Harry Truman's civil rights measures, including an anti-lynching bill, and refused to join other Wall Street legal titans in an amicus brief supporting the Scottsboro Boys. I cannot pretend to be an expert on the history of Sewell's former firm. For all I know, it has given millions of dollars to Tuskegee Institute and the UNCF to make amends for Davis's record. I do not even know if there has been any push among civil rights activists to have the firm name changed, though one comment (10th from the top) that I turned up in a Google search indicated that Davis's role in Brown has been redacted from the firm's promotional brochures. In any case, someone of Sewell's considerable education and intellect cannot have joined the firm without a full knowledge of the history of its namesake.

For all I know, her departure from the firm came as the result of the firm's refusal to change its name. (I would welcome authoritative information to this effect, from Ms. Sewell or anyone authorized to speak on her behalf. Commenting is unmoderated on this blog, as long as it's kept civil and legal. ) And maybe I am the only one who cares, but it strikes me that the Congressional district including Selma should not be represented by an alumna of a law firm with the leading segregationist lawyer of the Twentieth Century on its brass plate. I personally find that name as offensive as I would that of Lester Maddox. And I know the 7th District wouldn't abide Maddox's name on a candidate's resume.

To her credit, Sewell took one look at the glazed eyes of Artur Davis as his severed head rolled to a stop at her feet on June 1, and re-emphasized her earlier support of Obama's health care reform efforts. (I have schadenfreude reading the page. "Now confined to a wheelchair Terri works closely with her family to care for her father. " She is? Or he is? And "Terri is on the Community Advisory Board for UAB’s Minority Health Resource Center that helps to decrease the disparity in health care that exist [sic] in minority communities. Her work there helps close the health care disperity [sic] gap for rural and underserved communities." Yes, Princeton will tell.☺) But what worries me about Sewell's Wall Street background is the prospect that she will revert to it when the spotlight is not so glaring as it was on health care reform. That landmark bill was not Artur Davis's only Republican-pandering big business vote. Without much notice, he voted for the so-called Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, which substantially hurt sick, disabled and laid-off workers in bankruptcy. In other words, the people in his district. Sewell's website platform pages are ominously silent on her positions on legislation to stop the abuses and corruption of Wall Street, Big Oil, and tax-dodging billionaires. She has made some generic calls for "transparency" in financial services, but that is securities-lawyer-speak for "set up a public derivatives trading exchange, and the all-knowing 'free market' will take care of everything." What is needed is comprehensive reform, including, at a minimum, some reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, and restrictions against deposit institutions holding securitized debt obligations, in which they have no clue about the creditworthiness of their end-use counterparties. I'm glad she was and is for health care reform, but it's done with for a few years. These "Big Mule" issues, as Big Jim Folsom would have called them, are the fights of the next Congress. What will Sewell do? Given that she has made a very lucrative career out of helping engineer Wall Street deals (Sewell was a partner at Davis, Polk & Wardwell. In 2009, per partner profits there were $1,655,000 - in a down market), I find it hard to think she'd endanger a post-Congressional spot on K Street or Wall Street with any real pushback.

If I have missed clear statements by Sewell on these issues, I hope she, her staff, or her supporters will help me out with some links in the comments box. And Lord knows, I wish the average Alabama member of Congress had half of Sewell's academic credentials and intellectual horsepower. But unless I were to see some solid answers to the concerns I have raised, my gut instinct is that Smoot would be a more loyal member of both the Democratic majority, and the Congressional Black Caucus, and would thus serve her constituents better. And she did graduate from Michigan State, which helped send Nick Saban on his way to Tuscaloosa.

NOTE: I want to make one thing abundantly clear. Although, as I stated above, I served as an advisor to the Hilliard campaign, I speak solely for myself in this post. I did not discuss it with Earl Jr. before writing or posting it. In fact, the only communication I have had with him since the night of the primary has been an exchange of text messages, in which I told him to enjoy his vacation in the Smokies. And that I hope to see him in public office again someday.