Rep. Grayson won't hold his tongue
By JOSH KRAUSHAAR
3/6/09
politico.com
The standard playbook for new members of Congress includes this time-honored piece of advice: Lay low, focus on constituent service and avoid drawing too much attention to yourself.
But Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.) hasn’t paid much attention to the old adage about being seen and not heard. Just two months into his first term, he’s already making a name for himself with a shoot-from-the-lip style and an ideological edge that some argue is ill-suited for the competitive, suburban Orlando seat that he represents.
On Wednesday, Grayson weighed in on the dispute between the Obama administration and Rush Limbaugh, calling the conservative talk show host “a sorry excuse for a human being.” In January, he referred to Limbaugh as a “has-been hypocrite loser” who “was more lucid when he was a drug addict.”
The tart-tongued freshman also skewered Wall Street CEOs with sharp questioning at a recent Financial Services Committee meeting — video of which he uploaded to YouTube — and, in a much-noted personnel move, hired prominent liberal blogger and political consultant Matt Stoller to be a senior policy adviser on his congressional staff.
During the past election, Stoller led efforts to recruit liberal primary candidates to challenge moderate Democratic members of Congress throughout the country.
All of this has earned Grayson a national following of progressive admirers, including prominent congressional candidate Darcy Burner of Washington, who made a late January fundraising appeal praising Grayson for “scaring some of the people who got us into this financial mess.”
“It’s who the guy is; it’s not like he’s changed at all since he’s been elected,” said Democratic pollster Dave Beatty. “It’s who he is. He’s outspoken, and he’s serving the same way he ran.”
In dozens of congressional districts across the nation, Grayson’s approach would ensure a long career in office. The trouble is, Florida’s 8th District isn’t one of them.
While Barack Obama, by all estimates, carried the district in 2008, George W. Bush won by comfortable margins in 2000 and 2004. As recently as 2004, then-incumbent Rep. Ric Keller (R-Fla.) won reelection with 61 percent of the vote.
It’s the kind of competitive district where Grayson’s talk of beating “swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks” might not resonate the way it would elsewhere.
“For someone in Congress, he’s really out there. He comes across as a total ideological flake,” said Florida Republican media consultant John Dowless. “He’s tacking hard left, and he’s trying to become the Robert Wexler of Congress, but Wexler’s in a district where you can do that and get away with it. Grayson’s not in that type of district.” |
