I’m going to miss ya, Congressman Ray
By Bill Dennis | 2nd August 2007
I’ve had a lot of fun with Ray LaHood on these pages as well as the pages on my blog, PeoriaPundit.com. I imagine, though, that wasn’t quite so much fun for the congressman.
Now that LaHood has announced his retirement and the end of his current term in January 2009, I think it’s appropriate to explain the source of my pique with Peoria’s one and only congressman.
We go back a long way. My dad was, shall we say, an enthusiastic supporter of G. Douglas Stephens, who ran against LaHood’s former boss, Bob Michel. I believe the statute of limitations has run out, but familial loyalty prevents me from retelling some of the Dad’s tall tales about the lengths he and his cronies (or would that be “co-conspirators?”) went shortening the lifespan of Michel’s campaign signs back in 1982. It’s entirely possible Dad embellished things a bit.
But Michael retired and his top aide LaHood ran and won in 1992. When LaHood faced Stephens in 1994, I was a reporter for the Journal-Courier in Jacksonville. The boss assigned me a write lengthy follow-the-candidates-around profiles on both of them (the boss didn’t seem concerned that my old man was a Stephens supporter). I think I did a pretty good job. LaHood won, of course, and I tended to be the one assigned to cover him when he showed up for ribbon cuttings or to read stories to grade schoolers (“‘Who, who!’ went the owl, “Who who!’” Ya shoulda been there).
We weren’t buddy-buddy or anything, but we were certainly amicable when we dealt with each other. He took my calls when I made them, and if he griped about me to my editor, I never learned about it.
My time at the J-C came to an end and I found myself back in Peoria and out of newspapers for the time being. I took a software tech support job at Affina on War Memorial Drive. We didn’t get a whole lot of visitors, so I was surprised to look up one day and see Rep. Ray LaHood standing there looking around. I quickly got off the phone and walked over to shake his hand and exchange pleasantries.
LaHood mumbled something and bolted as soon as he spotted the people he was there to meet waiting for him on the other side of the call center floor.
I was dumbfounded. My old buddy Ray didn’t remember who I was.
It is at this point where I should write that I swore then and there to take my revenge on Congressman LaHood for this insult. But the truth is that I probably wouldn’t have remembered myself either.
A few years later I found myself running this odd little Website that make snarky comments about local politics and media. And quite often, Peoria’s one and only Congressman found himself in the cross-hairs. Soon, he became one of my favorite targets.
Honestly, folks, it’s not that I dislike Ray LaHood. I was just annoyed by the subservient attitude most of the local media seemed to show the guy. The co-hosts of WMBD’s morning show called him “Congressman Ray.” And I still am ticked off that the media never, ever made him explain why in the Hell he needed to let the nuclear power industry pay for his trip to France, nor did they call him on his non-denial denials.
He also did take some positions I found insane. He actually took the position that the United States should fund the Hamas-run Palestinian government, and also demanded that Israel NOT defend itself against Hezbollah attacks from within Lebanon.
He took positions that at times made me think he was targeting, well, me. He supported a form of campaign finance reform that would have required bloggers to submit documents to prove that we weren’t a part of campaign.
And let’s face it, during the past few years, he made some real bonehead moves. He announced that the United States was real close to capturing Saddam Hussein, then back-peddled. He said he was considering a run for governor of Illinois, but never did any serious campaigning. He tried to get a low-level staffer investigated and fired for leaking secrets because he was ticked off at the kid’s boss. He announced he was interested in becoming Bradley University’s next president, and when confronted with the fact that they had narrowed the search to a list of final candidates and that he wasn’t on it, he said that he was still considering applying.
How do you NOT ridicule these things?
LaHood also did things that deserve attaboys. He gave Bush a frank and honest assessment of his party’s chances should the United States still be in Iraq in 2008, something Bush’s sycophants seemed reluctant do so. And he’s stood up to so-called fiscal hawks who can’t find better things to cut from the budget than funds to help wounded veterans. And he did manage to get Upgrade 74 approved.
And if for nothing else, he deserves an attaboy for not being one of these mindless, right-wing, Sean Hannity/Rish Limbaugh wannabes that seem to infest the party of Abraham Lincoln.
But still, the vast majority of my comments about “Congressman Ray” were unflattering. Now that the end is near, I feel I need to tell the man that he ought to not take it personally. In all honesty, as a moderate Republican, his views probably aren’t all that different than mine. It’s just that I felt the need to give him the grief that politicians need to be given in order to keep them honest and on their toes. Had I seen the news media do that in the River City, I probably would have been nicer. Nobody in the media was lobbing hand grenades his way, just softballs. It was my mission to fill that void.
You can see for yourself . Perhaps after he retires and settles down to life in Peoria (assuming he doesn’t do what Michel did and become a lobbyist), LaHood could start a blog of his own, commenting on idiot members of Blogosphere.